To wonder why older kids never go to the zoo?

[anotherfinemess1]

I had a fantastic day out with DS (8 years old) at London Zoo yesterday. We all loved seeing the animals and it’s great now he’s older and can read the signs and learn about species and how they are being saved in the wild. I was really shocked that he was about the oldest kid there. Why don’t older kids (8+) go to zoos any more? I hope my son never grows out of it - at the moment he wants to be a conservationist when he grows up and surely that’s going to be really important for his generation after the older generations have made such a mess of the planet!

London zoo is a charity their primary funding my understanding is from legacies and donations.

Here Dublin zoo is making money as a major tourist stop.

I know our local school no longer does the usual trip on junior infants. They have replaced it with a visit to a working farm experience. I doubt we are the only school to do so.

While I agree that many zoos are awful and the whole principle behind them isn't great so many now are involved in conservation and similar things that I don't think thay should all be written off as "bad"
DD is a real animal lover (as I said upthread she is studying in that area and hopes to have a career in it too) and she did say all zoos were awful and wouldn't go at one point (around 12/13). BUT when she got older and looked into it in more depth and realised the work they do etc she has changed her mind. She spent time with a keeper in her area of interest and was blown away by the care and knowledge the person displayed as well as the work the zoo was doing to preserve species and habitats.
No animal should be captured and put into zoos but I think that there is more to a lot of them than providing cute things for small children to look at.

I just looked it up… the London Zoo is 35 acres and has 10,000 animals. That seems rather squishy. The MN zoo has 485 acres and ~4500 animals.

I’m with you though, my local Zoo (in an urban area) is on 200 acres and has 3100 animals. I know a zookeeper there and they support actively (research/field work) or passively (funding) a lot of wild conservation projects. I like a big open zoo, but also find the small ones miserable and depressing (Como Park as an example).

Does that include the spiders, butterflies, fish etc?

I think its important to compare enclosure size not just a vague numbers vs overall size.

Number of animals is a pretty poor comparison.
A mouse needs substantially less space than an elephant

I’m guessing it’s not all hippos and elephants 😁

For more in depth research, you’re on your own.

I’ve never been to the London zoo, but have been to both the MN zoo mentioned and my local zoo. The default is large open habitats for the larger or roaming animals like buffalo.

Both zoos have trains/monorails (apparently the monorail was decommissioned awhile ago and converted to a raised trail) that allow visitors to see the larger animals out in the open vs. right up next to glass.

Gosh I wouldn’t class 8 as an older child, and would defo think they’d be still interested in a zoo.

8 is quite little really.

We might be quite spoilt as the zoo my kids have been to most is Whipsnade. So loads of space and animals don’t seem at all miserable.

But I’d think a 10-13 odd year old would still be interested in a zoo.

Here you go… 2 tiger enclosures side by side

And hold saviour (terminology?) populations.

@TeenToTwenties have many animals been successfully reintroduced into the world from one of these populations? I've seen Przewalski's horses in the wild but both the conservation and reintroduction of these horses was a bit of a cluster, honestly.

I get the impression reintroduction is still a relatively new area for zoos on the whole, as in they are learning the whole time. Plus there is only a point in reintroducing if the animals will be safe when it is done. But without the captive populations whole species could get lost.