Interview 4973 – Caption Index: 165
In the learning part of the job, what professionals either zoo or aquarium or otherwise did you respect and learn from, and who had the most influence on you?… Read More
In the learning part of the job, what professionals either zoo or aquarium or otherwise did you respect and learn from, and who had the most influence on you?… Read More
When I think about my zoo career and who had the most influence, I think there were probably two gentlemen that I was enamored with and respected. They were both different, they were like two sides of a coin. One was Marlin because he was very forthright and he did… Read More
It’s hard to pinpoint any one. Those two individuals in the broad sense, but I learned a lot from almost everybody I knew in the field. You learn what you want to learn. You’ve met a lot of people as director. Yes. Read More
He says marginal. He was nursing this beetle on his hand. He was a wonderful man. And they ended- Between Mylon and Randy- Well, getting back, we began to get more and more comfortable. So I approached two ladies from the Crosley- they were sisters of Powel Crosley. Crosley was… Read More
So they agreed and they gave me $250,000 to build this exhibit. Well, the more we got into the exhibit, the more exciting we got into it. I kept going back to the board and stretching it and stretching it and getting money from here and there. Eventually we spent… Read More
And that was something- You might as well have a dead antelope in a cage, I felt, as trying display a dead insect, but these guys were fantastic. And we developed a strong theme in that building, and it was the theme of diversity and how important insects were to… Read More
And everybody said it wouldn’t work, that the animals wouldn’t react or people would damage the animals, you know, kids, but it worked beautifully. We used heliconius and the difference between heliconius, in our situation, it’s a forest butterfly and it focuses on the ground or on its surroundings. It’s… Read More
And I said, what you got there?… Read More
He mentioned some sort of beetle. Read More
And I says, how is it?… Read More
And I’m thinking to myself during the summer, if you want to operate an insect building, all you have to do is open the windows. Read More
But winter time, what are you gonna do if something like that happens and you got a major exhibit in the winter?… Read More
And we started looking around for people that could work with insects, and the only people we could find were people that were working, that were in college that were working in etymological departments, but their whole design was to kill insects. They would rear them, but to kill them. Read More
And he had a mouse taped, a taped up mouse to a board, and there was a 100 mosquitoes feeding off the, he had shaved the mouse’s belly and a 100 mosquitoes feeding off that mouse. I ran in there, I said, Mylon, you can’t do that. The public will… Read More
And somehow we would, and we never got to that point, but I always wanted to tie the diversity of man into those projects, that that was important as well, and something to be respected. And little by little, we keyed certain areas to certain groups of animals. A good… Read More
If you can keep animals active, obviously they’re better exhibits and are better information for the public. So I went back home and, little by little, I began to experiment. We kept small groups behind the reptile house. We kept small groups of insects and local insects because there were… Read More
It’s been private people or researchers. I mean, we were very competent people and we know what we’re doing in those areas. We don’t want our animals running all over the place. So they got more and more confident with us, and they started allowing me to bring in exotics,… Read More
And at that time, early on animals were sold rather than given away as they are today. So that’s the way we funded that program. You had the vision of changing the exhibits. Read More
What did you want to do with exhibitry and how did it change over your time as director?… Read More
The Cincinnati Zoo, obviously we stepped into an old zoo and it was very popular in zoos to theme their parks. Not only their parks, but their exhibits. They would do an African area in the zoo or an Asian area. This was very difficult in Cincinnati. So I chose… Read More