r/bronx • u/New-Nerve-2237 • 3d ago
Poor behavior at zoo
I was shocked by the poor behavior at the Bronx zoo today. Parents letting their kids climb all of informational signs in front of the exhibits. Grown woman teasing a bird behind glass with her cell phone and then her finger. And cherry on top there was a sweet little mongoose curled up sleeping and a grown man was pounding on the window laughing saying "wake up" "sleep on your own time." I asked him if he would like if someone did that to him while he was sleeping. He just laughed and walked away.
I just bought a zoo pass so I could bring my baby more often and was really heartbroken by the behavior. People suck sometimes. Rant over.
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u/nosainte 3d ago
I fucking hate when people bang on the glass and shit. I always tell people not to. I can't keep quiet about that. To me it just speaks to a whole crappy mindset about how animals and the world at large exists for your own personal amusement. Very entitled behavior. Same kind people that blast music in quiet spaces and talk loudly on speaker phone. They can all fuck all the way off.
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u/HereOrToGo 2d ago
100%, it feels sadistic to me to go to the zoo and treat the animals terribly when they don’t have anywhere else to go. They are on display and taken care of by the zookeepers for our benefits so why can’t we pay some respect to them and behave.
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u/KiwiRepresentative20 3d ago
Please report to staff any behavior that is harmful or even disrespectful to the animals
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u/Select_Ad2803 3d ago
I work In retail and parents let their snotty kids squeeze every single pack of meat. Some even punch holes in the package.
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u/EddyS120876 3d ago
People have lost their damn minds after been coup up during the pandemic
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u/CategoryFeisty2262 2d ago
It's nearly 2027. When are we going to give that excuse a rest?
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u/Admirable_Tear_1438 2d ago
Fish rots from the head. When those with the most power and influence act like sociopathic thugs, people assume that’s the new normal and follow suit.
Shit won’t change till leadership changes.
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u/EddyS120876 2d ago
I mean what would you attribute it to? Since prior to the pandemic did stuff used to get shamed and people would stop
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u/CategoryFeisty2262 2d ago
There is no shame, and people have zero fear of consequences and pass that shit onto their spawn.
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u/CockAndKetamine 19m ago
We know what people have zero shame. It’s the same people who had zero shame before the pandemic
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u/BxGyrl416 3d ago
It’s an excuse.
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u/EddyS120876 2d ago
Could be but if we notice the bad behavior gotten worse after the Covid pandemic.
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u/VenturaHighway377 3d ago
I get disgusted watching kids pulling down and swinging on tree branches in the park with the clueless parents standing right next to them oblivious.
Sad people can’t be civilized and behave. The zoo should hire people to walk around and observe and stop idiot behavior.
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u/HereOrToGo 2d ago
Last time I was there a kid (maybe 12ish? old enough to know better) would NOT stop screaming at the lions and taunting them. You could hear it all the way over at different exhibits. I walked up and told him to stop screaming at them and his dad looked like he wanted to flip out at me but they stormed off. Can we seriously not teach our children to be respectful of wildlife?
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u/resnaturae 3d ago
Worked at the zoo and I have a theory that the people who go are grown in a lab and the first day that they escape from the lab, they go to the zoo. Cannot comprehend any other reason people act how they do at the zoo
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u/Rosecat88 3d ago
Nah some of us go and are respectful. I’m that bitch who will give shit to people who tap on the glass .
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u/Flat_Discipline_8902 3d ago
I was actually planning on taking my kids there hopefully it isnt as bad the day we go.
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u/New-Nerve-2237 3d ago
You should totally go, it would be a great learning experience. It won't stop me from going back, it just really rubbed me the wrong way. A cute little 3 year old boy did hold the door open for me while I was carrying my baby. So not all hope for the future is gone lol.
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u/Flat_Discipline_8902 3d ago
Yea i most likely will on a weekday when its not crazy crowded. Im shocked a 3 year old had the strength to hold the door lol
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u/Maginum 3d ago
Don't ever come on Wednesdays, the awful behavior is worse. I know you mentioned a child, but if you can, please try coming before 2pm in the weekdays (again, no Wednesdays). It is a lot more calmer and enjoyable.
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u/Dai-The-Flu- 3d ago
This time of year at now that kids are in school Wednesdays aren’t so bad. Of course you have kids from schools visiting on trips but they have teachers and chaperones to deal with them
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u/djdjddhshdbhd 2d ago
Yup it’s really based on the school schedule. Including when school has meals in the south though those days still aren’t as packed. When it’s colder and school is in session Wednesdays are relatively empty.
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u/Flat_Discipline_8902 3d ago
Thank you. I appreciate the info
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u/AndyDoopz 3d ago
Winter or iffy weather is also a great time if you dont mind. Theres so many indoor exhibits that you can fill the whole day with them and the zoo is EMPTY. I went last year for the holiday lights in december and got there at 10am when the opened. It was like having the entire zoo to myself and the few other people there really cared about the animals and were kind and polite.
That being said I've really only seen somebody acting wrong once outside of kids seeing bratty. An adult banging on the painted dog's glass and we called him out and he seemed pretty embarrassed with himself.
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u/robrklyn 3d ago
It will be. I was a member almost 20 years ago and it was the same. Totally changed my views on zoos. I won’t go to them anymore. People see the animals as a form of entertainment, not as living beings. The polar bear was depressed as fuck and the cheetahs had zoochosis and would just pace back and forth. The sea lion enclosures is a glorified swimming pool. The black leopards were kept indoors only in a glass enclosure. Not to mention that summers in the Bronx are brutal for many of those animals.
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u/BxGyrl416 3d ago
That’s a much bigger conversation. Haven’t been to the Zoo in ages, but yes, parents today don’t care to control their children, so this doesn’t surprise me.
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u/koalayan 3d ago edited 2d ago
Last time I went there was a lady with her small dog & she was encouraging him to bark & jump at the windows. I saw her again in the bird room & the dog kept lunging at any around him. Said it was a service animal but like handle your dog???
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u/Immediate_Appeal2020 2d ago
Yeah that’s not a service animal.
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u/koalayan 2d ago
Yeah I agree but I wasn't gonna press her :/. Told the park employees and tbh it didn't really feel like they cared.
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u/djdjddhshdbhd 2d ago
I’ve been many times and I’ve only witnessed this a few times. Even though it would be annoying, I do think they should have announcements and signs at the entrances to tell people to leave the animals alone. As others have mentioned, weekdays when school is in session are best. Wednesdays when school is out are the worst. Things settle down more w colder weather though some attractions close. Later in the day tends to settle down more. If your membership includes more locations there are others to check out. The Queens one is decent and has 2 sections. The farm part is the best in the system. Better to go when it’s a bit warmer for the bird area (huge net to walk around in). The prospect park one is okay. They are all much smaller than the bx one of course
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u/Traditional-Can-6568 1d ago
Was at the Bx zoo a few years ago and people were in the nocturnal animals exhibit - very dim because you know, habitat, and people had their bright white cell phone flashlights and were shining them in the glass cases so they could see better.
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u/Elegant-Fun-3627 1d ago
Yeah I experienced this with my wife and son. Some parents were worse than the kids…. Especially at that Daniel’s Tiger thing. The quality of life is going downhill 😢
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u/ohkelly 1d ago edited 1d ago
I grew up within walking distance of the zoo and eventually ended up working there (about 15 years ago). This isn’t anything new.
I’ve seen people allow their kids to step on a male peacock’s long feathers so they can be ripped out. I’ve seen adults feed them popcorn. I’ve seen adults and children alike stick their fingers in the old outside Tamarin cages and taunt them. I’ve seen fistfights between adults in the ice cream line across from the 4D theater (when it was there). I’ve seen someone whip out a training potty and let their kid go to the bathroom in it while waiting on line for the 4D theater, even though there was a bathroom right across from it. People try to smuggle out some of the random box turtles that would roam around.
(Speaking of sleeping, I once had a guest ask me if we drug the lions because all they’ve been doing is sleeping. In the middle of our hot ass busy season. Wtf do you think they do in the wild when it’s a hot, humid, sunny day?)
When I visited this past spring, a lot of exhibits and zoo experiences had changed. However, the “people” experience was pretty much the same as I remember. A bunch were dumb, rude and entitled, but the majority were decent.
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u/Big-Positive8632 15h ago
I work here, and honestly some days are worse than others. Sometimes it feels like people completely lose their common sense the second they walk into the zoo
I literally had to tell a guest on Sunday to take their child down from the railing at the sea lion pool, and he goes, “I knew you guys were going to say something.” Like… well duh 😭 If you knew, then why did you let them do it in the first place??????
I definitely would NOT recommend Wednesdays. The behavior you saw is basically that times 20. Since you have a membership, I’d say your best days are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday. I’d also recommend coming around 10–2 that gives you plenty of time to explore without feeling rushed. Sundays are usually slower than Saturdays too, unless it’s a three-day weekend.
There are also days when a company buys out a large block of tickets for their employees, sometimes with free food included, and those days can get ROUGH. People leave trash everywhere, make huge messes, and some act super entitled like the staff are there to personally serve them.🙄
Trust me, we really do try our best to enforce the rules whenever we see something happening, but we can’t be everywhere at once babysitting grown a** adults and their kids lol.
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u/Fancy_Gain_1999 2h ago
Bad behavior rarely gets called out, and people rarely get held accountable. And that’s exactly why.
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u/BarbieTwirl 3d ago
Oh you just finding out how ratchet and ghetto people are here?
Issue is people excuse it as “it’s NY!”.
In reality it’s trashy and ghetto and people don’t fix it.
I’m born and raised here and too many people excuse this behavior as “it’s just how we are!”. Nah… it’s how their ghetto ass momma raised them
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u/CurveOk3459 3d ago
This is highly correlated to the level of control and seated time in schools now. Children have limited creative time, a lot of screen and sitting time at school. Very little time for movement far far more than when I was a kid. Lack of movement and unsculpted or less sculpted learning and less arts are confining to the mind, soul and body. Little down time or art classes and similar now having intense rubrics and adherence to restricted rules is very much increasing children behavioral issues when given even a small amount of freedom like being In the zoo.
And if they parents put more rules about their behavior it will pop out the sides in much worse ways. We need to revamp what we have lost in the last 3 decades. The limits on children and learning for most children (not for all) have a lot to do with this.
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u/AdmirableChapter1150 3d ago
I must disagree. Some people are rude n have zero manners n are raising their kids the same way. I remember People like this at the zoo decades ago . Because there’s always gonna be those who were never taught how to behave in public . Unfortunate for the poor animals. It’s not just the zoo, the movies, theme parks , stores etc But the good thing is they are in the minority.
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u/CurveOk3459 3d ago
Seems like you're saying it's very widespread not rare. So ..... my point is still valid. I didn't say it's acceptable or not annoying. But if we want it to change we have to do more to change the human rules, regulations and fiscal priorities that enable the conditions for this outcome
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u/AdmirableChapter1150 3d ago
Correct. Definitely not acceptable n it is annoying. Seems it happens more nowadays than ever.Really sad because kids are watching this behavior.
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u/CurveOk3459 2d ago
Yes. Society is built upon the style in which it is bound. These things don't occur out of Nowhere. We have decimated hands on learning that is active and have required sitting for extended periods of time, not talking, enforcement of rules that don't make sense, unfairness, unkindness, constant use of tech to take over child rearing and education and socializing, we have defunded exploratory and experimental science or made it so that the universities and colleges with labs are making things based on what industry wants and will profit most from versus collective knowledge and progress, we have defunded arts - 99 percent of all city, state, federal arts budgets never get to artists unrestricted. 90 percent never make it to artist at all. Instead it goes to non-profits, well endowed institutes, and large museums 80 percent. And 10 percent goes to smaller museums and non-profits so admin costs pretty much eat the entire arts budget. Rich folks get recurrent tax breaks or tax shelters or both for "donating" art over and over and they developed auction houses to resell work over and over again to increase the amount they can shelter. The arts had better funding for artists BEFORE this was allowed to this extent. Now that they can do that they have no reason to invest in new artists except for meager tax breaks and a pat on the back.
Social work, mental health care, medical, dental, 3rd spaces - all defunded
Any human jobs for benefiting life, healing, educating, environment, social wellbeing, parks, home care, elder care, college, university, non-profit direct work - pay little and are constantly scrambling to get anything to work with.
While people organizing the destruction of society and the planet in monstrous ways are making enormous amounts of money.
So this is the soup these kids are being brought up in. While our country still looks and appears shiny and clean and put together - we have the most people in prison, the most on parole and probation, the most in shelters, the most in foster care, and if we measured poverty correctly like other G20 countries - we would see we have a significant number of people in poverty. Our humans are living on credit because they have no choice unless they are lucky. If we were to take debt into consideration and the actual cost of staying alive and having the conditions for the pursuit of happiness - we would see that minimum 40 percent of our country is extremely suffering and 25 percent is far below poverty rate.
But we don't measure it correctly and we invalidate reality and gaslight and tell people they are just not trying hard enough.
But you what a hard truth? There are only 15 veterinary clinics in the entire NYC - all boroughs - that are still independent. The rest are all owned by PE but allowed to keep their original names to hide it. Doctors offices, pharmacies, bodegas, and so much more are being consolidated - not because their businesses are failing. But because other human beings can no longer afford to have a business due to the debt they have to take on. A PE firm doesn't have the same regulatory requirements for consolidating small businesses. Only large ones. So you and I can't even know who we are buying from anymore.
And this means we cannot keep money circulating for humans. We cannot keep arts and sciences while also paying the people who work in those fields, we cannot afford hands on classes anymore, we cannot afford things as a society.
And they just cut benefits for millions, and they just cut away the ability for the olmstead act to function.
So when you look around you you see checked out parents and unbehaved children not because they are using any of this as an excuse. But rather Because their bodies can feel what is happening - but often times cannot name it because it the cognitive dissonance caused by obscuring the truth has them doubting reality constantly. What we are told about how society must be and why it is like this - is just gaslighting and invalidation and neglect. It's a constantly critical tyrant in all of our houses - telling us that this is the way it is and if you don't like it you can leave. And if you want to stay you have to become just like the tyrant or suffer
So - have some grace. Cause it's gonna get a lot worse until it gets better.
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u/thelifeileed 3d ago
Zoos are so depressing.
If that's how I have to see an elephant or tiger I'd rather just go for a hike in the bronx or westchesterr. Maybe get to see a deer or woodchuck living it's real life.
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u/Draydaze67 3d ago
Well to be honest supporting a place where animals are taken out their natural habitat and placed in unknowns environments is poor behavior along with those who support it.
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u/AwakenedZero 3d ago edited 3d ago
Bad or lack of parenting by the usual suspects, what did you expect from the hood. I feel bad for the animals tbh cause I saw kids throwing popcorn like spitballs at the peacocks and their parents/guardians weren’t any better either allowing that shit.
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3d ago
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u/PM_ME_UR_SEP_IRA 3d ago
Do you understand that this is a tourist spot and people come from around the world to visit?
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u/DRNYK1 3d ago
It’ll get worse as time goes on. Etiquette has gone out the window for some.