Children will always be the future generation and I think zoos need to continue to help spark an interest and educate young people about wildlife and conservation. Yes kids can be loud and sometimes annoying but they are the ones who will eventually and hopefully carry the torch so zoos are all the more important in regards to education of younger people.
Children are like meerkats....every UK zoo seems to have too many of them, and panders to those who like them.
Given children's natural curiosity especially for nature and animal, children will always be a major part of zoos. As long as they are respectful and well behaved I have no issue with them and actually love seeing them learn to love animals.
As much as I love children (really) I think school field trips to zoos should not be allowed. When you have large groups like that, the kids cannot help but run wild and make noise, no matter how hard the few adults try to contain them. It's perfectly natural; they are outside on a school day, they are with their friends, and their excitement gets the best of them. Of course family outings (kids with their parents) are a different matter and I cannot imagine anyone having an issue with that. But I have had many zoo visits ruined by field trips and I feel sorry for the captive animals that cannot escape the screaming hordes. I think there are two solutions. One is to have zoo staff or volunteers go to schools to do presentations with animal ambassadors that do well with the public. Here in the USA most zoos do this already and I imagine many overseas zoos do as well (I would love to hear from others on this). The second solution for having kids visit zoos is to have a separate area for educational presentations and ambassador animal presentations where large school groups are not on the main grounds with the general public.
Totally agree with you. Despite the irritations (and I freely admit that I find the behaviour of some kids in zoos to be irritating as hell) they are the next generation and for most of them these visits will be formative and educational experiences. Maybe a little idealistic but perhaps for some of these kids childhood visits to zoos could potentially translate into environmental awareness and even involvement in conservation in later life ? I would also add that all of us on this forum were once children paying similar visits to our local zoo (afterall that is where most of our passion for these institutions and wild animals began) and whose presence probably irritated some of the older visitors or staff.
Obviously, children should go to zoos, but I don't think there should be a "children's zoo" because that would imply that that is the only child-friendly spot in a zoo. Instead, every zoo exhibit should be child-friendly with, for example, simply written signs placed low to the ground, floor to ceiling viewing glass, and strategically placed interactive components (i.e., making sure that kids don't just press the buttons or spin the things etc. for the sake of interacting with things in favor of meaningful use of interactive components). I imagine some Zoochatters may have strong opinions of whether or not zoos should have farm exhibits. I am fine with those, but I think they should be more meaningful than Old MacDonald's Farm. Instead, it can be as simple as how food is made (chicken eggs, cow milk, etc.) and maybe agriculture's effects on the environment or as complex as farmyards from around the world (e.g., African goats, Asian yaks, South American llamas).
One other solution that has been around from what I know is splitting of groups. Obviously, this takes more work and chaperones but if it should be allowed for school groups (I don't think the pestering is a problem because children will be children, its the sheer size of the group of children that can ruin visits for everyone in the zoo) to visit, there should be small groups of maybe 3-6 children and 1-2 chaperones with them. I know this would be a lot of work to organize, but it's much more convienent to others in the zoo.
If I were to ever run a zoo I would insist on having one day a month that was child-free, and simply weather the social media hate campaign when people turn up with their little ones that day anyway and get turned away.
Having been a part of many school field trips I don't thnik they are that bad, provided they are in multiple groups and are at least middle school age (any younger and it gets crazy).
I think farm exhibits should go more into this, too. Milwaukee Zoo has a large exhibit about the dairy industry. It's a start but zoos could expand on the farm exhibit so much more. I think it would also be cool for a zoo to exhibit domestic species alongside their wild counterparts for comparison.
There are some interesting statistics on the AZA link below: Visitor Demographics Relevant information to this thread: - 69% parties with children*** - 57% children 11 and under ***I swear that I've had some zoo days where it seems that at least 90% of all visitors are there with children. I personally think that 69% is an extremely conservative total. This AZA link claims that there are "12 million student learners on field trips (annually)" Zoo and Aquarium Statistics | AZA Anyone wishing to eliminate school field trips would, in one fell swoop, cancel out 12 million visitors in a single year from the 240 AZA zoos...which represent only about 20% of the actual 'zoos' in North America. Getting children to visit zoos at an early age will allow them to fall in love with the very idea of zoos. Surely that is how almost all of us began our 'zoo nerd' odyssey? School field trips can sometimes be annoying, but they are absolutely essential.
Thanks for the figures, I have seen higher percentages for some metropolitan zoos. Fact is most zoo visitors come because they want to give the children a day out. Adult only groups are in a minority, and the more "generalist" the zoo is the more likely that is. Zoos could not exist without children.
Field trips are a huge money maker for zoos which stinks right now as the past month and a half are the biggest field trip season.
I am not sure how much of a money maker field trips are, because they get in at a very, very low rate (at least at my local zoo). And children will still go to zoos with their parents (which I encourage) even if field trips are eliminated. When I visited Point Defiance Zoo a couple years ago with my friend @snowleopard we were walking to the entrance and a mother with a young (perhaps five year old) boy was on the phone with his school saying he would not make it to school today. Of course she did not tell them it is because she was taking him to the zoo instead, but I thought what a cool Mom.
I don't know that we should assume this. There are plenty of families that already struggle with the cost of field trips themselves, let alone the additional costs associated with purchasing adult tickets, family travel to and from the zoo and so on. There will be many children for whom a school trip is their only exposure to the zoo.
I think children are great despite being noisy and running about. They are the next generation of people who are learning about the world of animals and hopefully have a career in animal conservation. When I volunteer at LA Zoo when I stopped the animal exhibits when I talk about the animal that is present the look of their faces are full of amazement or shocking when explained certain facts about the animals including those that they know about that they seem to enjoy, I would answer their questions about animals and ask them like their favorite animal is and I explain the facts, and even participation like if they can stand on one leg like a flamingo when near the flamingo exhibit.
I've seen one zoo do something where school visits are only allowed on certain days of the weeks, which I really like. It gives the employees a break and lets them better organize the days groups are there, and guests who don't want to be around a ton of kids can go on days there are no groups.
