Rainy days send curious minds to 'Extreme Mammals' exhibit

Rainy days send curious minds to 'Extreme Mammals' exhibit

(Kristin Murphy/Deseret News)


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SALT LAKE CITY — While many Utahns were wishing for a break in the weather Saturday, Paulmichael Maxwell was hoping for more gray skies and rain over Memorial Day weekend.

"We love it when there's bad weather on Memorial Day weekend because we see many more people," said Maxwell, public program coordinator for the Natural History Museum of Utah.

On Saturday, Utahns young and old took part in the first day of the museum's weekend-long celebration highlighting its special exhibition, Extreme Mammals. The exhibit, which runs through July 26, showcases mammals enormous and tiny as well as those with oversized claws, bizarre snouts and amazing horns.

Children and their parents made animal masks, got their faces painted and handled animal skulls, hides and antlers. Children also learned how to card and spin wool.

They also got to meet Pablo, a three-banded armadillo from South America, who occasionally poked his head out his armored shell as museum visitors crowded around a laboratory table.

"He's like a Transformer," Hogle Zoo docent Tina Mueller explained. "His head and his tail fit in tight."

Aby Grey, 6, said she had done a school report on armadillos. "They eat worms, grubs and bugs and they roll up in a ball," she said. "They have really good noses to find food."

But Saturday was her first opportunity to see one in person.

Minalush Allen, 5, said she enjoyed petting Ernie, a rabbit that is also part of zoo's educational program. "It was soft," she said.

Her friend Aubri Miller, meanwhile, said petting an armadillo was the best part of her museum visit.

Photo credit: Kristin Murphy

"His shell is really hard," she said.

While Maxwell said he recognized some museum visitors as regulars, many other families came to the museum because the weather was prohibitive.

Blake and Brycie Downey brought their daughters Breckin, Addison and Afton to the museum for something fun to do on the holiday weekend, but also to stir their interest in science. One wants to be doctor. Another fancies a career in paleontology. Their father is a geologist.


One of our goals here is empowering people. Not only can they do science, they learn that they do science every day.

–Paulmichael Maxwell


Their youngest? "Well, she just likes everything," Brycie Downey said, as little Afton lit up after petting a rabbit.

"And with the rainy weather, you've got to be inside," she said.

Maxwell said the weekend's events provide children a means to learn more about animals by giving them hands-on experiences with items from the museum's collections, encouraging them to take part in arts projects and to drink in the science.

"One of our goals here is empowering people. Not only can they do science, they learn that they do science every day," Maxwell said.

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