The "Have Kids heard of it?" Metric

[Alexjh]

This is just a random train of thought, but I've just been pondering basically the "is it so famous kids have heard of it?" Concept as a metric for where the big gaps are fame wise?

Like, assuming that a lot don't really know the difference betweeen individual species of say camel or rhino, what are the biggest name wild animals?

The ones that come to mind for me:

Sloth
Porcupine
Wild Boar
Stork
Coyote
Tasmanian Devil
Kiwi
Sea Otter
Walrus

Any other thoughts?

 

[Antimony96]

Have they heard of the actual Tasmanian devil or have they just heard of the Looney Tunes character?

 

[Alexjh]

Have they heard of the actual Tasmanian devil or have they just heard of the Looney Tunes character?

Honestly valid question, there's probably a couple of species that that applies to - Roadrunner comes to mind - but I'm inclined to lean in the Devil's favour just cos I assume that kids are more likely to recall something with devil in the name.

Kinda the reason I didnt include Wolverine - theyll probably know the character's name but he isn't actually a wolverine.

 

[DarthQuell]

Hmm, interesting concept. I wouldn't know, because I've always been reading animal encyclopedias and playing zoo games and stuff since I was very small.
I mean, my mom says that sometimes I'd ask the keepers/educators animal questions that they couldn't answer...

But, I'd say that your list is pretty good. Talking about habitat animals, there isn't much. I'd go far and add farm animals, as a petting zoo would be great. So:

• Domestic cow (Holstein comes to mind)
• Domestic pig
• Domestic chicken (Leghorn or Plymouth Rock come to mind)
• Domestic horse
• Domestic donkey
• Domestic sheep

Those are just a few, and the specific breeds I mentioned are those that are used in cartoons, at least when I was growing up.

For wild animals, I can't think of any at the moment

 

[TheDuckKnight]

Kids are bound to recognize:

1. Sloth
2. Walrus
3. Porcupine
4. Kiwi
5. Pelican
6. DUCK
7. Turtle (we have SO many options for a habitat turtle)
8. Turkey
9. Baboon
10. Howler Monkey

With the potential of flying birds in walkthrough exhibits, I'd say the top 10 birds they'd know are:

1. Parrot
2. Toucan
3. Owl
4. Eagle
5. Vulture
6. Cockatoo
7. Kookaburra
8. Puffin
9. Hawk/Falcon
10. Hornbill (especially one who sings about having a lovely bunch of coconuts)

And to give our herpes and invertebrate friends some love:

1. Chameleon
2. Cobra
3. Gecko
4. Box Turtle
5. Frilled Lizard
6. Python
7. Ants
8. Walking Stick
9. Bees
10. Praying Mantis

 

[DarthQuell]

DUCK

I FORGOT ABOUT THE DUCKS!!!

 

[Fallax]

This would honestly depend from region to region. How many kids from Australia have heard of quolls compared to kids elsewhere?

 

[TheDuckKnight]

I FORGOT ABOUT THE DUCKS!!!

Ya best not let them happen again

 

[Pentoleaf]

Kids are weird. I work with a lot of kids and it often shocks me what they do and do not know. Shout out to the kid (from North America) who thought Giant Pandas were from Africa but knew fifty different facts about capybaras. They also wanted to tell me all about kea parrots (though they were clearly conflating them with kakapos).

This isn't unusual. I've met kids (and adults, unfortunately) who think that cats and dogs are the same species (cats are female and dogs are male apparently???) But can give me very accurate information on a random species they saw in a meme or documentary. :/

Which is all to say... I don't really assume that any particular animal is super well known or not well known any more. Trends move so fast that relatively obscure species can become super popular in a week and some common ABC species you'd expect kids to know just aren't there.

 

[Captain Callum]

Well this is gonna widely vary from region due to different exposure to wild animals and media. More 'exotic' kinds of animals will be recognised from popular media such as films and cartoons so speaking roughly from my experience so animal exposure for the average kid not the animal Enthusiast (since I wasn't as a kid)

• Domestic cow - especially in Scotland this is either generic dairy cow (can't be bothered looking it up) or the Highland cow
• Domestic sheep , domestic pig, goat, goose etc . Especially with farm animal visits , This is why most children sections of a zoo are petting zoos
• Easily recognisable birds like stork, eagle, vulture, European robin, ducks
• I don't know how kiwi is recognisable as a kid, I was only introduced to it by a bird encyclopedia when I was like 12 or something
• Cartoons and animated films play large part to more specific animals - looney tunes and similar cartoons are the 2 most memorable sources. Animals like coyote, Tasmanian devil (although never knew it more than taz), roadrunner among many others

Of course these days could be entirely different, a much better variety of kid-friendly media could introduce even rare animals to kids. Most of the familiar animals are generally already ingame - lion, tiger, elephants giraffe, giant panda, meerkat etc

 

[DarthQuell]

Cartoons and animated films play large part to more specific animals - looney tunes and similar cartoons are the 2 most memorable sources. Animals like coyote, Tasmanian devil (although never knew it more than taz), roadrunner among many others

Totally. A lot of the animals I know today began in Looney Tunes and also cartoonish videogames, like, for example, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger, where I 1st heard about these guys and cassowaries and frilled lizards.
Crash Bandicoot is where I 1st heard about bandicoots (and I have to admit that when I looked up the real thing I was...disappointed. I was hoping they'd be 4 feet tall, spin around, and be orange and dance)

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Culture, pop culture (and thus era) and region play a big role. One big zoo around here features meerkats. Ever kid going to that zoo will chew your ear off about meerkat. I think zoos and their expositions can influence a lot what kids are impressed about. Could be the bird cage and a display of falcons, impressive elephant zone or penguins viewed under water. Zoos are big events for kids.

 

[Pentoleaf]

Culture, pop culture (and thus era) and region play a big role. One big zoo around here features meerkats. Ever kid going to that zoo will chew your ear off about meerkat. I think zoos and their expositions can influence a lot what kids are impressed about. Could be the bird cage and a display of falcons, impressive elephant zone or penguins viewed under water. Zoos are big events for kids.

On that note, I think that restricting dlcs to "popular" animals only is a fallacy.

1. We don't know what will be popular in a month, let alone in a few years. It's better to give a range of species to cover the bases.

2. I don't think that PZ's primary audience is children, not directly anyways. It very much plays on the Zoo Tycoon nostalgia and the core customers buying all of the dlc and creating online content are adults.

However, children are aware of the game. I've had multiple kids start telling me about animals they learned about from watching Planet Zoo playthroughs on youtube and tiktok those kids seem to especially like "weird" animals, because having knowledge about something unusual that maybe adults don't know as much about gives kids clout.

 

[biggest_dreamer]

I get what this thread is going for, but I don't actually think that "kids" are the right metric here. In my anecdotal experience, kids often have a somewhat better understanding of animals that they develop from educational videos and books, which they lose with age due to lack of interest or reinforcement. Conversely, I don't think the average adult American would know there's a difference between sea otters and other otters, or be able to say a single thing about kiwis besides their association with New Zealand. In fact, I've heard multiple adults say they didn't realize that kiwis were both birds and fruit. I'm also very certain that the supermajority of American adults would not be able to pick a wolverine or Tasmanian devil out of a lineup including, say, the two of them, a hyena, an American badger, and a maned wolf.

On the flip side, I think jackals are a bit underrated in this capacity. I don't think most people could distinguish them from other similar looking canids, but I do think a lot people know they're some sort of dog and can maybe speak to their association with ancient Egypt. That's more than I can say for a lot of animals.

 

[jcp011c]

\

This is just a random train of thought, but I've just been pondering basically the "is it so famous kids have heard of it?" Concept as a metric for where the big gaps are fame wise?

Like, assuming that a lot don't really know the difference betweeen individual species of say camel or rhino, what are the biggest name wild animals?

The ones that come to mind for me:

Sloth
Porcupine
Wild Boar
Stork
Coyote
Tasmanian Devil
Kiwi
Sea Otter
Walrus

Any other thoughts?

Adding in the Swan, and begrudgingly adding in the Honey Badger, simply because of the memes.

On the fence with the Wolverine as well,as you mentioned as well as a Roadrunner (Meep! Meeph!) On the other hand, I'm not sure that a Sea Otter, Wild Boar or as much as we'd like to think otherwise, the Kiwi and the Tasmanian Devil are on the top tier of this.

Also in very general terms, the standard petting zoo animals.

 

[SuzieSky]

From a NA perspective:

Basic farm/petting zoo animals: pig, small equid, cow (Highland for me!), alpaca, goat, turkey, chicken
Birds: swans, ducks, kiwi, rockhopper penguin; I think if they have been to many zoos, they would notice the absence of some other ground habitat birds if not specific species
Monkeys: howler monkey, baboon, sifaka (if that show is still played), tamarins, squirrel monkey, spider monkey; I think if they have been to many zoos, they would notice the game's lack of variety in small primates if not specific species
Carnivores: wolverine, honey badger, sea otter, American black bear, jackal, walrus, small cats (Most zoos I've attended had at least 2: bobcat, serval from Savannah cats/related social media, Pallas's cat is a meme animal, Ocelot--though I'd prefer a margay)
Ungulates: dromedary camel, bighorn sheep, wild boar, wild donkey, white tailed deer, maybe collared peccary?
Other: sloth, porcupine, Tasmanian devil, sea turtle, tree kangaroos and coatis are common in zoos (but I learned about them from this forum), maybe echidna

 

[biggest_dreamer]

I don't think being common in zoos equates to kids hearing about it at all, though. Especially considering how often kids ask their parents what an animal is, and the parent gives a nonspecific answer (it's a "monkey") if they even give a correct answer at all (I mention this all the time but it's a prime example - I once heard a Malayan tapir called an elephant, an anteater, a rhino, and a bear within the span of 10 minutes or so). I also think the American black bear, bighorn sheep, white-tailed deer, and maybe even the dromedary aren't great examples - we have a black bear, a sheep, a deer, and a camel in the game already. That's all they are to most people, a deer's a deer.

On the note of the sifaka, did they ever even refer to Zoboomafoo by species in the show? Honestly all I can remember is them calling him a "leaping lemur" all the time. Either way, I doubt a show from the 90s has much sway over kids some 25 years later.

 

[SuzieSky]

I don't think being common in zoos equates to kids hearing about it at all, though. Especially considering how often kids ask their parents what an animal is, and the parent gives a nonspecific answer (it's a "monkey") if they even give a correct answer at all (I mention this all the time but it's a prime example - I once heard a Malayan tapir called an elephant, an anteater, a rhino, and a bear within the span of 10 minutes or so). I also think the American black bear, bighorn sheep, white-tailed deer, and maybe even the dromedary aren't great examples - we have a black bear, a sheep, a deer, and a camel in the game already. That's all they are to most people, a deer's a deer.

On the note of the sifaka, did they ever even refer to Zoboomafoo by species in the show? Honestly all I can remember is them calling him a "leaping lemur" all the time. Either way, I doubt a show from the 90s has much sway over kids some 25 years later.

I was just listing the animals I would have recognized outside of the zoo tycoon franchise and niche documentaries.

Coatis and Tree Kangaroos were the only two that I thought maybe someone else might have seen in a zoo.

I've seen WAY more dromedary camels in media and in zoos than the Bactrian. Kids would probably recognize the one-humped camel although they might not call it the dromedary. If it's an animal that would instantly be recognized from somewhere, that would be good enough for me.

From NA: I was very familiar with the black bear, bighorn sheep, and the bobcat from elementary school lessons focused on local fauna (and most adults I associated with throughout my life would know them as well). The deer would be well-known locally, though mostly as a food source. Most kids learn about their local species as well as the basic safari and farm animals. The range of these listed is large enough and they are iconic enough that I think most people in NA would know them. However, there might be different animals in this category for people from different countries. I don't really know how iconic they are on other continents.

As for monkeys, birds, and small cats, I probably would not have known too many species names, but I don't have to look too hard at the roster to know that the balance is off. I think even children would remember seeing more of these broader groups in zoos than is present in the game. I guess they don't quite fit the "so famous that children would have heard of it," but they would know what a bird and a monkey is.

 

[Pinguin]

Very subjective but i think:

Sloth
Crested/Cape porcupine
Pellican
Domestic animals - not the breed of course, buit will know general pig/sheep/cow/duck etc.

but as i said kids from australia probably know tasmanian devil, tree kangaroo....kids from SA know coati and monkeys and kids from Europe will know Stork, Wild board etc. It is not easy to look at it from european perspective only.

 

[BananaLeech]

On the note of the sifaka, did they ever even refer to Zoboomafoo by species in the show? Honestly all I can remember is them calling him a "leaping lemur" all the time. Either way, I doubt a show from the 90s has much sway over kids some 25 years later.

I could attest to that. I tried showing Zoboomafoo on youtube to a kid whose mom did like the show bach at the early 2000s but the kid was not interested and instead wanted to watch dinosaurs and monster trucks.

Turtle (we have SO many options for a habitat turtle)

To be fair, when people already call tortoises turtles (I mean to an extent they are not wrong) you may as well expect people to be okay with the ammount of "turtles" they have.

On the flip side, I think jackals are a bit underrated in this capacity. I don't think most people could distinguish them from other similar looking canids, but I do think a lot people know they're some sort of dog and can maybe speak to their association with ancient Egypt. That's more than I can say for a lot of animals.

Yea the only cultural relevance I know of jackals is that here in Turkey witty and cunning people are sometimes referred as jackals. Otherwise I have never seen a relevance of jackals based on my experience living in a country with jackals my interaction with people of other cultures.