Is It Real?

One of the most irritating questions that keepers - especially reptile keepers - frequently get about their animals is, "Is it real?"   As if we regularly stock our exhibits with plastic alligators and rubber snakes because we're too cheap and lazy to have the real things.

Weekend confession time.  From as early as I can remember until I was, I don't know, 10 years old or so, I was convinced that the bats in my local zoo were fake.  They were kept in a dark, cave-like exhibit behind glass that was perpetually foggy and hard to see through, and they were constantly in motion, making everything that much blurrier.  I was so sure that they were all fake rubber bats on strings, maybe with a hidden fan keeping them spinning around.

I can be convinced that a crocodile that doesn't even blink in the several minutes that I watch it is perfectly real... but something about those bats just still, to this day, screams "FAKE!" to me.