When I visited the Dallas Zoo last year and partook in their Backstage Safari, there was a woman there with her mom, both of which were also from outside of Texas. It was really obvious from the start that the mom was just there to be with her daughter, she wasn’t a big animal person, and she didn’t really want to be close to any of them.
After helping train a gorilla, getting to feed an okapi, and meeting a number of their animal ambassadors (during which time she pet a skink and got licked by a tamandua), her attitude was completely different. The Dallas Zoo gives you a kind of VIP pass to hang around your neck, to make you feel even more special while you’re doing the experience. There was a member of the care staff handling a snake as part of an animal demo and we saw the pair there again. The mom came up to us and asked if we thought she might be able to use the vip pass to get to touch the snake.
We laughed as a group because in the matter of about 45 minutes, this woman went from not being an animal person to wanting to pet a snake (something that more than one Denver Zoo volunteer I know refuses to do!). I have a hard time thinking of a better story to demonstrate the power of zoos. Their power to educate, engage, and create people who care about animals.
The Zootographer 