Reading and photographing signs in zoos is a hobby of mine, but with a purpose. The zoo community rationalizes the imprisonment of animals on three shaky grounds: conservation (breeding endangered species); welfare (providing good care for animals); and education. The last is often the least examined by the animal protection and conservation community, hence my hobby.[teaserbreak]
Recently, I made my first ever visit to Safari Niagara, about a twenty minute drive from Niagara Falls, Ontario. Most of the signs in front of cages provided the usual simplified boilerplate information to be found in any child’s book on animals, but some were absurdly wrong.
Take the one that said the following:
“Black Ducks look very much like female Mallards. They are the only North American duck where both males and females look the same. They share the same habitat as Mallards, considerable interbreeding takes place. Once the most common species of duck, their numbers have declined by 50% since the 1950’s. They often remain all winter in the Niagara River rather than migrating south.”
© Born Free USA/Barry Kent MacKayIt’s virtually all wrong, including the photos on the sign, which showed images of an entirely different species, the Pacific Black Duck (Anser superciliosa), native to the Australasian region, not North America.
The text is obviously meant to describe the American Black Duck (Anser rubripes), none of which were visible (view my drawing of the American Black Duck above). There were some local Mallards, probably naturally wild ones, at the zoo.
American Black Ducks do look a little like female Mallards, which is why it might have been helpful to explain how they differ! It’s easy to tell them apart. They are not the only North American ducks with similar males and females; that also applies to the similar Mottled Duck, the two species of whistling-duck, and the introduced Muscovy Duck.
American Black Ducks tend to breed in boreal forests (including beaver ponds), while Mallards nest more in open sloughs and prairie wetlands, although these differing habitat preferences can overlap, and they do interbreed. American Black Ducks were never the most common species outside of eastern boreal forest regions (Mallards have a far vaster range across the northern hemisphere), and are outnumbered by other species. They winter not just at Niagara, but even farther south than southern Canada, and not necessarily “rather than migrating south,” since wintering birds in that region come from far northern regions.
So much for zoo expertise and other signs were as bad, or even worse.
Keep Wildlife in the Wild,
Barry