A poll... How many people remember being affected by the opportunity to touch or handle a "wild/exotic" animal? I know I was definetely sparked into pursuing wildlife rehabilitation by the hawk I used to handle. Would it be fair to conclude that if you were inspired into zoos/wildlife by an encounter with an education animal, that touching zoo education animals might be a good thing? Does it balance out with the other issues listed above?
now after what has been put forward I think now it is not right to pass educational animals around for touching. If you personally though are assigned to that particular animal as a carer, patting the animal showing affection I think is fine.
Where I volunteer at Bristol Zoo we allow people to touch invertebrates (after asking smokers not to touch the animals) but do not allow them to touch reptiles. All members of the public are asked to use a disinfectant hand wash if they have touched anything.
Cool, When I go to the zoo, for some reason I do notice a lot of smoking good thing it'll be a complete smoke free zone in 2009!
Hehe I love the inverts! The "no smoking" rule is a really good one- and not one I think I've heard of before. Then again- I've mainly done education for school groups...so they probably don't smoke anyways . The disinfectant thing is a big one though- we used to go through bottles of the stuff every week! In regards to passing around animals...I'm not exactly sure what you mean? We've had snakes that we "passed around" before, but kids and adults were never allowed to hold them- I would hold the animal and walk around. We also strictly enforced a "two finger/one finger" policy for petting. I felt it was pretty safe, seeing how the snakes head would always be pointed at me , and I always made sure they felt supported and relaxed. If they were grouchy in any way- that's too bad- skip him and move onto the next animal- no pressure- and kids were pretty understanding. Anyways an excellent discussion...
