Signage on human cultural beliefs about animals within zoos

This is fascinating stuff @dt644 thank you so much for sharing this!

It is amazing for me to learn about how the tiger is viewed by different cultures across its range and represented so differently in art / artistic styles.

It seems that the tiger is still a very emblematic animal in Korean culture and still is visually ever present in art but would you say that this cultural power that the tiger has is beneficial for its conservation in the country ?

 

What makes tigers more unique in Korea is that few people dispute that tigers are considered Korean symbols, even though they no longer exist in wild of Korea. That much, tigers are still special to Koreans, but in my opinion, Korean interest in tigers has not yet been much of a help to the actual conservation of tigers.

However, there exists Tiger and Leopard Conservation Fund in Korea(KTLCF), a Korean organization that studies tigers and leopards and delivery support money to Phoenix fund, the Russian tiger protection organizations.

KTLCF has long focused on scientific and historical research on tigers and leopards, but began holding online seminars on tiger culture last year. It was intended to create a sense of national familiarity about tigers, and also, I was able to get various information through KTLCF's seminars.

The lately purpose of KTLCF was to build a tiger ecology center and museum in Korea. I believe that successful tiger museum construction could lead to more widespread tiger culture and the Korean interest in wild tigers conservation.


As an example of Koreans' interest in tigers, Seoul Zoo's tiger exhibit has a fundraising box. This is the only one fundraising box that exists in all zoos in Korea as far as I know.

But so far, there are too many Korean who have a wrong interest in tigers. For example, in the history of Korean zoos, when tigers died in zoos 1960s-1980s, many zoos, both public and private were dismantled dead tiger and sold tiger meat to civilians.

The reason they did it was, that was the way to get more operating money, but more fundamental reason was almost all Koreans of that time believed to tiger meat has special effects about health and natural magic. And until recently, I have sometimes found some pictures of Korean tourists who show off about drinking tiger bone wine in traveling China on SNS.


The belief that animals have special powers, as is the case with any country, has led to a desire to own them. I believe that breaking this down will allow Koreans to truly move for the real tigers.

 

Signage zoo D'Asson in France about the Australian aboriginal dreamtime concept:


Photo credit to @fuscicollis.

 

Signage on the pygmy hippo, the culture of local communities and the folkloric beliefs regarding this animal in the Ivory coast, ZSL London zoo:



Photo credit to @Shirokuma.

 

Signage on the global history of the significance / symbolism of the tiger at Pheonix zoo, USA:



Photo credit to @Arizona Docent.

 

I have to question whether this is an actual traditional story and not fakelore. Did the particular culture this story supposedly comes from actually know or chart the geographical shape of the Indian subcontinent, much less Africa, at this time period, and were they familiar with African elephants at this time period? Also, this type of story would not be considered a “fable”, but rather an etiological, “pourquoi”, or “just-so” story.

 

Just as I suspected.
That’s essentially the definition of fakelore: a modern story presented in the style of traditional folklore.

 

Akron's Legends of the Wild is organized around folklore.

 

Detroit has/had some animal-appropriate folktales in front of some of their African exhibits. Here’s a few I remembered…

• “Hippo gets all his hair burnt off and now lives in the water.” Back when they still had Jock the hippo, obviously.
• “Plain white zebra eats too much grass, stuffs himself into a black coat in a cave, suddenly stripes.”
• An explanation of why warthogs kneel when they feed (I don’t remember the reason they used).
• “Why mother rhinos guard their calves while standing behind them instead of in front of them.” Really specific, might be bollocks.

I think they also had some for giraffes, ostriches, lions, and (maybe) aardvarks.

 

Bioparco Roma has a series of educational signs for some animals called "Animals in the Bible", citing the verses in which they're named and explaining the metaphores and symbolism surrounding them, as fair as I remember they're for lions, hippos, elephants, camels, pelicans, wolves and perhaps one of the gazelles/antelopes.