As zoos across the country start to reopen, one curator says certain animals seem to have missed having people around — but not all of them. 'We haven't seen the cats get super excited about seeing people,' he says. 'But that's honestly to be expected.'
The Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C., is reopening to the public on Friday."We haven't seen the cats get superexcited about seeing people, but that's honestly to be expected," says curator Craig Saffoe."Cats, whether they're your cats at home or giant cats like ours, are cats." Above,The pandas in D.C., the grizzlies in Oakland, the gorillas in the Bronx are all getting reacquainted with human visitors.
That means drastically limiting the number of people allowed in each day. In normal, fully operational times, in the peak spring and summer seasons, the National Zoo can accommodate up to 25,000 people in a single day. When it reopens, it will cap attendance at 5,000 through timed entry tickets. Masks will be required for anyone age 6 or above. Indoor spaces will stay closed, and throughout the zoo, there will be hand sanitizer stations and signs reminding people to social distance.
Zoos and aquariums can't just send their employees home and turn off the lights and secure the facility. The facility has to function at 100 percent to care for the animals that live there. So they continue to incur substantial costs day in and day out to keep the facility running."I don't want to belittle the impact that the pandemic has had on businesses like restaurants or movie theaters," he says.
In California, Oakland Zoo almost went bankrupt."We had about three months of reserves remaining, so we had to notify the city of Oakland that we were running out of money," says Oakland Zoo's president, Dr. Joel Parrott.
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