The No. 1 summertime exhibit for families in the Hartford area is all about No. 2.
Springfield Science Museum is presenting “The Scoop on Poop,” a show about animal feces. Kids will want to see the exhibit as soon as they hear its name. Parents who fear the show is just a steaming pile of ick don’t have to worry.
“There is the gross factor … it has a humorous, weird side to it … but there’s a lot of science behind it,” said Dan Augustino, one of the curators. Matt Longhi, a museum spokesman, added that the museum’s vacation-time exhibits are geared toward fighting “the summer slide,” when kids’ brains get fuzzy from inactivity because school is out.
The educational show is based on the children’s science book of the same name by Dr. Wayne Lynch.
Children will learn that elephants have the largest nuggets of any land animal; the flops are grassy, brownish-yellow mounds about the size of a soccer ball, 2 to 5 pounds each, and elephants drop more than 100 a day. Visitors can step on a scale to find out how long it would take for an elephant to defecate their weight.
One installation in the exhibit teaches that 7,000 species of dung beetles exist and shows a video of bugs rolling a ball of manure. An interactive element lets visitors become dung beetles themselves, with an arcade-style game that tests speed of ball-rolling.
The pooping habits of a variety of animals is discussed. Blue-footed boobies surround their chicks with a ring of scat; if a chick wanders out of the ring, it may not be allowed to come back. Rabbits eat their own doo-doo. Grizzly bears newly out of hibernation can drop a log as long and thick as a man’s arm. A newborn white-tailed deer will not squat until its mother allows it to. Rhinos wipe their feet in their own stools, as a warning to other animals. Sloths live in trees, but climb down once a week to relieve themselves, even though they could get eaten by a predator on the ground, and they carefully bury the BM, even if that predator is still lurking.
“Nobody really knows why they do that,” Augustino said.
Human interactions with animal turds is another element to the show. The Masai people use cow excrement as roofing for their houses, and some cultures use buffalo chips and scat from other animals to make fires. Chip-tossing is a popular — and, surprisingly, regulated — sport in some states. Scientists study waste from living and extinct animals to determine what the animals ate. Not all human interactions are friendly: One element to the exhibit discusses how pellets from rodents promote the spread of diseases.
One factoid about poo will ruin the plot of a lot of bad horror movies: If an archaeologist or grave robber dies soon after opening an Egyptian tomb, it is not a mummy’s curse. It is probably histoplasmosis, which is contracted by inhaling the droppings of bats, which tend to form colonies in Egyptian tombs.
Another factoid will make visitors wonder if the federal government has anything better to do: The 1856 Guano Islands Act gives U.S. citizens the power to take possession of any island where a lot of bird feces is found, because it is a valuable fertilizer. The law is still on the books.
History and science education aside, kids will leave the museum with a new vocabulary, too. Who knew there were so many (inoffensive) euphemisms for poop? Meadow muffins, kaka, sheep dip, patties, berries, field raisins, fly specks, frisbees, loaf, cigar butts, cowslip, trots, splats, slices. You’ll hear them all the way home in the car. And for days afterward.
“THE SCOOP ON POOP: THE SCIENCE OF WHAT ANIMALS LEAVE BEHIND” is at Springfield Science Museum, part of the Springfield Museums complex at 21 Edwards St. in Springfield, Mass., until Sept. 4. Admission to all of the museums is $18, $12 seniors and students, $9.50 kids, free to children younger than 2. Picnics are welcome in the Dr. Seuss Sculpture Garden on the museum quad. An additional $5 special exhibit fee applies to enter “The Scoop on Poop” exhibit. springfieldmuseums.org.
