Who lives on Animal Avenue? • Meerkat • Ring-tailed lemur • Black lemur • Damaraland mole rat • Golden orb weaver spider • Goliath bird eating spider • Emerald tree boa • Green tree python • Western Bell’s hingeback tortoise • Pancake tortoise • Ornate horned frog • White’s tree frog • Hourglass tree frog • Surinam toad • Long-legged desert ant • African emperor scorpion • Madagascar hissing cockroach • African cichlids

Take a stroll down Animal Avenue

By Meghan Erkkinen

When most people take a look at their families and neighborhoods, they do not expect to see ring-tailed lemurs, meerkats or hissing cockroaches, so it may seem like a stretch to picture them hanging out on your street.

But that is just what the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium is trying to convince visitors of with its new exhibit, called Animal Avenue, which opened to the public May 31. The exhibit, the final installment of the KidZone area, features an array of animals, from meerkats and lemurs to mole rats, pythons and cockroaches.

While these animals might not have much in common with one another, human spectators might see traits similar to themselves.

Meerkats, for instance, work together to build elaborate homes, complete with separate rooms, underground. And, just like people, when mom and dad meerkats are busy, they get a babysitter to watch over the little ones.

Like many people, ring-tailed lemurs know the importance of family. Moms, dads, brothers and sisters all live together in “troops.” And, just like in human families, mom is in charge. Like many of the children who will visit the zoo, lemurs also like to spend their free time playing in trees and on jungle gyms.

Visitors to Animal Avenue will also learn that African cichlids – a type of fish – can be very overprotective parents. Cichlid parents hold their babies in their mouths while they mature, letting them out only to get a bite to eat.

The exhibit, which features 18 different species of animals, was created to engage children with animals on a more emotional and educational level, according to Educational Curator Carla Collette, who has overseen the project from its conception.

The exhibit will allow children to compare their families and communities to those in the animal kingdom, both by observing similar practices and through various hands-on activities.

“It’s really a good way to show kids how a family functions in the wild,” Collette said. “Just about everything you see (in the exhibit) has a purpose.”

That includes the various matching games and play toys. One activity allows children to match up images of baby animals with their parents to show how animals, as well as humans, mature and change. Children can also explore various animal homes, such as a bird nest, a snail shell and a giant spider web.

The activities are geared for children ages 3 to 8, but toddlers and older children will find ways to get involved, Collette said.

“It engages the adult as well as the child, and that makes it even better,” she said.

The $4.3 million project is located on the former site of World of Adaptations, which was demolished as part of a 1999 bond issue. Some visitors were sad to see the old building go because of

the diversity of animals in the exhibit.

But when the new facility was created, designers kept that idea in mind.

“When Animal Avenue was designed, it was made to mimic some of that diversity,” said Gary Geddes,

zoological and environmental education director for Metro Parks. “It’ll be interesting to see how people will react to that.”

The first phase of the KidZone project has been very popular and the zoo is hoping for a similar reception for Animal Avenue.

“We’re not apprehensive,” Geddes said. “We’re very interested to see how people respond.”

Geddes added that the variety of

hands-on activities will also encourage children and their families to hang around for a little longer and give them the chance to see animals in more than one stage of activity, allowing visitors to “revisit animals at different action points.

“It really is about immersing people in this experience,” he said.

The Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is $10 for Pierce County

residents with discounts for seniors and children age 12 and under.

For more information on the zoo and the new Animal Avenue exhibit, visit www.pdza.org.

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