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#31
07-05-2008
Yes, it shocks me that zoos are held responsible for the complete lack of control of certain guests. Does anyone remember the lady who sued McDonald's because she spilled her coffee and it burned her? The answer to that was for them to put in tiny letters "CAUTION: Coffee is hot."
Why then, are zoos not faultless when they have LARGE and BLATANTLY OBVIOUS signs for idiot patrons? |
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#32
08-05-2008
There are numerous examples of labelling to deflect blame, think cigarettes, theme parks etc... I don't see why zoos should be any different... In my opinion they should be less so, people used to think cigarettes were good for them however its quite obvious that a tiger can kill you...
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#33
08-05-2008
Yeah...but I'm pretty sure she knew that coffee was hot before...
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#34
Zoo sign
08-05-2008
Wellington Zoo
" Zookeeper says -- if you put your fingers inside this cage the tiger will bite you " If the zoo really needs to have that sign there , they should do more to prevent little fingers from being able to go into the "cage " !! |
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#35
08-05-2008
Unfortunately, the more educated the public are - the dumber they are becoming. Common sense is not common any more.
From a liability protection point of view these days we need safety barriers AND signage AND patrolling staff AND, after all that, a liberal dose of good luck! You would be amazed at the number of people who really do think that the price of admission to the zoo entitles them to cross over safety barriers. When you remonstrate with them they say really intelligent things like "... but you wouldn't be allowed to keep them if they really were dangerous". Is it any wonder that zoo people look forward to 5pm? |
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#36
09-05-2008
Quote:
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#37
10-05-2008
Sign in Chinese zoo:
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#38
10-05-2008
Sign at the Sydney Aquarium:
"DO NOT ENTER: If the fall does not kill you the crocodile will" |
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#39
10-05-2008
My favorite (and most common) question from visitors is "Does it bite?" I understand, that they really want to know how dangerous the animal is. But I always have to bite my tongue so I wont say anything regrettable and then say "If it has a mouth, it can bite".
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#40
11-06-2008
I just happened upon a similar discussion at the AAZK site and thought you'd enjoy their experiences:
The Official Discussion Board of the American Association of Zoo Keepers / Whats the dumbest thing youve ever heard at work? |
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#41
11-06-2008
@Zooplantman: Hilarious! I read a lot of them, but my favourite was the one about the komodo dragon breathing fire.
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#42
11-06-2008
On that thread was the second case of an American being disturbed that a visitor had stated they wanted to shoot a zoo animal (kifaru was the first earlier in this thread) is that a common occurence..? Not just in America but elsewhere..?
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#43
11-06-2008
love that thread Zooplantman. Funny how same as on here you get some posters complaining that we are picking on the visitors who can't be expected to know any better and that we should be using the opportunities to educate them instead of laughing at them. But I get it all the time at work with odd questions about our kiwi (Are they extinct? Do you need to feed them? Do they use their beak like a snorkel? Do they migrate south in the winter? etc etc). Some questions are just through an unfamiliarity with kiwi but others are just plain stupid (Do they need surgery to get the egg out? Are they related to bears? etc). And we do answer the questions with a straight face and hopefully the visitor learns something, but some people simply won't be told anything. One of my colleagues had a woman arguing with him that we had three kiwi not two because she had definitely seen three, and she left thinking we were trying to scam her in some way!
And if you are a visitor yourself to a zoo, then not every other visitor is going to be exactly welcoming to some stranger telling them what's what. And of course as we all know, your average visitor cannot read signage. Or maybe they can but cannot believe what it says: when I worked at Orana Park a man asked me what the animals in the paddock were and I said they were springbok, and he replied "oh I thought so, because that's what it says on the sign". I also regularly got the "oh look there's a human in this cage" or "look at the funny bird" comments when working in the aviaries (so I wrote up a sign on a bit of paper and stuck it on the netting, which read "Human Being (Homo sapiens), hand-raised", which worked a treat. |
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#44
11-06-2008
@NZ Jeremy: in my 14 years as a zoo employee, I only overheard such a comment once, as two men stood watching the markhor at the Cincinnati Zoo and calmly discussed whether a .22 would do the trick
@Chlidonias: I love the stupid questions. They really can open up a great conversation. Especially since we tend to act like we have all the answers (as zoo people), when in fact we're usually spouting something we were told but never really questioned ourselves. What always bugs me, though, is the "know-it-all" parent or teacher or docent who makes those anchorman-type pronouncements. That just kills curiosity and learning. |
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#45
11-06-2008
About the shooting aspect: I have heard such remarks now and then in both American and European zoos, yet more often in American institutions. Usually, it's the typical male teen who wants to show his mates what a tough guy he is...
@Zooplantman: Thanks for posting the link. Some of the examples had a very familiar ring to me, some are new, but the Belted Galloway "Panda" surely takes the biscuit. About the stupid questions, or rather stupid behaviour of visitors also mentioned in the link: of course this might serve as a basis to increase the knowledge and curiosity/will to learn, and of course nobody can claim omniscience for himself. But to be honest: some of the visitor comments are so plain stupid that You can't do anything else than laugh or bitch at them, depending on Your temper and the comment. What makes me sad though is that all these beautiful informative signs, interactive consols, expensive TV documentaries, awesome non-fiction books or even (over)simplifying Internet information channels are not used-that the people are at least as or even dumber than their uneducated ancestors in the early decades of the very first zoos. After at least 100 (or even 250 in Vienna) years of zoo existence, the random visitor questions and remarks have changed only slightly if at all in comparison to the ones in the beginning of modern zoos. I sometimes even get the impression that some of the newer questions would have been considered as signs of a remarkable lack of common-sense back then. And even if the kids are interested to learn, the first persons they turn to are usually their parents. And if the parents are less informed than their kids and unable/unwilling to simple switch on their brain for a second or two to look for a reasonable answer, I can't see any positive learning effect at all for all involved. The current generation of parents and teachers are actually a weird breed; most of them grew up in a time when high-quality TV animal documentaries by Attenborough, Cousteau, Grzimek, Sielmann etc. ... started to launch, new updated non-fiction books for kids & adults and the very first zoo-education programmes came out and wild animals and exotic places like Africa were still considered "cool"... However, somewhere during their growing-up period this interest and knowledge in fauna & flora was erased and never came back, leaving only a few interested "infantile animal nerds" behind. Maybe it's due to the decrease of importance of this kind of knowledge in modern life, maybe "expert idiotism" is required in most fields of modern life and maybe the overflow of data just kills the natural curiosity and will to learn, no matter whether it's animals, arts, music or history... All in all, these stupid and permanently echoed questions make me kind of doubt about the sustained yield of the current system of education in many countries... Re: Nigel's older comment about making visitor-safe exhibits: that would often collide with the visitors' wish to see and get close to animals. And to be honest: it's hardly possible to avoid all possible risks, as a sane person often lacks the ability to imagine & forecast all the stupid things some people can come up with... |
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