DTop
Active member
Have you ever had trouble determining what is the truth and what is just plain BS coming from our elected officials or those that want you to elect them? I think a visit to Maimi might help. What do you think? Should we organize a filed trip in the name of investigating the truth?
Seriously, would you go to this exhibit?
Seriously, would you go to this exhibit?
'The Scoop on Poop' opens at Miami Metrozoo
BY YUDY PINEIRO
ypineiro@MiamiHerald.com
ROBERT IRIZARRY/FOR THE MIAMI HERALD
AT MIAMI METROZOO: The 'Scoop on Poop' has colorful panels, 3D models and interactive components.
More photos
Everybody does it. Adults don't like to talk about it. But it fascinates kids.
You guessed it: poop.
An exhibit about the science of what humans and animals leave behind -- 'The Scoop on Poop' -- opens at Miami Metrozoo's Dr. Wilde's World on Friday.
''Smells bad,'' said Xcaret Hernandez, 4, on Tuesday at the sight of fake elephant dung. Dulce Hernandez giggled at her daughter's reaction to the ``superduper pooper.''
Colorful graphic panels, three-dimensional models and interactive components in a 5,000-square-foot indoor exhibition room feature smelly facts, real-life stool samples, and all kinds of poop trivia from ''Who Dung it?'' to ``Test Your No. 2 IQ.''
Miami is the second stop in a national tour of the traveling exhibit, which premiered at the Virginia Living Museum in May. After it closes here on Jan. 10, it's off to Philadelphia.
Clyde Peeling's Reptiland, a Pennsylvania zoological institution, used the children's book by Wayne Lynch called The Scoop on Poop! as a model to produce the exhibit.
''We want to let people know there's more to poop,'' said Cristina Heredia, a Miami Metrozoo exhibits manager. ``It's not just waste. Animals use it. Humans use it.''
A few children settled in Tuesday to test the exhibit.
Almost instantly, a beetle dung derby sounds off, groans and grunts bellow from a poop chute, and a deafening flush sends waste traveling through transparent pipes.
''There sure are a lot of interesting things about poop,'' said a blushing Joyce Picard, 32, as her children ran around the exhibit.
Some scat scoops:
• Storks and vultures squirt watery poop and uric acid to cool off.
• Some spiders and frogs camouflage themselves as bird droppings for protection.
• Male sarus cranes fling chips in a bizarre courtship dance.
Hernandez and Xcaret stood on a scale that weighs the number of hours it takes an elephant to poop their weight. A bulb lit up next to the number eight.
''Wow,'' they said.
Not all feces facts are gross or silly.
Maasai tribesmen waterproof huts with dung plaster. Dung doctors have found that rodent droppings carry breast cancer-causing agents. And there's more. . . .
However giggly and disgusting an exhibit on excrement sounds, it's the curiosity of the barely discussed topic and the science of it that zoo officials hope draws zoo-goers.
''Where else can you say that you've had the opportunity to roll dung balls?'' asked Cindy Castelblanco, public-relations manager for the Zoological Society of Florida. [URL]http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/miamiherald.news/5min;c2=special_packages;c3=5min;c4=5min_homepage;template=article;!category=5min;pos=center7;group=rectangle;sz=300x250;ord=1160823500398?[/URL]
