Girl Scouts - March 11

The program this time was titled "Wildlife" so we geared most of our program towards that. I have to admit, this is one of our easier programs: how difficult is it to speak of wildlife while at a zoo? We had a good group of girls: 17 juniors (ranging in age from 9 to 12) with plenty of adult supervision to help us out. There were three of us from the zoo there: Amber Mount (the education director's assistant), Mike (one of the board members who likes to help out occasionally) and myself.

Introductions went around the table, with each person stating their name and their favorite animal. Favorites ranged from horses to dolphins, tigers, monkeys, snakes, bears, and leopards. One little girl even stated that she liked muskrats! That was a first for that particular animal.

Since we were focusing on wildlife, Amber took the time to introduce our education animals to the girls, most of which I'm sure you've already "met". I'll go ahead and list them out anyway, for those of you who have not. We have an African Ball Python named Yaz; three Eastern box turtles named Leo, Mercy and Scruffy (unfortunately, Leo chose this particular evening to mate all night long with Mercy, giving the girls a rather unexpected lesson in animal propagation); 9 degus, which are South American rodents and whose names I do not know; about 25 baby millipedes (the adults have all died off, so we're down to just the little ones) whose names I also don't know although I told one little girl that the millipede I had crawling over my hand was named Fred (and she believed me); 1 lizard named Garry (I have probably been told a hundred times exactly what kind of lizard Garry is, but darned if I can ever remember it); and 1 Mexican box turtle named Goliath.

I was very impressed with how the girls handled their first activity of the evening. We passed out a slip of paper to each girl that had the name of an animal or insect on it. Amber then read off a list that paired the animals and/or insects up into groups of two, and each girl had to go find her "partner". Once the new seating arrangements got settled down, Amber put up a poster with three "relationships" lined out for them to study. COMMENSALSISM: is a relationship where one organism benefits and the other one does not, but is not harmed either. MUTUALISM: is a relationship where each organism benefit, and PARASITISM: is a relationship where one organism benefits while the other one does not. The girls then talked amongst themselves for a few minutes to figure out which type of relationship they had, then we went around the table and told us all what each pair had decided.

Unfortunately, I can't remember any of the animals and/or insects, and Amber never sent me the email she said she would send that was to have listed them all out. But I’m sure you get the idea, and I’m sure you are also impressed with the girls being able to grasp the whole concept and apply it to animals they were familiar with (as well as some they were not.)

Our second activity of the evening was a really fun one, and had everybody in the room laughing. We divided the girls into 4 groups and then gave one group a bunch of scissors, another group got a bunch of tweezers, and the final group got spoons. We explained that the girls were now birds and these utensils were their beaks; the scissors represented a meat eater's sharp and pointy beak, the tweezers represented a seed eater's small pointy beak, and the spoons represented a fish eater's bigger dull beak.

We then put a pile of marbles, representing snails, in front of them and told them to pick up as many as they could, using only their "beaks", and put them into a cup. At the end of about 2 minutes, we counted to see which group got the most. We found out that the spoons did the best at this activity, since a bigger beak would be better suited for scooping them up.

Next, we put a pile of washers in front of them, representing crustations, and reminded the girls to use ONLY their beaks (I’d noticed several hands in use the last time). We discovered that the girls with tweezers did the best at this, even though they are "seed eaters".

Our final experiment was a pile of pipe cleaners, representing worms, which ended up being consumed by the scissors the best, although some of the "worms" got cut in half accidentally.

We got finished with our two activities quite a bit earlier than scheduled, but figured that extra time spent outside was not a bad thing at all, so we got the girls geared up and headed on out the door. We took the usual route passed the polar bear, around the wolverine, passed the crows and musk ox, but then decided to head over to the snow leopards to see what they were up to.

Once we got there, Amber decided to play her game again, where the girls are divided up on two sides of the trail, and have to form whichever position is called out. The last to get into the proper position is "out" and has to give a reason as to why their assigned animal might go extinct. The girls were really rambunctious, and had to be shushed several times. I didn’t really enjoy playing with them since they were so rowdy, but I guess that’s one of the things kids do best. By the time we got the game over (taking out two or three animals at a time, even) we were way behind schedule, even after having been ahead of schedule earlier, and had to hustle back to the education building for a quick snack.

We didn’t have time for the other activities planned for the program, unfortunately. Instead, we just did my creature feature portion and then got out a few of the animals for the kids to meet in person. My creature feature this time was one that I’m particularly intrigued by: the Giant Pacific Octopus. Those of you who have been to the Seward Sea Life Center have no doubt met the two that lived there. J5 was the male (he’s gone now, but not before he was able to produce some offspring) and Aurora their female (who is currently tending her nest of 80,000 eggs, and who will soon pass away herself).

They are one of the strangest creatures I’ve ever encountered, although they are surprisingly intelligent. Studies by scientists have found that octopus can figure out mazes and other such puzzles with surprising speed. They can also open jars and mimic their surroundings, changing not only their color but their texture as well. They have a very well developed brain and have excellent eyesight, as well. They also happen to be escape artists; J5 and Aurora both have been found in tanks other than their own on many occasions.

The giant pacific octopus is the largest of over 100 different kinds of octopus. They average about 50 to 90 pounds and can reach up to 16 feet from the tip of one leg to the tip of the opposite one. The largest one ever recorded was a whopping 600 pounds and measured 33 feet! Considering the fact that they have no bones and are basically just a bag of jelly with eight legs, that’s pretty amazing.

Their most noticeable feature is of course, their eight legs covered with suckers. All totaled, they have roughly 1,600 suckers in all, and can actually taste things with them! An Octopus’ normal diet consists of crabs, clams, snails, small fish, and even the occasional octopus (yup, their cannibals). They use their sharp beak, located at the center of their legs, to either drill holes into the shells of their prey, or to crack them open and eat the insides.

As we’ve seen from the Seward Sea Life Center, the male dies very shortly after mating. The average life span of the giant pacific octopus is only about 4 years anyway, even though they do have the longest life span of them all. The female sticks around just long enough to tend to her nest, which takes up to 6 months to hatch. At birth, the octopus is barely the size of a grain of rice! What an amazing growth rate: from a grain of rice to 33 feet in just 3.5 years!

As I said earlier, we just had a few minutes left in our program, so we got out some of the critters for the girls to meet. These girls were pretty exhausting for me, so I had to admit I was pretty happy to see them all go home, but we did have a good time.