Zoo Programmes: Part One

Every morning before work I watch Roar on BBC 2. This is a children’s show but it’s still full of fascinating facts. It’s set in Howlett’s Wild Animal Park in Kent, and is fronted by two baby faced and endearingly enthusiastic presenters, who usually end up performing some kind of task including animal faeces.

Of special interest is the honey badger, which is an extremely cool and underrated animal. All other African animals, including elephants and lions, are scared stiff of this rather ordinary looking badger. This is because they are actually the psychotic killers of the animal world, and can suffocate an elephant by grabbing its trunk and just holding on.

I always switch over and watch the news for a bit when Roar Rangers comes on, as I don’t really like children, and I’m jealous of them getting to be keepers for a day anyway. But Ask the Keeper is a pretty good part of the show despite the children’s sometimes odd questions (“how long is a Siberian lynx?”). Another good thing about this show is that because it is aimed at children it avoids most of the oogy vet bits which I don’t like anyway, and mysteriously animals don’t seem to die on it either.

While the presenters are by no means Konnie Huq, I do like to see how their knowledge grows over the season, and they have started asking some pretty intelligent questions by this point. There is also the online game, which is a Zoo Tycoon-style build-your-own-zoo effort. It seems ok, but you have to keep coming back day after day to upgrade it, and I hate those kind of games. Also my zoo doesn’t seem to have saved for some reason, and apparently I’m doing something deeply offensive and illegal by even playing it, because I’m over 15 which makes me a paedophile or something.

Anyway, to sum up, this zoo show is a pretty fair effort, and a sparkling one for a children’s zoo show. It would have made a good companion series to the Really Wild Show in my youth, but times were hard back then, and there were no zoo shows. It certainly beats GMTV for something to eat your toast to. Next time: Animal Park (perhaps).

Introduction

So, hello there. I’ve been thinking for a few days about setting up a blog about zoos. I’m a lover of zoos (I almost put ‘zoophile’ there, but that’s a very different thing!). I like the animals, of course, but I also like the other aspects of a zoo – the gardens, the staff, the library (when there is one) and the additional bits and pieces that most zoos seem to have.

The one thing I don’t really like is the other people. My favourite time to visit the zoo is when nearly no-one else is there. Early on a summer’s morning when it’s a school-day, that kind of time. It means less waiting to get to the front when visiting popular animals, less wincing every time someone screams at a bat or taps on the glass in the reptile house, more time with each animal. That said, some zoo visitors are brilliant. I like to see enthusiasm, fears overcome and people learning when I’m at the zoo.

Recently, I’ve mainly been visiting Chester Zoo, so that might be the one mentioned most for now. Chester is the closest zoo to where I live, and it also happens to be one of the biggest zoos in Europe. It’s a fabulous zoo with big plans for expansion, but I also love smaller zoos like Blackpool, and also safari parks such as Knowlsey (yes, I am currently living in the north west, how did you guess?).

The first zoo I ever went to was Guernsey zoo, because that’s where I’m from. I can’t remember how old I was when I first went, but I think I must have gone for the last time in 1990 when it closed (according to Vernon Kisling’s Zoo and Aquarium History). I can barely remember it as I was very young at the time, but it wasn’t the most well-appointed and humane of zoos. It had penguins, I think, and it must have had ostriches since during one visit my brother had a finger nearly amputated by one, but other than that I can’t even remember what animals it had. I’m not sure I can account for my love of zoos that way.

Of course, right next to Guernsey lies Jersey, with its wonderful Durrell Zoo (called Jersey Zoo when I visited as a child). This was a regular stop on our family holidays to Jersey. Here I learnt about the conservation work that is now so important to all zoos, but which Jersey Zoo pioneered. Gerald Durrell’s books about setting up his own zoo (and animal collecting for other zoos) are perhaps the main basis for my interest in animals and conservation, so therefore I think Durrell Zoo will always be closest to my heart.

Anyway, enough about my history in zoos – I may write more about this in the future. All this has really been a preamble – and a ramble – to me welcoming you (whoever ‘you’ are) to my blog. I can’t say how often I’ll update (dissertations don’t write themselves) or what I’m going to write about, but I guess you can see a bit of a theme now…

Hello everyone. I hope you enjoy reading about zoos.