Things people do that irritate you when you go to the zoo?

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blospz said:
I'll take pounding glass any day over what I saw once. A tamandua was sleeping on a branch right next to mesh covering it's exhibit. There was a tree branch near it and a teenager decided to take the tip to poke the tamandua. When that didn't work they reached over and used their gatorade bottle to poke it harder until the poor tamandua woke up. To this day I wish I had the courage to shout at them but I was so shocked I couldn't do anything. Luckily the tamandua seemed unharmed and the teenagers eventually went away.
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If I saw someone doing this I'm not sure I'd be able to contain my fury. I'm quite an outgoing person really, I'm not afraid to speak my mind. Normally I would politely tell them to stop, but in this case I would have probably kicked them in the nuts if I wouldn't have been kicked out of the zoo for it!

I am friendly with several of the staff at The Deep, Hull. One of them told me that there was once a family there who didn't speak nor seem to understand English. One of the children opened one of the rockpool-themed tanks, took out a sea urchin, then lifted high in the air, while his parents laughed! At the tank for garden eels, there is a sign which clearly tells visitors not to tap on the glass. Yet everyone goes over, says "Look at these worms", then start hammering on the glass!

I haven't read this full thread, but I'm quite confused: why do people keep putting the world 'zoo' in red?!
 
Falanouc said:
I haven't read this full thread, but I'm quite confused: why do people keep putting the world 'zoo' in red?!
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Have you used the search function at all, or even by mistake, because that will highlight whatever word(s) you search for? For example if I search this thread for the word 'animal', it would highlight the word 'animal' in red every time it appears.
 
Ah, that explains it, as I was searching for this very thread. Thanks!

As for things that have irritated me, the list is long and gruelling . . .

People who are not interested in looking at the animals, or learning about them, just having their photo taken. I saw a family consisting of a dad, a mum, a boy of about 11, and a girl of about 8, come into The Deep. The children, after a 5 second glance into the large and beautiful Lagoon of Light tank, sat down in front of it and started having their picture taken by their mum. However, their mum couldn't seem to get the camera to work, and after about 10 seconds, the boy just jumped to his feet and, with an expression of absolute fury, shook his fists in his mum's face! I was shocked by how disrespectul he was to who I assumed must be his mother. After that, they left the exhibit, having spent no more than a few seconds actually looking at the large amount of animals there.

I get so sick of shouts of 'Dory' or 'Nemo' in The Deep, even from grown adults talking to each other. Also, people skipping all of the exhibits just to look at the sharks.

In his book, Menagerie Manner, Gerrald Durrel, creator of Jersey Wildlife Park, says that they have on several occaisons found visitors handing lit cigarettes to monkeys!
 
I realise this is off topic, but I find that the media gives many examples of misinformation. There is an advert for a magazine about insects and other bugs, while a recent story mentioned worms and other insects.
I saw the front page of today's 'Daily Star' with a horror story about cannibal spiders. I assume that the writer thinks the reader is unaware of what the word 'cannibal' means. The story refers to false widow spiders. I didn't buy the paper, but I saw a false widow spider on the way home. I presume that the spider hadn't read the article. It may have preferred to read a fly paper.
 
Dassie rat said:
I realise this is off topic, but I find that the media gives many examples of misinformation. There is an advert for a magazine about insects and other bugs, while a recent story mentioned worms and other insects.
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This frustrates me more when it comes from people or institutions that should know better. Most notably, the conservation charity Buglife, whose work encompasses all invertebrates.
 
Adults calling Bison bulls and Lechwe reindeer
Also years ago people used to throw apples into the hippos at dublin zoo until one time someone threw a tennis ball in, the hippo thought it was an apple and died
 
I Have a little story as well.
I was at the Brookfield zoo last week and I saw a group of teens throwing/feeding popcorn to the pelicans, I was about to say something but luckily a zoo worker beat me to it. People really need to read the don't feed the animals sign
 
When I was at the London Zoo I saw a parent lifting their kid onto railings and signage in the aquarium and letting them kick the glass and what not so that they could get a photo (with flash).

~Thylo:cool:
 
Also at London someone walking into the nocturnal hall and screaming "I hate rats!!" and then preceding to walk and yell through an exhibit primarily filled with rats and rat-looking species...

~Thylo:cool:
 
This didn't happen at the Zoo, it happened at the county fair this weekend, but it could easily happen at the zoo.

I witnessed someone putting their foot in a Gander's face (and too close to his accompanying Goose to boot) then kicking him when he started to nip at the shoe on said foot. Then whining when they get kicked out of the building for doing so.
 
As keeper

- people putting there kids on hand railings
- throwing things in enclosures
- Littering
- smoking
- shouting at animals
- School groups coming in and not properly supervising there kids
- feeding animals
- parents who k ow they have kids who are over excited and dont supervise them properly.

More often then not customers are great but those two or three people you have to deal with a day does put a ink drop in a glass of water.
 
I hate when I'm in an open-air aviary, and parents let their children scream and chase the birds. If I ran a zoo I'd have large signs prohibiting that and kick them out of the aviaries if children did it and the parents made no attempt to stop them. It can't be healthy for the birds, and (from my selfish perspective) it also tends to make them go into hiding.

I don't like it when children scream at zoos generally. I know that most zoos are outdoors, but I wish that parents would still tell their children to use their indoor voices at all times. That's what my parents told use when we went to zoos: be quiet so you don't disturb the animals.
 
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Speaking of anteaters, I witnessed people at the Saint Louis Zoo who saw a giant anteater flick its tongue, and were frightened because they thought it was eating a snake.
 
Mother to her 8 or 9 year old: "Oh look sweetheart, aren't these baby whales sweet?"
She was at the short-clawed otter enclosure. o_O

While I was at my local aquarium I heard this:
Mother: "Oh look! The fish have sad faces."
Little boy about 5-6 years old: "Why mummy?"
Mother: "Because they miss the sea. That's why all the fishies are crying."
The little boy looked appalled and about ready to smash the glass and rescue the poor heartbroken fish, but his mum was dragging him on to look at the 'giant jellyfish' (octopus).

This isn't a zoo story, but it is related to animals so I may as well post it. There was these people in a shopping center who were from some kind of society who rescued owls or something like that (can't quite remember now), and they had brought 2 owls in. The man who was handling the owls was explaining how you could tell that one of the owls hunted during the day, and the other hunted during the night, and you could tell from their eyes. After even had left, I politely said, "So, that one's diurnal, and that one's nocturnal?" He just said, "No, this one's Athena and this one's Johny." Many people don't know what dirunal means, I'll grant you, but surely he'd have known the word nocturnal, being an owl handler?! o_O
 
Falanouc said:
The man who was handling the owls was explaining how you could tell that one of the owls hunted during the day, and the other hunted during the night, and you could tell from their eyes. After even had left, I politely said, "So, that one's diurnal, and that one's nocturnal?" He just said, "No, this one's Athena and this one's Johny." Many people don't know what dirunal means, I'll grant you, but surely he'd have known the word nocturnal, being an owl handler?!
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Are you sure he wasn't making a dad joke?
 
Yeah, I'm sure he wasn't joking. I can usually read people pretty well, and this guy was being perfectly serious.
 
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