Building the Ark (From National Geographic)

Building the Ark

There's not too much that I'm going to say - this article does an excellent job of conveying something that I've long believed to be true.  There is a dichotomy between the animals that zoos DO work with and those that they SHOULD work with.  If we want zoos to be doing as much as possible to help endangered species, then every zoo should have an amphibian house.  Instead of filling up spaces with brown and American black bears, more zoos would be displaying (and breeding) sloth, sun, and Andean bears.  Each exhibit would be planned and filled according to the question, "What is best for conservation?"

The big hold up, here, is visitor expectation.   I've written elsewhere about the challenges of getting visitors to recognize and learn about unfamiliar animals.  We often think that we know exactly what animals the visitors want to see - lions, giraffes, zebras.  Have we ever really tried to sell them on other animals?  That lion-tailed macaques can be just as cool as gorillas?  That just because they never heard of Panamanian golden frogs before they come to the zoo doesn't mean that they can't be excited about them? 

There is definitely still a place for the "classic" zoo animals in our collections.  It would be great, however, if we could get visitors excited about lesser known species.  That would be of great help in making the transition from the collections we have to the collections that we need.