Last Saturday at Jihlava Zoo really made me wonder whether some visitors are oblivious to things they don't understand-or just plain stupid:
As you can see in the gallery, the pygmy hippo enclosure in this zoo allows the visitors to get really close to the animal, being seperated from each by only a rather low wall. That very day, and to the utter joy of the visitors, one of the hippos casually walked to the wall, slowly turning around until its behind was touching the wall. Those zoochat members familiar with pygmy hippo marking behaviour will understand why I backed up immediately. The mass of visitors, however, given the rare opportunity to pet a hippo, instead moved closer, pushing their children into the first rows. As a result, quite a few got a nice little shower of tail-stirred hippo faeces droplets. What is particular, though, is that none of them seemed to have noticed that the hippo had literarily **** into their faces-nor did they seem to care. Given the otherwise high sensitivity of the public when encountering animal faeces, quite weird, isn't it? Maybe the pygmy hippo should increase the quantity of the output to get noticed...