Zoo Visitor Heroics?

JerseyLotte

JerseyLotte

Well-Known Member
Do you as a visitor find yourself obliged to save the day when you see what you think is an animal in distress/stuck etc?

I've come to find that the average zoo visitor is quick to identify a perceived problem and actively seek out help, this is a great thing and often restores my faith in people!

However, sometimes I feel that people can be swept up by a wave of heroism, an overwhelming desire to have verbally delivered their message of note to a keeper and ensure some action is taken, a subconcious desire to go home feeling like you've made a personal contribution and done a good deed!


Yesterday one of the Meerkats figured out how to get inside the cage around the base of a sapling tree in his enclosure, after enjoying being in there for a few minutes he began the (slow and confounding for a Meerkat!) task of then learning how to get back out!
This involved a lot of running around inside the little cage and scuffling at the floor.

A member of the public had found their way up to the tortoise paddocks outside reptiles and informed a student of this. He came and told me and I then went down there to first check there were no mammal staff to be found. There were perhaps 100 people gathered on all sides of the enclosure, looking concerned and/or shocked that no one had appeared to save the poor creature immediately.

I radioed the Meerkat keepers in full view of the gathering crowd, while pointedly observing the animal, someone was on their way immediately.
I however had to stay outside of my section for 10 minutes to speak to endless pairs or groups of people who came up to me one after another to tell me the same thing "He looks like he's stuck and panicking!", "Aren't you going to do something?!", to me the animal looked like he was enjoying a puzzle... but anyway!

So all of these people despite seeing me stood in the area, watching the animal and radioing (maybe I was ordering lunch for later?) and then hearing me answering people on the same topic before coming up and making their statements anyway, just couldn't help it, the desire to feel like they had recognised a situation and done a positive thing about it is too great.

As it was, the Meerkat in question hopped back out seconds before the other Keeper arrived to sort it out!

You get the same kind of thing when a turtle is on it's back or an iguana is sat in a tree at a funny angle so he must be stuck there!
I'm not complaining about this aspect of visiting public, more interested to know how many of your find yourselves doing the same things.

I'll take visitors with an irresistable urge to do good deeds than throw litter in enclosures any day of the week :p
 
We had to flag down a keeper in the Old Zoo at Poznan to rescue an East European Hedgehog that was jammed in a mesh fence. Was a bit tricky with no common language but they staff were concerned and very quick to act once they saw the animal - it was swiftly removed from the fence and taken off behind the scenes.

I know from work experience at Riber that as soon as there's an animal with an injury you'll find out very quickly. And keep finding out a few times every hour until it's healed!
 
When we were at San Diego Zoo, a young swamp monkey had managed to get ahold of a juice box and was now tearign it up and tryign to eat it

Another visitor quickly ran to a keeper and the item was retrived from the monkey (For a food trade of course :p)
 
Many of us enthusiastic zoochatters are probably often in zoos on a rainy Wednesday in the middle of winter , or they may be the first visitor in on a quiet day, so they may have a fair amount of experience of "incidents".I remember being almost the only visitor in a zoo and noticing the the male orang had somehow smuggled a large rock into his indoor enclosure and was doing the most professional job of expanding a large crack across the plate glass window.The amazing thing is that instead of whacking the rock against the glass which would have made an awful racket and alerted zoo staff, he was going "tap tap tap" with just enough force to progress the fracture.As the panel was already beyond repair, I let him carry on for a couple of minutes because I was having great fun watching and I had known this orang for many years and he was looking at me as if to say " I know you´re not going to rat on me".Of course , by the time the work was making escape a real possibility, I was already with a member of staff and informing him of the "work in progress".Keepers were straight over to lure the orang into another area and entice him to drop the rock, but I did not accompany them as I did not want the orang to associate me as being the "rat" and "not speaking to me" on future visits!
 
I saw a young tortoise on it's back in Paignton, and despite the sign telling people he would flip over eventually, most still insisted on trying to find a keeper.
 
On a rainy visit to Paignton, we noticed that an owl chick had somehow climbed out of the top of the netted enclosure. It was sitting in a tree calling piteously while its parents kept flying towards it with food. We set off to find a keeper, as did other visitors, and told a volunteer en route and she told somebody else. We found the Curator of Birds in his office and spoke to him through his open window. He patiently told us that they knew about the chick and were hoping it would be able to find its own way back. I expect his patience began to wear thin when the people we'd alerted turned up too. :o
(Of course, they could have put up a notice 'Escaped Owl. Keepers Aware'!)
 
Hahaha! Great stories everyone :D

The scheming Orang story is wonderful :) and the owl chick... it really does pay to make a quick sign about injured animals etc :rolleyes:
 
I really can't give an opinion as a visitor, but as a keeper I can't even begin to count how many times I have been pulled away from what I was doing to address a concerned visitors report of an injured or stressed animal. 9 out of 10 times it's nothing that the animal can't take care of or an old injury that has left an animal lame. Sometimes there has even been concern about enrichment items that the public thinks somebody gave them from the public or maybe the animal had taken from someone. I find this an excellent chance for a keeper talk.

But thank you to the visitors for informing us about other misbehaving visitors. Personally I have answered dozens of calls from the kiosk about people feeding the animals or teasing them. A couple of my favorites have been when a young lady climbed over the protective railing at the spider monkey exhibit and was letting our dominant female play with her hair.That about scared me to death, but she thought it was good fun. I distracted the monkey with her favorite treat and got her back over the railing then nicely explained to her that even though the monkey was being quite gentle at the time, she could have at any time turned aggressive and that pretty long hair of hers would have belonged to the monkey. But just a few days ago we got a call saying that a large group of people were being unruly and obnoxious, so 2 of us went to check it out. What we found was a group of about 12 people ranging from the ages of 4 to 30 years old at the mountain lion exhibit angry because they couldn't see him. So about 4 of the younger ones, about 12-15 years old, decided to climb on top of the holding area of the enclosure to see if they could get a better view. There was a cat in the holding area that was not on exhibit that day, and he was not happy about his visitors at all. In order for them to get on top of the holding area they had to cross the railing and climb the large rock structures that are quite a few feet tall. After getting them to come down and asking them to please stay on the pathways, they became very confrontational and began threatening us so we had to ask them to leave. If not for certain people that are concerned enough for the zoo and its animals, I shudder to think about what could have happened to those kids. So, even though we may think the public a tad bothersome at times, they are a huge help to us and usually a delight to talk with.
 
In London Zoo's reptile house, a few days after the female Gaboon viper had been moved to the dimly-lit vivarium, I decided to watch her and see if she behaved differently. Out of nowhere she tried to strike me through the glass. Though she was on the other side of the window, and the 'attack' only lasted milliseconds, it was one of the scariest experiences I've ever had. She hit the glass with such a smack that it looked like she'd hurt herself; there was a bit of blood, and she kept opening her jaws and moving them about, as if they were dislocated. I alerted a keeper, who inspected her and told me that she does it quite frequently, and that she'd be fine.
 
My Ukrainian colleague Vladislav Kozyrev and I spotted a rabbit on the zoo premises in Jersey soon after we arrived. If I remember right he had myxomatosis. It was a Saturday and many people were off duty. We informed a Gorilla keeper who rescued him but he unfortunately died. But I think at that time many rabbits on the island were suffering from this disease.
 
I used to work at a primate sanctuary, and one of the monkeys I looked after was hit by a car as a baby which caused nerve damage to one of his arms, and meant it became slightly deformed and he doesn't use it at all. He's perfectly healthy though, is now one of the highest ranked males in the troop. But, whenever new volunteers arrived, I could guarantee that they would tell me about the monkey in the enclosure with the injured arm... Admittedly it is always good to check...but, if I had £1 for every time I was told about him, I'd be very rich!
 
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