The Survival of the Slowest, an exhibit that showcases animals that adapted to a slow lifestyle for survival, opens at Niagara Falls.
By THERESA REDULA
Published March 11, 2020 (Niagara News)
Not being the fastest, largest or strongest is okay. In fact, it has its advantages.
Survival of the Slowest, an educational exhibit at the Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory, proves that some animals’ disadvantages are the reasons why they still exist today.
The exhibit presents the animals’ unique adaptation of slow speed that translates into an effective survival strategy: avoiding predators, wasting less energy and eating less than faster animals. The most-visited
The most-visited animal in the exhibit is Barry, a Linnaeus’s two-toed sloth.
“He’s not from the wild,” says zoologist and evolutionary biologist Haley Yorke, who is also the wildlife educator in the exhibit.
She adds that Barry, named after fictional DC Comics character Barry Allen (The Flash), is “very spoiled” and “loves his hammock and blanket.”
“He’s always bugging me for sweet potatoes. That’s his chocolate basically.”
Because of the sloth’s slow speed and tendency to be still, predators may find it more difficult to find and hunt them.
Other animals in the exhibit have also adapted to a slower life for survival, such as the green iguana, and the red-footed tortoise.
The green iguana, named Hammer, likes to hang-out on his favourite log and “soak in the sunlight from his heat lamp.” He also tends to be lazy, but can run “pretty fast if he wants to,” although not for very long.
Living in the same enclosure with him is his fellow vegetarian the red-footed tortoise, Strawberry.
Yorke says fighting won’t be an issue between the two animals.
“(They) get along nicely because they’re all vegetarians and nobody’s going to be nibbling on anybody else.”
“(Fighting) is something that is very unlikely, especially for those animals,” she adds. “If we thought there’s a chance of them harming each other, we just wouldn’t put them together.”
Yorke adds that both the green iguana and red-footed tortoise are from the rainforest region in Central and South America.
“It wouldn’t be unusual to find them together in the wild.”
The exhibit’s visitors were also curious about one other animal, the African bullfrog.
Visitors had to look twice to find the bullfrog, as it tucked itself deep into the mud but its eyes were peeking just above the ground.
The African bullfrog, coming from a wet or dry season, can spend up to six months soaking itself under the mud to keep its skin moist; it is another way animals adapt into a lowenergy lifestyle.
The exhibit doesn’t really take out the bullfrog for visitor interaction due to the mucus and slime coat on its skin.
“Because amphibians breathe through their skin a little bit, they tend to absorb anything that comes into contact with their skin,” says Yorke.
“When we do bring them out, we don’t let people touch them because … different people may have hand sanitizer, soap, perfume and not all those things can be healthy for them absorbing into their skin.”
However not all animals in the exhibit are what visitors expected.
Yorke, in one enclosure at the corner, took out a ball python, which was a surprise for some visitors.
She explained that among Survival of the Slowest exhibits, they don’t always have the ball python, sometimes they have the blood python, which fits the theme “a little bit better.”
But both are “great, big, chunky snakes that stay still.”
Both snakes tend to “sit in just one spot and just wait for food to come to them.”
Lack of movement for predatory animals such as snakes is an advantage because they can stay motionless and “grab something walking past.”
Other animals in the exhibit include a veiled chameleon, pancake tortoise, tarantulas and scorpions.
Yorke says that the most rewarding experience for her is when visitors see that their fears of the animals, especially toward snakes and spiders, are “a little misplaced and they don’t have to be afraid of something that they’re afraid of.”
The animals in the exhibit, run by Little Ray’s Nature Centre and the Canadian Museum of Nature, are rescues.
Yorke says that the animals they care for tend to be former pets of people who thought having them for pets would be “cool” but realized they couldn’t take care of them because they’re more expensive to care for than they expected, or because of their longer lifespan. For example, tortoises can live up to 40 or even 60 years.
The Survival of the Slowest exhibit will run at the Niagara Falls Butterfly Conservatory until May 31.
