HABITAT HAZARDS:
How Guest Behavior Can Directly Influence Animal Health and Welfare. BY RON MAGILL
The overwhelming majority of zoo guests have great respect for our animals and understand that with patience, wonderful natural behaviors can be observed. Unfortunately, there is a very small minority that sometimes tries to get an animal’s attention by making loud sounds or actually throwing items into an animal’s habitat. Though these visitors may believe that this is harmless, the reality is that it can be very detrimental, and even deadly, to the animal involved. Making loud noises or other types of sounds that may represent danger to a particular animal can elevate their stress levels, which can sometimes lead to lower resistance to illness and disease as well as self-injury in extreme cases. What can be even more dangerous to the animals is when foreign objects end up in their habitats. Some of these objects (cell phones, sunglasses, hats, etc.) may be the result of accidents, which is why we ask all visitors to secure any loose items they may have whenever they are observing animals. Sometimes, the animal may ingest an item before staff has the opportunity to remove it, in which case, they still need to be notified so that the animal can be closely monitored to ensure that the item can be naturally passed and isn’t going to cause a potentially fatal obstruction. We have had some animals including alligators and a Komodo dragon that had to undergo surgery to remove items ranging from pacifiers to water bottles that could have proven fatal without veterinary intervention! 8
Foreign items found in Zoo animals
If you accidently drop an item into a habitat, please notify a staff member so that we can safely remove the item before an animal may try to ingest it.
