General Zoo Misconceptions

I now have a wonderful mental image of a rhino rolling down a hill in order to look like a rock!
 
It can be a minefield even when they read the signs! I overheard this at Paignton yesterday while looking at the Lesser Mouse Deer:
Son: " What's that?"
Mum: "I don't know." Goes to read sign. "It's a Lesser Moose Deer."
Mum has a think and re-reads sign. "No, it's a Lesser Mouse Deer."
Son: "It's a big mouse, isn't it? It looks like a small deer."
And off they wandered.
 
Worst I've heard is - Tawny Eagle = Golden eagle,
- Harris Hawk = Sparrowhawk
- Caracara = That weird bird
- Rhino = Hippo
 
Gigit said:
It can be a minefield even when they read the signs! I overheard this at Paignton yesterday while looking at the Lesser Mouse Deer:
Son: " What's that?"
Mum: "I don't know." Goes to read sign. "It's a Lesser Moose Deer."
Mum has a think and re-reads sign. "No, it's a Lesser Mouse Deer."
Son: "It's a big mouse, isn't it? It looks like a small deer."
And off they wandered.
Click to expand...

Shame the zoo doesn't have Deer Mice (Peromyscus) in the next exhibit - that'd confuse 'em! :D
 
The annoying thing I often hear at Marwell is "This zoo isn't very good because it doesn't have elephants."
 
ive heard this many times but this was quite annoying...

i was at the big cat house at blackpool zoo, look at the lion cubs (they were soo cute!!! XD) and i could hear a kid saying to its mum "why is that lion got stripes on it back?" than the mum said "coz the keepers painted it"
 
i was a the ky fauna park on sunday and i heard a father telling his daughter that a cockatoo was an emu:eek: (the family were not aussie thank god)

to add. 2 women were looking in bushes along the side of the walking trail to find snakes just because they saw an image of a snake in the garden. upon reading the caption i realised it stated the snakes that lived in the area.:D
 
just the other day i saw a dead lizard in an exhibit. along came a mum and daughter.
daughter: mummy! why isn't the lizard moving
mum: oh darling it's sleeping
what a classic reaction. i guess it's the right thing to say to a child.
 
let him dangle his feet....once less idiot in the world when he falls in.....these stories about people harassing animals ( San Francisco tigers) or people trying to get in exhibits (polar bears in germany)...are classic.....these fools should be the ones behind bars...
 
pancake tortoises are fun, you see a kid run to the enclosure and say "WOW!! THAT IS ONE FLAT TURTLE MUST OF BEEN HIT BY A CAR!!" or

Kid "Mummy, aren't zoos safe places"
Mum "Yes, dear. why you ask?"
Kid "That Meerkat had gone crusty!"

Kid "Look it is a silly rabbit that got stuck in a tube"
Dad "Yeah that is a very silly rabbit"
 
jaguar78 said:
let him dangle his feet....once less idiot in the world when he falls in.....these stories about people harassing animals ( San Francisco tigers) or people trying to get in exhibits (polar bears in germany)...are classic.....these fools should be the ones behind bars...
Click to expand...

Melbourne Zoo has it's own book of crazies that they are not to let in because they might enter the exhibits. one bloke payed the hard way when he jumped into the lion exhibit. he said that god made him do it.:rolleyes:
 
London Zoo had a couple of incidents like that in the eighties: The first chap climbed in with a bible claiming God would protect him and the second entered with two frozen turkeys and claimed the lions were his friends. Both were badly attacked but survived.
 
A misconception that seems common to all zoo visitors is that you need to wear your very worst clothes to visit the zoo.In fact , you need to be even worse-dressed than you would be for a trip to the supermarket.Looking through old zoo photos , it can be seen that this was not always the case.In fact, even just 20 years ago , most visitors were still making an effort , and dressing as if the zoo visit were a special occasion.Somehow the misconception crept in that zoos were somewhere you could dress as if you were visiting a farm.Personally , I try to give an example , and always shine my shoes etc before visiting any zoo , as I feel it all sets a positive tone.Zoos may start to get the message that it is actually not fine to just dispense hamburgers and include bog-standard mis-spelt descriptions on the exhibit signage.
 
I've heard many misconceptions in my time as a zoo-goer, but most of the comments were more uneducated than directly stupid (like calling an african wild dog a hyena etc. (by the way, an african wild dog is called "hyænehund" in my native language which means "hyena dog")

The worst I've heard, however, was this one: In the small Danish zoo Jutland's Park Zoo, an elder woman was walking with two small kids (I think she was their grandmother). I was watching the ring-tailed lemurs. This day, they were unusually active, jumping around, play-fighting, playing etc. Soon, the woman and the kids arrived. The kids who couldn't read pointed to the sign where they clearly was written "Ring-tailed lemur" (Kattalemur in Danish) and asked "What is that animal?" The woman didn't even bother to read the sign even though her grandchildren was pointing at it, and just stated "seems like a sloth".
What's worse, the irony in this is that a sloth in Danish is "dovendyr" which literally means "lazy animal", and the ring-tailed lemurs were probably the most active animals that day.
Near the lemur island is a paddock with alpacas and cameroon sheep. Though not as embarassingly ignorant (pardon my honesty) as the comment with the lemurs, I heard the woman refer to them as "dromedaries and goats".

On a positive note about these kinds of people, I like going to the zoo with my dad. He's not knowledgeable about animals and he tends to the forget the names of the lesser well-known animals he has seen in a zoo. But when he is in a zoo, he can be hard to pull away from an exhibit because he spends long time reading every single sign in order to find out what he's actually watching. This means I don't have to be an annoying know-it-all, only that I maybe can add "this animal is actually very rare in zoos" etc.
So all in all, I don't really care if people don't know a jolt of what they're watching. But it can bother me if they're too ignorant to want to know it - why then go to the zoo?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top