I think it's more that people just like to watch the animals doing something different. You go to watch zoo animals and most of the time they'll be sleeping, eating, or wandering around. Have them do something different and people get excited. San Antonio Zoo got some tiger cubs a while back, very playful. When I would go, they would always attract a huge crowd since they were always running around playing and doing something silly. Agreed on the circus loop. A lot of places make it too much of their selling point and it becomes hard to back out.
So yesterday I went to the Houston Zoo and I saw a sea lion show I've never seen before. It managed to be entertaining and did a good job of talking about the environment. They had these reduce, reuse, and recycle bins and they threw some junk into the pool and the sea lion would fetch them, and the audience would have to tell the sea lion which bin to put it in. Zookeeper talked about garbage getting in the ocean and stuff.
