Signage on human cultural beliefs about animals within zoos

dt644 said:
I like that painting, too. The painting is the most famous tiger painting in Korea today, and it has story that the first daughter of Jo-jayong, a folklorist and folk painting collector, found it in an antique shop and bought it by suggest Jo to buy it. I think that great cultural heritage could be preserved thanks to her.




Japan's tiger culture is somewhat different from that of Korea. The biggest difference was that no tigers lived in Japan, so Japan had to bring information about tigers from abroad. So in Japan, tigers had a stronger image as legendary animals such as dragons than real ones.


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A Japanese painting of Kato Kiyomasa's tiger hunting in joseon kingdom, painted in the 19th century. Kato Kiyomasa has never actually hunted tigers, but Kato is still considered a representative of the samurai who hunted tigers in korea.

The source of this picture is wikimedia.​


Japan had several military activities in Korea, by invasion or alliance, and also the story of samurai who hunted tigers in Korea appears. Therefore, for the Japanese, tigers also served as abroad's legendary monster combated by brave samurai.


To talk about the style of tiger painting, Japanese tiger paintings were different from Korea due to the differences of culture and whether tigers existed or not. Professor Choi-Kyung-guk, who majored in Japanese, said, Korean tiger paintings depicted tigers very freely, even if they look different from real tigers, but Japanese tiger paintings tried to depict tigers close to real. And also, he speculated that the Japanese might have tried to draw painting close to real tiger even by referenced to dogs and cats because they couldn't saw the real tiger.
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This is fascinating stuff @dt644 thank you so much for sharing this!

It is amazing for me to learn about how the tiger is viewed by different cultures across its range and represented so differently in art / artistic styles.

It seems that the tiger is still a very emblematic animal in Korean culture and still is visually ever present in art but would you say that this cultural power that the tiger has is beneficial for its conservation in the country ?
 
Onychorhynchus coronatus said:
This is fascinating stuff @dt644 thank you so much for sharing this!

It is amazing for me to learn about how the tiger is viewed by different cultures across its range and represented so differently in art / artistic styles.

It seems that the tiger is still a very emblematic animal in Korean culture and still is visually ever present in art but would you say that this cultural power that the tiger has is beneficial for its conservation in the country ?
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What makes tigers more unique in Korea is that few people dispute that tigers are considered Korean symbols, even though they no longer exist in wild of Korea. That much, tigers are still special to Koreans, but in my opinion, Korean interest in tigers has not yet been much of a help to the actual conservation of tigers.

However, there exists Tiger and Leopard Conservation Fund in Korea(KTLCF), a Korean organization that studies tigers and leopards and delivery support money to Phoenix fund, the Russian tiger protection organizations.

KTLCF has long focused on scientific and historical research on tigers and leopards, but began holding online seminars on tiger culture last year. It was intended to create a sense of national familiarity about tigers, and also, I was able to get various information through KTLCF's seminars.

The lately purpose of KTLCF was to build a tiger ecology center and museum in Korea. I believe that successful tiger museum construction could lead to more widespread tiger culture and the Korean interest in wild tigers conservation.


As an example of Koreans' interest in tigers, Seoul Zoo's tiger exhibit has a fundraising box. This is the only one fundraising box that exists in all zoos in Korea as far as I know.

But so far, there are too many Korean who have a wrong interest in tigers. For example, in the history of Korean zoos, when tigers died in zoos 1960s-1980s, many zoos, both public and private were dismantled dead tiger and sold tiger meat to civilians.

The reason they did it was, that was the way to get more operating money, but more fundamental reason was almost all Koreans of that time believed to tiger meat has special effects about health and natural magic. And until recently, I have sometimes found some pictures of Korean tourists who show off about drinking tiger bone wine in traveling China on SNS.


The belief that animals have special powers, as is the case with any country, has led to a desire to own them. I believe that breaking this down will allow Koreans to truly move for the real tigers.
 
Signage zoo D'Asson in France about the Australian aboriginal dreamtime concept:
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Photo credit to @fuscicollis.
 
Onychorhynchus coronatus said:
Elephant sign detailing an Indian fable about the animal at Conneticut's (sic) Beardsley zoo, USA:
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Spectacled bear signage detailing indigenous Andean cultural beliefs at Conneticut's Beardsley zoo:
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I have to question whether this is an actual traditional story and not fakelore. Did the particular culture this story supposedly comes from actually know or chart the geographical shape of the Indian subcontinent, much less Africa, at this time period, and were they familiar with African elephants at this time period? Also, this type of story would not be considered a “fable”, but rather an etiological, “pourquoi”, or “just-so” story.
 
Birdsage said:
I have to question whether this is an actual traditional story and not fakelore. Did the particular culture this story supposedly comes from actually know or chart the geographical shape of the Indian subcontinent, much less Africa, at this time period, and were they familiar with African elephants at this time period? Also, this type of story would not be considered a “fable”, but rather an etiological, “pourquoi”, or “just-so” story.
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It is taken directly from a 2000 childrens book by Catherine Chambers called "The Elephants' Ears", described on various publishing sites as a "contemporary fable", "original fable", and "modern fable". In other words, it looks like the people who made the sign just read a little kid's picture book and used that.
 
Chlidonias said:
It is taken directly from a 2000 childrens book by Catherine Chambers called "The Elephants' Ears", described on various publishing sites as a "contemporary fable", "original fable", and "modern fable". In other words, it looks like the people who made the sign just read a little kid's picture book and used that.
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Just as I suspected.
That’s essentially the definition of fakelore: a modern story presented in the style of traditional folklore.
 
Detroit has/had some animal-appropriate folktales in front of some of their African exhibits. Here’s a few I remembered…
  • “Hippo gets all his hair burnt off and now lives in the water.” Back when they still had Jock the hippo, obviously.
  • “Plain white zebra eats too much grass, stuffs himself into a black coat in a cave, suddenly stripes.”
  • An explanation of why warthogs kneel when they feed (I don’t remember the reason they used).
  • “Why mother rhinos guard their calves while standing behind them instead of in front of them.” Really specific, might be bollocks.
I think they also had some for giraffes, ostriches, lions, and (maybe) aardvarks.
 
Bioparco Roma has a series of educational signs for some animals called "Animals in the Bible", citing the verses in which they're named and explaining the metaphores and symbolism surrounding them, as fair as I remember they're for lions, hippos, elephants, camels, pelicans, wolves and perhaps one of the gazelles/antelopes.
 
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