Interview 22877 – Caption Index: 478
Can you do it?… Read More
Can you do it?… Read More
I mean, that’s the problems I think curators are facing now, is how to maintain a healthy, a genetically healthy population. Read More
Well, if you can’t get that male and female together, bringing Chia-Chia to breed Ling-Ling, you’re screwed. (chuckles) You know, there’s more to it than just saying, okay, put a male with a female and you’re gonna get a baby. So I think maintaining healthy populations in captivity is a… Read More
It depends on the animal and whether there is a wild to do it in and I think that the big change has been being able to introduce, with veterinary medicine, being able to do sperm collection and ova collection. And then, you know, you may not take the animal… Read More
Is there a wild to do that in?… Read More
Well, the basic job of the curator is to supervise keepers and make sure animal care is right and work with veterinarians and maintain the collection, decide which animals you’re gonna breed, which animals you’re not and to find suitable homes for animals that are surplus to the population and… Read More
Would you say the role of curator has changed from when you started?… Read More
Do you think zoo animals, you kind of touched on, be introduced into the wild?… Read More
Well, I think zoos, of all, education is important. I mean, because we, I mean, we have living creatures there and the education departments, I mean, the Society’s education department, their classes are always, always full. They go from infants and their parents up to like sixth, seventh grade. Have… Read More
Why do you think education is so important in zoos, or is it?… Read More
So education serves a lot of purpose, a lot of purposes, I mean, they do counting. It can help with mathematics, it can help with reading, ’cause kids are interested in animals. So anything that will get them more interested in learning and being able to talk to their parents,… Read More
I will tell you that they’ve had a contractual bird show in Milwaukee for years and when Kim Smith was the curator, Walter Crawford provided the bird show. And it was very popular, but it was very rollerskating parrots and very showbiz type. And Kim contracted with Steve Martin. No… Read More
The curators decide what the play is going to be about. And they write songs, create puppets, and the the actors go around with the puppets and the kids interact with the puppets. It’s great, yeah, that’s worked. I think Central Park Zoo started that. They started a theater program… Read More
And I think that’s been much more effective than the animal shows themselves. Read More
We had talked about the animal rides, but animal shows like birds in flight, do you think they helped to get the message across to visitors about a group of animals or about conservation?… Read More
If the animal activists want a dialogue, yes, they can achieve it, but I’m not sure, many animal activists don’t. I mean, I can tell you, talking to Pat Derby and others, it was, I mean, had no interest in what I had to say. Dialogue means two people have… Read More
What do you think their value is?… Read More
If you don’t have a nasty controversy that you can raise money on, you’re not gonna point out what’s good about a zoo. So I don’t know who would provide the training and whether it would be helpful or not. Read More
I don’t know what training you could have. I mean, when I ran into my animal rights problems, I had people that I knew in animal rights groups that I could call and say, okay, this is what’s going on, you know, from your perspective. But if you get someone… Read More
Do you think then zoos can or can’t achieve a dialogue with animal activists?… Read More