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I love animals. I have a fascination for the vast variety of creatures on this planet and how they have evolved to fit their niches. My son is not an animal lover (he finds them biologically interesting, but he's not one to pet every dog or rescue ducklings from a sewer grate like I am) but I constantly try to instill in him the same interest and respect for wildlife that I feel.
Today we went to the zoo. My son asked pertinent questions and observed the animals with interest while my husband and I pointed out our favorites and did our best to answer him- looking at the easily accessible information cards or asking zookeepers if we didn't know the correct answers. We pointed out how they do things similar to the way we do things, to hopefully give him some empathy with them ("Look, the polar bears have balls to play with just like you do. Animals like to play too." "See, the bonobo has hands like ours.")
But all day I heard,
"Mom, what's that?" "I dunno, some kind of monkey."
"Look at that fox's ears!" "Yeah, they look funny."
No attempt to see what kind of monkey it was (or ape, since most people can't seem to tell the difference) or explain that the bat-fox lives in the desert and its huge ears help disperse heat. No attempt to impart accurate information to kids who were interested.
And then in the chimpanzee exhibit this kid was running around shrieking, "Ooh ooh! Bananas! Ooh ooh!" Not only was this in an enclosed viewing area (and he was LOUD, and would not shut up) but I made a point of telling my son, 'Chimps do like bananas, but so do people. And they do lots of other things besides that." It was just...disrespectful, I felt.
And don't get me started on the adults who were standing right next to a 20-foot tall Masai giraffe and were too busy playing on their cell phones to look up and be awed (well, I'm a bit biased there- giraffes are my favorite). How can you expect kids to be interested in learning when the parents themselves have no interest in learning or teaching them? The key to saving our planet's diversity is in making the kids see how amazing it all is.
On a lighter note, we got to touch a Galapagos tortoise, and the keeper asked how old we thought it was. My son said five. I expected it to be much older and that she asked as a way to surprise him, since they can live to well over a hundred and he has no concept of numbers that big, but he was right on the money- the tortoise was five years old.
Today we went to the zoo. My son asked pertinent questions and observed the animals with interest while my husband and I pointed out our favorites and did our best to answer him- looking at the easily accessible information cards or asking zookeepers if we didn't know the correct answers. We pointed out how they do things similar to the way we do things, to hopefully give him some empathy with them ("Look, the polar bears have balls to play with just like you do. Animals like to play too." "See, the bonobo has hands like ours.")
But all day I heard,
"Mom, what's that?" "I dunno, some kind of monkey."
"Look at that fox's ears!" "Yeah, they look funny."
No attempt to see what kind of monkey it was (or ape, since most people can't seem to tell the difference) or explain that the bat-fox lives in the desert and its huge ears help disperse heat. No attempt to impart accurate information to kids who were interested.
And then in the chimpanzee exhibit this kid was running around shrieking, "Ooh ooh! Bananas! Ooh ooh!" Not only was this in an enclosed viewing area (and he was LOUD, and would not shut up) but I made a point of telling my son, 'Chimps do like bananas, but so do people. And they do lots of other things besides that." It was just...disrespectful, I felt.
And don't get me started on the adults who were standing right next to a 20-foot tall Masai giraffe and were too busy playing on their cell phones to look up and be awed (well, I'm a bit biased there- giraffes are my favorite). How can you expect kids to be interested in learning when the parents themselves have no interest in learning or teaching them? The key to saving our planet's diversity is in making the kids see how amazing it all is.
On a lighter note, we got to touch a Galapagos tortoise, and the keeper asked how old we thought it was. My son said five. I expected it to be much older and that she asked as a way to surprise him, since they can live to well over a hundred and he has no concept of numbers that big, but he was right on the money- the tortoise was five years old.
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