Snowleopard's 2014 Road Trip

[JVM]

This has been an enthralling journey to read. I'm very, very new to zoo-going as a genuine hobby and it was incredibly educational and informative. It's fascinating to see such direct comparisons of the strengths and weaknesses of zoo's across the country balanced from both a visitor and wildlife interest perspective, which is something I'm still getting used to here.

I'm curious what species you feel are most becoming more and less numerous in American zoos right now. I noticed you talking about the high increase in the Sichuan Takin and the lack of Asiatic Black Bears.

 

[snowleopard]

This has been an enthralling journey to read. I'm very, very new to zoo-going as a genuine hobby and it was incredibly educational and informative. It's fascinating to see such direct comparisons of the strengths and weaknesses of zoo's across the country balanced from both a visitor and wildlife interest perspective, which is something I'm still getting used to here.

I'm curious what species you feel are most becoming more and less numerous in American zoos right now. I noticed you talking about the high increase in the Sichuan Takin and the lack of Asiatic Black Bears.

Hey newcomer, thanks for your comments at various stages on this thread. On past road trips I visited many of the really large zoos and would typically tour 1 zoo per day in 2008, 2010 and 2011. Then on my 2012 trip I toured 2 aquariums per day on a number of occasions. This latest trip was completely different as my wife and 3 little kids were not with me and thus I could go at a much faster pace and almost all of the zoos were very tiny anyway. You should read some of my older road trip threads!

Species like Sichuan Takin and Fisher are extremely rare in most American zoos, but on this trip I mentioned them several times because due to the cold-weather climate of many of the U.S. states that I was in those particular species thrive there. Asiatic Black Bears are on their way out and there are maybe 10 left in the nation.

In general the vast majority of large-scale American zoos have begun to become homogenized and look the same as there is a focus on the SSP (Species Survival Plans). The smaller zoos are actually really cool to tour because there are rarities at many of them that simply cannot be located in the major zoos. Of course there is often not a lot of money to be found at the smaller facilities and so you end up with a place like Cosley Zoo in Illinois that spent many years just raising funds for a new Bobcat exhibit. On the other end of the scale there are zoos like Los Angeles, National Zoo and Miami where all 3 of those zoos spent $50 million on a single complex in the past 6 years. L.A. on elephants, National on elephants and Miami on a South American zone. Construction in the big cities is astronomical and so overall the exhibit quality is generally much higher in the major zoos but there is not always the diversity of animals on display. My top 5 zoos have, for the most part, the best of both worlds: San Diego, Saint Louis, Omaha, Bronx and Columbus.

 

[zooboy28]

TOUCH SCREENS 101
I'm going to try to shed some light as the the good (and bad) of touch screens in an aquarium. I designed all of the Touch Screens for The Living Planet Aquarium and I can give some insight into the thought process that went into them.
Touch Screens vs. Print- the biggest advantage of digital touch screens is the ease in which they can be updated. You can update a master file on your computer and upload it directly into the digital frame (or if it's really fancy, your frames are linked to your server and you upload directly from your computer.) Most aquariums feature species that are fragile, short lived, tasty to their tank mates, hard to replace or all of the above. A printed sign is fine when you have a long lived and easily replaced animal like an anaconda but for most tanks the livestock changes regularly, making replacing printed signs expensive and time consuming. Which leads to another sign problem - animals on display with NO sign or animals on the sign but not on exhibit. Touch screens solve this problem.
ONE VS 100. One touch screen allows you to view as many species as you want to put on the screen. Sometimes there isn't room around a tank for 45 printed signs- which leads to animals without signs or signs being very minimal (picture and name only).
The third advantage of touch screens in an aquarium is that they are back lit which makes them easy to read in a dark exhibit space. You need to be very smart in your placement due to reflections in other tank windows. I actually back lit the printed signs for this very reason.
THE DARK SIDE OF TOUCH SCREENS
Here's the problem, as Snowleopard pointed out- the interference of donor/ sponsorship ads. And that's what they are - ADS. Unfortunately they were an evil I fought and lost. Companies do not sponsor exhibits out of the kindness of their hearts- they want exposure for that $10,000 donation. And subtlety and tact do not figure into their desires. I had one sponsor that demanded that their family be painted into the tank mural and had to be talked out of it with great patience. Often the Board or founders just want/need the money and do not see what the issue is in turning a beautiful gallery into a megamart of corporate logos and signs. It's the bane of the non-profit...
The other huge problem with touch screens has nothing to do with the technology but everything to do with who designed it. Most that I have seen are nothing more than power point presentations created by an intern or secretary. And when they have several hundred to churn out... Well not a lot of thought goes into them. And hiring a real design group to do them would make them beautiful (Monterey Bay Aquarium's are gorgeous) but could cost several hundred thousand... A problem for Non-Profits...
A BRIGHT FUTURE...?
I do believe there is a way to make Touch Screens an important part of aquarium signage- but like any art form, good design, ease of use and restraint of ads make a huge difference between an interactive and informative exhibit sign and a glowing eyesore screaming company logos at you.

Not to be pedantic, but are these actually touch screens as such? Or just monitors showing signs that are not in any way controlled by visitors. Surely actual touch screens would suffer much more from malfunctions than monitors.

I can see the huge advantages of these, but the negatives are pretty big too, especially with multispecies exhibits. I haven't seen any ads per se on screens, but if they are displayed alongside the sign that's fine, but if they are ads between changing signs or similar then people will ignore the signs even more, which surely defeats the purpose. I don't think there is a great chance of escaping these screens in the future, but I hope they improve a lot from where they are now.

 

[snowleopard]

An update on the photo situation (34 zoos have photos completely uploaded and the full list of zoos is on an earlier posting). Here are the 3 from today:

32- Hutchinson Zoo - 25 photos
33- Henson Robinson Zoo - 65 photos
34- National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium - 90 photos

What interests me is that a tiny, fairly crappy facility like Michigan's DeYoung Family Zoo has generated a lot of comments in the gallery, while some of the really good zoos have lots of folks viewing the photos but the comments are kept to a minimum. Somewhat understandably zoo nerds are inclined to post a remark on a really bad exhibit rather than commend something that is obviously of a high quality. Human nature? Thoughts?

Also, this morning I spent more than half-an-hour in a busy post office and I sent off 5 packages bursting with zoo maps. Two of them are off to England, two to the United States and the largest of the lot is headed to Poland. All 5 destinations are to zoo nerds who I've traded map packages with in previous years.

I've now entered into my laptop and organized all 1,000 zoo maps that I own into two large bins; sent off the 5 bulky packages to foreign destinations; and what I have left is a single bag of odds n' ends from years past. I have a package of 28 maps and another of 23 maps (mainly all from the years 2011 and 2012 and almost none from the most recent road trip) that I'm willing to trade for maps or guidebooks. Any takers? Those small numbers of maps will at the very least be cheaper than the packages I sent away this morning if anyone is willing to trade.

P.S. This week I re-read Gerald Durrell's "Beasts in My Belfry" and of the probably 20 Durrell books that I own it is one that I've enjoyed perhaps more so than a few others. What a brilliantly funny and informative writer!

 

[snowleopard]

Uploaded Photos as of August 29th:

1- Red River Zoo - 50 photos
2- Reptile Gardens - 60 photos
3- Great Lakes Aquarium - 40 photos
4- Tanganyika Wildlife Park - 55 photos (see me with lemurs or the assistant director scratching the belly of a ratel)
5- International Crane Foundation - 70 photos
6- Peoria Zoo - 80 photos
7- Living Planet Aquarium - 50 photos
8- Clay Center Zoo - 20 photos (this place is a dump!)
9- Cosley Zoo - 35 photos
10- Shedd Aquarium - 50 photos
11- Willow Park Zoo - 25 photos
12- Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center - 40 photos
13- Nature & Raptor Center of Pueblo - 10 photos
14- Pine Grove Zoo - 30 photos
15- Saint Louis Zoo - 305 photos
16- Cat Tales Zoological Park - 30 photos (another dump!)
17- Butterfly House - 20 photos
18- Phillips Park Zoo - 40 photos
19- Cheyenne Mountain Zoo - 115 photos
20- Great Bend Zoo - 40 photos
21- Chahinkapa Zoo - 50 photos
22- Endangered Wolf Center - 15 photos
23- Garrison Dam National Fish Hatchery & Aquarium - 15 photos
24- Alligator Alley - 20 photos
25- Grant's Farm - 40 photos
26- Minnesota Zoo - 200 photos
27- Bramble Park Zoo - 75 photos
28- Bear Country U.S.A. - 75 photos
29- Hemker Park & Zoo - 50 photos
30- DeYoung Family Zoo - 100 photos
31- Kansas Fishes Aquarium - 4 photos
32- Hutchinson Zoo - 25 photos
33- Henson Robinson Zoo - 65 photos
34- National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium - 90 photos
35- Miller Park Zoo - 50 photos
36- Como Park Zoo - 95 photos
37- Dakota Zoo - 150 photos
38- Lee Richardson Zoo - 60 photos
39- Henry Vilas Zoo - 95 photos
40- Roosevelt Park Zoo - 65 photos
41- Scovill Zoo - 50 photos
42- Montana Grizzly Encounter - 9 photos
43- Sea Life Minnesota - 15 photos
44- Wisconsin Deer Park - 50 photos
45- Tracy Aviary - 80 photos
46- Yellowstone Bear World - 40 photos
47- RAD (Reptile & Amphibian Discovery) Zoo - 18 photos
48 - Niabi Zoo - 90 photos
49- Racine Zoo - 60 photos
50- World Bird Sanctuary - 45 photos
51- World Aquarium - 75 photos
52- Wildlife Prairie Park - 75 photos
53- Pueblo Zoo - 75 photos
54- Aquarium of Boise - 18 photos
55- Lincoln Park Zoo (Manitowoc) - 45 photos
56- Lincoln Children's Zoo (Nebraska) - 50 photos

 

[chrisbarela]

Not to be pedantic, but are these actually touch screens as such? Or just monitors showing signs that are not in any way controlled by visitors. Surely actual touch screens would suffer much more from malfunctions than monitors.

I can see the huge advantages of these, but the negatives are pretty big too, especially with multispecies exhibits. I haven't seen any ads per se on screens, but if they are displayed alongside the sign that's fine, but if they are ads between changing signs or similar then people will ignore the signs even more, which surely defeats the purpose. I don't think there is a great chance of escaping these screens in the future, but I hope they improve a lot from where they are now.

We did a combination of touch screen and digital frame (the same kind that displays vacation pictures). The Digital frames were around $17 bucks each and could hold hundreds of pictures. I had 3 sizes - a 12" a 15" and a 22" touch screen since that would be for major tanks that held over 20 species. I made sure that at all times you could see a picture and name of the animals to the left and the featured animal in the space to the right. Like I said previously - having one 22" screen saved so much space compared to 38 signs, which would have cluttered the walls. Also digital signs are lit from within which helps in a dark gallery.
I was just at the Shedd and they use iPads mounted on stands that allow you to rotate through species and that was done well.
As for ads (or sponsors)... well that is up to the board of directors or the curator discretion. Sometimes they just don't care and sometimes they do.