Do you think that collections should have signage with the Scientific name in large bold fonts and the common name in smaller font thus making it easier for people to know that species of the same Scientific name have more than one common name. As the signage in collections stand many people don’t see the Scientific name so when they see a species that as a different common name they think they are seeing a different species (but the Scientific name is the same)? I would like to see the Scientific name in larger fonts even though I do list all my species by common name.
Most sites have the scientifc name much smaller than the common name, sometimes with huge differente in character size. Zoo visitors tend to read only common names, and they would do the same if the scientific name was in bigger characters. Only animal enthusiast, zoo nerds, zoochatters are interested in scientific names, and they only are a small part of the total visitors. Zoos must thing in the average visitor and not in the zoo nerd. I read only the scientific name and don't read any other part of the signage. I don't care if the scientific name is in very small characters under an enormous common name, it never takes more than 2 seconds to find it. What I dislike is the complete absence of scientific name. This is rare in zoos, but there are some, especially for "smaller" animals. For example San Diego Zoo have in Elephant Odyssey a water zone with native amphibians and turtles. Labelled only as "Pacific pond turtle". So I needed to search in Google back to home for find what is the pacific pond turtle's name. The tumblebugs of Elephant Odyssey are also unsigned to species, and I needed to consult experts for find that they're Canthon pilularius. Apparently, the unsignage of species is more common in natural history museums, where I've found for example things labelled just as "flying fish" and "Lucifer hummingbird", without the scientific name.
