Hey Lion!!! WAKE UP!!!!!

@Zooplantman: Hilarious! I read a lot of them, but my favourite was the one about the komodo dragon breathing fire.
 
On that thread was the second case of an American being disturbed that a visitor had stated they wanted to shoot a zoo animal (kifaru was the first earlier in this thread) is that a common occurence..? Not just in America but elsewhere..?
 
love that thread Zooplantman. Funny how same as on here you get some posters complaining that we are picking on the visitors who can't be expected to know any better and that we should be using the opportunities to educate them instead of laughing at them. But I get it all the time at work with odd questions about our kiwi (Are they extinct? Do you need to feed them? Do they use their beak like a snorkel? Do they migrate south in the winter? etc etc). Some questions are just through an unfamiliarity with kiwi but others are just plain stupid (Do they need surgery to get the egg out? Are they related to bears? etc). And we do answer the questions with a straight face and hopefully the visitor learns something, but some people simply won't be told anything. One of my colleagues had a woman arguing with him that we had three kiwi not two because she had definitely seen three, and she left thinking we were trying to scam her in some way!

And if you are a visitor yourself to a zoo, then not every other visitor is going to be exactly welcoming to some stranger telling them what's what. And of course as we all know, your average visitor cannot read signage. Or maybe they can but cannot believe what it says: when I worked at Orana Park a man asked me what the animals in the paddock were and I said they were springbok, and he replied "oh I thought so, because that's what it says on the sign".

I also regularly got the "oh look there's a human in this cage" or "look at the funny bird" comments when working in the aviaries (so I wrote up a sign on a bit of paper and stuck it on the netting, which read "Human Being (Homo sapiens), hand-raised", which worked a treat.
 
@NZ Jeremy: in my 14 years as a zoo employee, I only overheard such a comment once, as two men stood watching the markhor at the Cincinnati Zoo and calmly discussed whether a .22 would do the trick

@Chlidonias: I love the stupid questions. They really can open up a great conversation. Especially since we tend to act like we have all the answers (as zoo people), when in fact we're usually spouting something we were told but never really questioned ourselves. What always bugs me, though, is the "know-it-all" parent or teacher or docent who makes those anchorman-type pronouncements. That just kills curiosity and learning.
 
About the shooting aspect: I have heard such remarks now and then in both American and European zoos, yet more often in American institutions. Usually, it's the typical male teen who wants to show his mates what a tough guy he is...
@Zooplantman: Thanks for posting the link. Some of the examples had a very familiar ring to me, some are new, but the Belted Galloway "Panda" surely takes the biscuit.

About the stupid questions, or rather stupid behaviour of visitors also mentioned in the link: of course this might serve as a basis to increase the knowledge and curiosity/will to learn, and of course nobody can claim omniscience for himself. But to be honest: some of the visitor comments are so plain stupid that You can't do anything else than laugh or bitch at them, depending on Your temper and the comment.
What makes me sad though is that all these beautiful informative signs, interactive consols, expensive TV documentaries, awesome non-fiction books or even (over)simplifying Internet information channels are not used-that the people are at least as or even dumber than their uneducated ancestors in the early decades of the very first zoos. After at least 100 (or even 250 in Vienna) years of zoo existence, the random visitor questions and remarks have changed only slightly if at all in comparison to the ones in the beginning of modern zoos. I sometimes even get the impression that some of the newer questions would have been considered as signs of a remarkable lack of common-sense back then.
And even if the kids are interested to learn, the first persons they turn to are usually their parents. And if the parents are less informed than their kids and unable/unwilling to simple switch on their brain for a second or two to look for a reasonable answer, I can't see any positive learning effect at all for all involved.
The current generation of parents and teachers are actually a weird breed; most of them grew up in a time when high-quality TV animal documentaries by Attenborough, Cousteau, Grzimek, Sielmann etc. ... started to launch, new updated non-fiction books for kids & adults and the very first zoo-education programmes came out and wild animals and exotic places like Africa were still considered "cool"... However, somewhere during their growing-up period this interest and knowledge in fauna & flora was erased and never came back, leaving only a few interested "infantile animal nerds" behind. Maybe it's due to the decrease of importance of this kind of knowledge in modern life, maybe "expert idiotism" is required in most fields of modern life and maybe the overflow of data just kills the natural curiosity and will to learn, no matter whether it's animals, arts, music or history...
All in all, these stupid and permanently echoed questions make me kind of doubt about the sustained yield of the current system of education in many countries...

Re: Nigel's older comment about making visitor-safe exhibits: that would often collide with the visitors' wish to see and get close to animals. And to be honest: it's hardly possible to avoid all possible risks, as a sane person often lacks the ability to imagine & forecast all the stupid things some people can come up with...
 
Try visiting an Asian Zoo (esp one with lots of Chinese visitors. I'm not being racist, i'm Chinese myself!) and you'd think the visitors were walking down a buffet line. They'd trade stories on which animals on display they've eaten and how best to cook them. Its true though, traditional Chinese folks eat just about anything.
 
@Zooish: Haven't You heard that old South Chinese saying? "You can eat everything as long as it's belly is pointed to the ground (and not to the sky).";)
 
Ugh, I'm always annoyed by some of the idiots that show up at Marineland. Luckily there's plenty of staff around to keep them out of serious trouble XD People always leaning over to touch something that swims by, or banging on the glass, or generally being idiotic. Same with the Toronto Zoo. Some people have no respect for animals anywhere and it disgusts me. Of course, sometimes they're just ignorant, but I don't think that's an excuse. One lady at Sea World Orlando my friend told me about was explaining to her kids about the "stingrays" - who were really walruses.
 
Marinelander:I understand where your coming from.There were people throwing rocks at Ikaika (an orca) just so he would start sqeualing for help.Terrible.I told a cove worked who had them evacuated.

I also have something that may intrest Ungulate if he's ever on here.The last time i was at the zoo with my class.Me and my friends were going to see the river hippos and to our disgust,people were throwing sticks at them to make them open there mouths.Since there was no teacher or parent supervision that day (the teacher just said to group up and meet at the entrance at around 5:30) we gave them a piece of our minds.I swear,we never told someone off so bad in our lives!And these people were at least 16!It actually came to the point of the hippos getting so annoyed that they came and tried to find a safety blanket in us.We quickly finished our little "speech" and raced up to the elephant "balcony to tell an elphant keeper to call security.He quickly did and they were ejected from the zoo.I actually think i saw the hippo smile as they walked away!Sorry for being so in-depth,i just thought you should know the whole story.
 
This reminds me of the time I told off a woman at Toronto Zoo who was trying to hand feed one of the GRIZZLY BEARS a sandwich. She got offended :rolleyes: She had to be at least 40, old enough to know better!
 
Zoogoer2000 said:
Marinelander:I understand where your coming from.There were people throwing rocks at Ikaika (an orca) just so he would start sqeualing for help.Terrible.I told a cove worked who had them evacuated.
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WHAT? What kind of ****** does that to a whale? That's awful. I hope they don't have any pets.
 
Some guys are just empty, and cruel lets stick some in a maze and try to see if they can get out, making them run on a wheel would be pretty amusing and then they'll get stuff thrown at them, I could go further in fact people in my school often have Your Momma battles,
 
Meaghan Edwards said:
This reminds me of the time I told off a woman at Toronto Zoo who was trying to hand feed one of the GRIZZLY BEARS a sandwich. She got offended :rolleyes: She had to be at least 40, old enough to know better!
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you'd think they'd know.I've seen alot more then the hippo situation though at tornto zoo like ppeople standing next to the fur seal pool yelling "look at the otters!" and then there was the time someone asked me why the gorilla's were so tiny at the mandrill viewing area.I mean please come on!!!!!!!!!
 
Alot of people at Toronto Zoo also like to go to the mandrill viewing window and tap on it while the females eat right next to it.The dominant male usually ends up egging the reaction the people want on by coming over and snarling.
 
Just today I was at the very small Peoria Zoo (I'll review sometime this week). A couple about my age (approaching thirty) and their little girl walked right up to plexiglass for the tiger exhibit. The father started beating on it like a policeman banging on a criminal's door on television. It was extraordinarily loud. For nearly two minutes straight, the entire family was screaming at the top of their lungs "HERE KITTY KITTY." Those poor tigers must have been used to it. They didn't stir from where they were lounging.

They finally stopped when I snuck up right behind them and shouted "HEEEEERE, ***** FAMILY!"

I also see it quite a bit with the free-ranging peafowl 90% of zoos seem to think are a good idea. Those poor things get chased all over the place. I don't know why they roam about, anyway.
 
What did the people do when you yelled that?Im thinking they spazzed
 
Boy, would I have loved to see that :D

Nicely done monomach
 
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