The Official Houston Zoo Blog

Have you ever wondered what a Zoo Curator does? When I tell people I am a Curator at the Houston Zoo they quite often get a puzzled look on their faces because most people think of museums and art or fossil collections when they think of a Curator. Zoo Curators fill a very similar role to Museum Curators, only we plan which animals go in which exhibit instead of which painting goes on which wall. We have to make sure animals are compatible with each other rather than making sure that an Oligocene carnivore jaw bone isn’t identified as a Pliocene primate femur.  Both museum and zoo Curators want our exhibits to be engaging and educational.  We want kids to love them instinctively and students to gain knowledge from them.  We want people to leave wanting more and for them to talk about what they saw to their family and friends, and our highest hope is that people will act to preserve what they have enjoyed so much on a given day.

Hopefully the title of this blog caught your attention.  But what is a “crowd curated exhibit” you might ask. If you do an Internet search for “crowd curated exhibit” you’ll find a handful of articles about museum exhibitions that have been crowd curated, but none on crowd curated zoo exhibits. In the art world it’s actually highly controversial, believe it or not. There are those that don’t believe a crowd has the background to properly curate an exhibition, but using a crowd to reach a decision is a phenomenon called ”crowdsourcing” that has actually been studied and tested for some time. The results are really quite fascinating. I urge you to read some about crowdsourcing and suggest a very engaging book entitled “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki. Mr Surowiecki discusses crowdsourcing and gives some extremely interesting examples. I’d love to hear your thoughts in our “Comments” section if you decide to look into crowdsourcing.

Our exhibit waiting for YOU to help CURATE!

As far as I can tell, no one has yet attempted to crowd curate a zoo exhibit so we’ll be exploring new territory with this project. I have been eager to try this idea for some time, so when we found ourselves with an empty exhibit in Wortham World of Primates I jumped at the opportunity to try out what museums have done with quite a bit of success. I am also excited to share the experience of being a zoo curator with all of you.  It really is one of the best jobs in the world.

Follow this blog in the coming weeks as we go through the process of developing an exhibit, identifying and obtaining animals, making the environment inviting for the new residents, and finally opening the exhibit. We have hung a banner in front of the empty exhibit with a QR code that people can scan with their smart phones. It takes them to this page: http://www.houstonzoo.org/crowd-curated-exibit/ where they can learn about this blog and join in as Curators, so hopefully we’ll build up a nice size crowd.  The bigger the crowd, the better so tell your friends and share this blog on your Facebook page and Twitter feeds.

This week, I’m going to give you a few parameters and then open the process to start developing a list of which animals you might want to put in your new exhibit.  We always have to take into account things like the size of the exhibit, temperature requirements of animals, which other animals we already have in our collection, which animals are available etc. So here’s what we have to work with:

• The exhibit is in Wortham World of Primates, so the species in the exhibit must include primates.
• We are lucky to live in the south, so harsh winters are not a major concern for us, although the opposite is true. Species that live in cold climates need climate controlled exhibits here. This is an outdoor exhibit.
• The size of the exhibit is 15’W X 15’L X 15’H
• The mesh is 1½” woven wire, which means it has some give to it but is very strong. The mesh completely encloses the exhibit.
• When housing primates in close proximity to one another, you have to maintain strict standards because of cross contamination between species.  Very often New World primates carry diseases that affect Old World primates and vice versa.  All of our primates come inside to their holding areas at night.  The holding building that this exhibit is attached to houses New World primates that go out in the other exhibits during the day, such as our howler monkeys and various tamarin species.
• We do not like to duplicate species that we already exhibit elsewhere in the zoo.  For example, the Natural Encounters building houses saki monkeys and golden lion tamarins as well as other primate species, so we don’t want to exhibit those same species in Wortham World of Primates.

Based on the above information, your task as a Curator this week is to develop a list of species that may be appropriate for this exhibit. Post your ideas in the “Comments” section at the end of this blog post. The early phases of this process are a lot of fun because your ideas can be pie-in-the-sky. Brain storm and throw out names of species without worrying too much about if it would ever be possible to obtain them. It’s always fun to dream.

Follow the comments of your fellow Curators and see what others think would be cool in this exhibit. Do you agree with them? Why or why not? Next time we’ll start narrowing down our list of possibilities.

Have fun and thanks for helping us develop the First Ever Crowd Curated Zoo Exhibit!