More "broad" education in zoos?

[Agalychnis]

The zoos I've visited have all focused their primary educational energy on individual animal species, usually big mammals such as tigers.

Perhaps zoos should provide a more broad basis for education about wildlife? After all, without such things as pollination, photosynthesis and evolution*, there wouldn't be any of the big mammals we know today.

What do you think about zoos providing education about not just zoology, but also ecology, botany, geology, paleonthology and perhaps, with today's trouble with Global Warming**, even climatology?


* I recognize that due to issues with (ahem) religious fundamentalists, zoos in some parts of the world would be dismissed by the public if they educated people about how evolution works and natural history.

** Same for Global Warming, just with political fundamentalists instead of religious ones.

 

[zooboy28]

I think a number of zoos do illustrate broader educational principles, I've certainly seen plenty of signs about pollination, climate change, food webs, habitat and evolution in zoos, although certainly not all zoos do this.

I think picking an educational "theme", such as those above and linking it to multiple exhibits in one area of a zoo is a good way to get a message across. For example climate change in an area of Arctic exhibits, food web signs in the African savannah section, etc. This in addition to standard signs on species biology.

Of course zoos could always do this better, and many are striving to. I think much of the zoo's education budgets ultimately go towards visiting school groups, and I know these classes typically focus on broad themes. In many ways this is probably more effective at getting these messages across, compared to a typical zoo visit.

 

[TheMightyOrca]

I'd be in support of that. I'm all for zoos getting more educational. And while I enjoy my charismatic megafauna, I like it when zoos shift more focus to smaller species and other aspects of environmental education. People already know about tigers and elephants, and if they want to learn more they can type it into Google. But one of the big benefits of zoos is that they can expose people to animals and concepts that they weren't aware of.