Things people do that irritate you when you go to the zoo?

Ironically, that exact thing happened to me in Chester last Sunday.....

 

Really? What species? Nothing to unusual or elusive I hope?

 

For me luckily not as I’ve seen them before, but for my companions it was....the pademelon! They failed to get a decent photo as a result!

 

That is a shame, not a common species so photo ops are far and few between! Hopefully the person who did this will realise that delicate species do not appreciate loud visitors, at least when they are settling in.

 

Really? I've never seen anyone antagonise a tapir before; bears, primates, reptiles and cats tend to get abuse in my experience but tapirs don't seem exciting enough to warrant the (unwanted) attention!

 

Well they're black and white, not doing much... Blob bears?

 

I feel like they thought they were baby elephants or giant pandas

 

I visited on Sunday and saw the pademelons for the first time and got a little excited around them and I did see people trying to photograph it. I'm starting to think this was me but I didn't scare it off or shout. If this was me I apologise for being inconsiderate but I am uncertain and feel that I need to know because I would feel like such a fool knowing I spoilt someone's photograph.

 

It might have been you or it might not have been, I can’t remember who the person was...in any case, at least my friends got to see the pademelons (just no souvenir) and now having seen them you know to approach a bit quieter!

 

I recently visited Biopark in Valencia where they were celebrating their birthday. Part of the "celebration" was giving "gifts" to the lions (actually meat in cardboard boxes and paper flags). They thoroughly enjoyed having this stimulus only to have some people complain how much rubbish there was in the enclosure...why not ask for a reason first?

 

Something I have learnt about zoos is that the general public will always jump to a negative conclusion before a positive one. However some conclusions people get to are just ridiculous.

 

That's unfortunate, but true. At Barcelona Zoo, there's a little enclosure for chicks, and parents tell their kids that they're there to feed the crocodiles/lions/etc.

 

To be honest, they most probably end up exactly like that...

 

Either that or in the zoo's cafeterias!

 

Annoying to see a bunch of people taking photos with flash at Wild Reef in Shedd Aquarium.

 

"For the health and safety of our animals, please, no flash photography."

They couldn't hear the recorded voice saying that over and over again?

 

I'm a Visitor Engagement Volunteer at Chester Zoo and have been for almost a year now. Most of the time, guests are nice, polite and genuinely interested in hearing about the animals.

Most of my volunteering happened during school trip season; and I always ended up at "schoolkid" hotspots, so I ended up talking to a lot of kids. I love talking to kids; they're often really bright and it's fun wording facts in a way they'd understand (e.g. using Maurice from Madagascar as an example when talking about our aye-ayes).

With most school trips, the kids were as good as gold; at worst, they were a bit noisy. The rare cases of bad behaviour were easily corrected by me, with the help of the teachers/parent volunteers.

However, there was one exception, when I was volunteering in the aye-aye house. It's normally a two-man job, but the guy who I was supposed to be with hadn't turned up, so I was alone. About 20-30 kids (it was a school trip) came into the aye-aye house and started getting pretty noisy (well, they were excited). So, I had to try and calm them down one-by-one, which went just about as well as you'd expect; when I got one kid quiet, another would pipe up. So I just thought "I give up" and went to ask the teacher for help.

What was the teacher doing when this was happening? Why, she was standing, back against the wall, on her phone! When I walked over to her and asked her if she could help me get the kids quiet, she looked at me, shrugged (as if to say "not my problem"), and immediately went back to texting. I eventually got the kids calmed down; by addressing them as a group and telling them why the aye-ayes didn't like loud noise. To their credit, they calmed right down and were good as gold the rest of the time.

I didn't file a complaint for three reasons. First of all, I couldn't see the uniforms (I'd only just gone in), so I didn't know which school it was. Secondly, I didn't know if the "teacher" was an actual employee (she might have just been a parent enlisted to help on the trip). The last reason was I didn't want the kids thinking I was mad at them; for these kids, I think it had been a long time since anyone in uniform was patient with them.

I have an "uncle" (he's my aunt's partner) who's a deputy head teacher and, when I told him about it, he was amazed I didn't file a complaint; if one of the teachers at his school had behaved like that, he'd have fired her.

Sorry if I sound grouchy here.

 

Interesting! We were likely on the same volunteer induction.