PARENTS

Fun Zoo Message to Parents
Ever heard of a "troop" of baboons, an "ambush" of wild boars, or a "crash" of elephants? Troop, ambush, and crash are words for animal families. Do any of these words ever apply to your family?

But seriously, family cohesion or "togetherness" is important to many species — especially mammals. For example, African wild dogs reinforce instinctive knowledge by teaching their young about things like group hunting techniques, which are surprisingly similar to tactics in a football playbook.

Then there are the cotton-top tamarin monkeys from South America. The whole family (barrel?) takes on childcare tasks. It's sort of an on-the-job training that teaches the newborns’ older brothers and sisters how to be caring parents later on.

Which brings us to human parents. We encourage you to have some fun discovering the stories, games, challenges, and surprising facts about the animals prowling through this web site. That way you can show your kids how incredibly smart you are when you know answers to questions like: "Why do Queensland koalas have such fresh, minty breath?" or "In a fight between a giraffe and a hungry lion, who'd win?"

Along the way, you can toss in some useful information about protecting Florida's natural habitats and how your family can easily cut back on household water usage while reducing your water bill.

As you may know, when kids are having fun with high-interest subjects such as the animals featured in the Fun Zoo web site, they pick up information fast and retain it like water after a tub of salty popcorn. So we urge you to stay one step ahead of them by exploring the Fun Zoo Miami website on your own — especially if you're wondering if a giraffe really can kick the stuffing out of a full grown lion.