Hi.
You're listening to Cultivate Curiosity, a
podcast.
That inspires the next generation to stay
curious.
Cultivate Curiosity is brought to you by
the Emerald Coast Science Center, a
nonprofit.
Interactive science museum and steam
educational facility in Fort Walton Beach,
Florida.
This podcast is perfect for anyone curious
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You never know what we'll talk about
next.
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to an episode
of Cultivate Curiosity. My name is Jacie
my my name is Harley.
And I'm Diane, the director.
And this week's episode, we're going to
be talking about our animal investors. So
to begin with, we first started in
2014 with Lovelace, who was our first
animal investor here at the Science
Center.
And I'll tell you a little bit
about how we get our animals here
at the Science Center. They're all donated
to us. We get phone calls and
people that have had exotic animals at
our pets. And for whatever reason, they
can't keep them anymore. Maybe they're
moving. Like Felix, our hedgehog. His
family was moving to Belgium. Obviously,
they couldn't take their hedgehog with
him. Or maybe their landlord came in
and realized that they had a pet
that the landlord didn't know about and
was not pleased. That's how we've gotten
a couple of the pets. So we
don't always get the pets that they've
had. The best husbandry and animal
husbandry is how you care for an
animal appropriately, based on what the
animal is, what their natural habitat and
climate would be. With a lot of
the reptiles, you have to have certain
light situations. They like certain
temperatures. Some of them have to have
access to UV light, which means an
additional light bulb. And so by the
time that we get them, they might
not have been taken care of in
the appropriate way. So that's one of
the things that we really strive to
do, is make sure that their habitat
is appropriate for whatever type of animal
they are. And sometimes we don't have
a lot of history, so we might
not know how old they are. They
might have passed through several
different families before they arrive
here, and that information might have
gotten lost along the way. So some
of our animals we know more about
than others, and we strive to take
care of them. We take them to
the vet when they need to be
taken care of and strive to provide
the best opportunity for a happy and
healthy life for them. So that's why
we have sort of like an eclectic
collection of animals, is because it's not
something that we it's just looking for.
We're not looking for certain animals or
anything like that.
It's whatever comes our way, whoever calls
us. And then different animals have
different lifespans, so some of them are
bigger commitments than others. Cough.
Cough Tortoises in Paris. That's a huge
commitment. Harley, you want to chime in
on anything?
I mean, you're hitting everything so one
thing to mention, too, before we start
going through the animals, we also try
to name all of our animals after
a scientist or a scientific discovery.
That way when people are going around
the science center, they can read the
sign that talks about what the animal
is, what their species is, all that
cool information, but also then read
another sign about who they are named
after so people can learn more about
that.
Because I know this is something Diane
always talked about. Not always. When you
ask someone about a scientist, really, can
they name one? They might say like
Albert Einstein, but they might not know
many others and especially not recent
ones. I feel like that's why we
tried to name them after scientists like
Kizzy and other ones. Recently, we've been
trying to name them after scientists that
are doing things right now in this
time period.
So I think one of the things
that we in the beginning, we named
them after, like, Nobel Prize winners,
people that we felt in a cultural
literacy, everybody should know who that
scientist is. But lately we've been
trying to reach a more diverse background.
Our goal is that every child that
comes into the museum can see someone
that looks like them when they look
at our animals, because we have pictures
of the scientist right there. And also
a diversity in the different types of
scientific fields that we are exposing
them to as well, because there's a
variety of scientific disciplines
and a broad variety of types of
people that are in those fields as
well.
I think a great example of that
is Sebastian and Wolfgang, since we named
them after musicians because Mass is in
music, so that's a great tie in.
Well, and also Sebastian came to us,
and his name was Sebastian, and that's
a great name. So we wanted to
so we do try if the animal
has a name, you know, that we
want to sort of keep that name
as much as possible. So then we
go hunting for scientists that are named
that. But like, Bendy's name was
Buttercup.
His name was Tank. How are you
going to find it.
Kind of hard to find a Tank
and a Buttercup scientist.
There's a like Lily hero. Two named
Hero.
Like yeah. So Lily was yeah, Lily
was named Lilith. And so, you know,
sometimes we try and just keep it
Lucy. Lucy was named Lucy, so we
were able to keep that name as
well. So it can be kind of
really fun to sort of get in
there and research different scientists
that might match a name that we're
given that kind of makes us be
a little bit creative, too, and brings
diversity into the type of scientists that
we're going to go after for the
naming rights. I had to tell you
a funny story that just popped into
my head talking about this was we
had Monica and she actually went
home to live with a local family.
They just came in all the time
and played with her and spent so
much time with her, so they adopted
her. But we had named her after
Monica Turner, who was like the first
woman to get a PhD in ornithology
in England. And if you go to
our website, we have the list of
all our current animals and we have
who they're named after. And the niece
of
Monica Turner sent us an email because
her daughter was doing a report, and
when she put in her great aunt's
name, we came up. So she put
in like Monica Turner and it pulled
up the information about the bird on
our website. And so she reached out
to me and sent me this email
and she goes, oh my gosh, you
have no idea how excited my daughter
was about that. You know, sometimes those
like weird little things can happen like
that. And just to think that here's
this female scientist that would probably
been forgotten and everything about her
would have been historical, and then all
of a sudden something current pops up.
So anyway, I thought that was fantastic.
Made my day.
Okay, I guess we're going to dive
into everyone now. Yes. So we'll start
with Lovelace and our snakes. So snakes
can live about 35 to 40 years,
at least all the ones that we
have. And Lovelace is a red rat
snake named after Ada Lovelace.
We also have Babbage, who's my favorite.
Yeah, he's very similar to Lovelace, but
he is a cream sick of corn
snake. He can also be called a
rat snake, but for some reason rat
snakes cannot be called corn snakes. And
he's named after Charles Babbage. And
actually both of those scientists work
together, am correct? Yes. And then we
have our bulk python. We have four
in total. Now we have avocado. He's
our OG ball python. He is not
a morph, he is a regular one.
He's named after Amadeo Avocado, which you
may know from Avogadro's number or
constant, which is the number of
elementary entities in 1 mol of a
substance. So that's like atoms,
molecules, ions, and other particles.
Kids always ask me who he's named
after, like elementary kids, and I always
tell them, it's a really large number
that you probably will not learn about.
Until you're in high school.
Yeah, give it some time.
It's always funny because when you
mentioned that to adults, remember you
learned that in high school chemistry. Oh,
yeah, that's right. So I'm just going
to insert how we got Avi because
we call him.
Avi for sure another way too.
Yeah, but we got him from the
state of Florida as part of their
exotic animal amnesty program. So people
are allowed to turn in exotic pets
to the state as opposed to setting
them free and no questions asked, the
state will take them. And then we're
a certified adopter so we do have
a registration with the state. Every year,
we have to fill out a form
that lists every single animal that we
have so that the state knows who
we have because we're using them for
educational purposes, and we do have a
license with them. So we're a certified
adopter in that program. And we went
to an adoption event, and I think
they had like eight ball pythons turned
in that day, and they were like,
anybody want a ball python? I was
like, sure. And they went in, and
I got to pick them out. And
they said, well, this one came from
a home that had young kids, very
good with kids. I said perfect. That's
the snake for me. So they put
them in a pillowcase and they go,
okay, here's your snake. So it's great
because the snake comes for free, the
animal you get for free at these
events. But then what you don't see
is that you have to go in
and spend about $3,400 to buy the
appropriate habitat and the substrates and
the toys and all of those other
things on the back end of it.
But I distinctly remember my daughter was
with me at the time, and we
were riding home and ball pythons ball,
because they curl up in a little
ball, and she's just sitting there in
the passenger seat just holding him. He's
just curled up in a little ball.
And I'm like, oh, my. Well, lovelace
eats frozen, so we talk about how
to feed our snakes. Lovelace at the
time was the only snake that we
had, and she ate frozen. So she
has a frozen mouth that we get
out, saw and feed her. And so
I thought, silly me. Okay, well, I'll
just feed avi a frozen mouth. And
Avi was like, no, this is not
what I eat. What is this dead
animal? Exactly. We're going hardcore
snake odor, and I want to eat
live. So that took a little bit
of transition for me personally to go
from feeding a frozen mouse to actually
having to go to the pet store,
buy the live small rats, and bring
it to him and feed him. And
if you look at Avi, he's a
chunker, so you know, that boy never
misses a meal. So I think that
that was a new experience for us.
And I always say that's the hardest
part of my job is feeding the
snakes that eat the live. But it's
a circle of life thing, and you
have to understand that everybody eats
something. And
thankfully, we feed our snakes in a
two week schedule, so they eat once
every two weeks. So it's not something
that you have to do on a
daily basis. And I guess over the
years now, we've kind of become immune
to it. That's just part of part
and parcel.
I don't like to watch either. We
have a feeding tank that
we put our snakes in, you don't
feed snakes and the habitat they live
in, you don't want them to get
used to eating in there, because if
you stick your hand in there to
play with them, they might be going,
is that my food or is that
my friend? And it does have a
lid, so I usually like, put the
snake in, introduce their meal, put the
lid on, come back a few minutes
later, and they've already are in the
process of eating their meal. But yes,
so that is how we get and
we've gotten several other animals through
the we got Nye goose, and we
got Newton and the Dagoon. We have
gotten several animals through them, and
sometimes they will have people Will
request, and they'll send out an email,
and they go, hey, there's somebody in
your area that's looking to rehome. We
got a couple of the turtles, aquatic
turtles that way, too. It was set
up through the state of Florida.
It's been a while since they've done
another Amnesty Day around Gulf faring
well.
That'S a COVID thing.
The last one, and the first one
that I went to was in 2019
at the end of 2019, because I.
Think 2018 was the year I went.
And we got the decisions right. So
hopefully they'll be doing those again. So
that's just one of the other ways
that we get some of Our animals.
Okay, let's finish up With Our Ball
pythons, because they have some cool ones.
We have kidney. She's a yellow belly
ball python. So this is a morph,
and you can see it with yellow
chips to Their undersides, unmarked belly
scale, and a light border of Spickle
patterns where their belly scales meet
their side. And sometimes they can
actually have a light spot on The
Top Of Their head. But I Don't
think Kissy has she's named after Kiss
Nikia Corbett, who is an American viral
immunologist who worked on the COVID-19
vaccine. And so we also have Bo,
who's a banana spider morph ball python.
So he looks quite different than the
other two we just mentioned. He has
yellow colored swatches and dark freckles
against a tan based color. And this
morph actually originated in the wild, but
It's Very rare now. And he's named
after John Bochamp Proctor. So the
beauchamp is where the bow comes from.
And then the last one we have
is Lily. She's A pastel ball python,
so she's More Brightly colored than normal
ball pythons and is easily identified by
her pale green eyes. And some pastels
also have White lips, but that's Very
rare, too. And then our last snake
is Lucy, who we talked about a
little bit earlier. She's a red tail
fella constrictor, and she's actually
named after a set of bones. It's
al two eight one. Or known as
Lucy.
She's also our largest snake. She's about
6ft long, so she's Very pretty.
And my favorite thing about Lucy, if
you look straight at her at her
face, it looks like she has a
little mustache and a little goatee.
They're just little black lines that just
go right across the top of her
mouth, and one little splash that goes.
Right below the bottom, because I saw
another one, and it had the same
thing. It had, like, the markings there.
So they just have mustaches and goatees
with their bella.
And it's really funny because whenever I
tell people if we have her out
and we're playing with her, and I
say, well, look at her face and
look at her mustache and her goatee,
and immediately you can tell when they
actually see it because their facial
expression totally changes. Like, they
start laughing, and you're like, I see
that you saw that. Because I can
tell by the look on your face
that you got it.
Yeah, but it is very cool that
she has that.
I don't think I have any weird
snake stories.
I have a story.
I haven't done anything weird.
It involves aubby.
I have a Lucy story, too, but.
You don't that's right. If you remember
Kristen Coral that worked here years
ago, she hated the snakes, and this
was before they moved. They were back
in what's, the Ecosystem Room now? And
one morning, she came in, and she
was making a cup of tea in
the kitchen, and Avi was out, and
he was on in the kitchen, and
Coral just, like, had a connection. So
every morning after that, she would go
the first thing she would do when
she got here was she would go
into the reptile Room, and she would
make sure that all in their habits.
So they're very good escape
artists.
Well, my thing is Lucy got out,
and I had to come wrangle her
back into her cage. So yes, and
and Lucy can seem.
Intimidating because she's large. She is
large, and she's she's she's a sweetie.
She's just a big old marshmallow.
But but she was not happy to
go back.
Yeah, but she she never is happy
to go back into her cage and.
Very strong because she is very big,
and she has a lot of muscles.
Right.
Very hard to get back to wrangler.
But my other Ovi story is I
was bitten by him one time when
I was feeding him. This is totally
my fault, because I was in a
hurry, and he was in this feeding
tank, and he had just eaten, and
I'm like, okay, I'm just going to
snatch him out of there and go
put him up. And his I just
popped my hand in there real quick,
and he just, like, snapped on me.
And what they'll do is they hold
with their mouth. They're not biting you,
per se, but they're just grabbing on
and holding to you, and then they
wrap around you. Well, he bit me
on my knuckle and wrapped around my
arm, and there was people in the
room and I was so embarrassed. And
then my hand starts bleeding and just
like blood dripping everywhere. It wasn't
painful, and it wasn't deep by anything,
but he did too. Really tight, a
lot, right? And I have really thin
skin on my hands anyway, so I
just touch something, and I get a
boo boo. But I was so embarrassed.
So I have to come out of
the room. I walk behind the front
desk, and I take a little pencil,
and I kind of put it in
his open mouth. And I just wait,
because you just wait a second, they're
going to release anyway. They're just
testing it. And so I have to
kind of like, take my one hand
and slide them off my arm. And
I thought, well, this is great. The
next day, it's going to be bruised.
You're going to be able to tell.
We couldn't even tell the next day
that had happened. And again, that was
completely my fault. And everything was
fine. We have a great relationship.
Still.
He forgot about it.
So people ask all the time, was
he going to bite me? And I'm
like, probably not. I can't guarantee that
everything that has a mouth can bite
that's.
Honestly, for any of the animals.
Absolutely. It's for me, too.
I can bite you.
Kids also always ask that question because
they come into the animal room, and
especially during animal presentations,
and they're like.
Oh, my god, oh, my gosh, oh.
My gosh, will they bite me? And
I'm like, all right, everybody, let's take
a second, and we're going to think
about this for a second. Every animal
inhuman has the ability to bite you.
It just depends on how you treat
them. And then they immediately will be
like, oh, okay, if you're going to
be scary towards the animal, it's probably
going to bite you because it has
no other way to defend itself. So
it doesn't even have a hand.
Be nice to the animals.
One, I always say our animals are
well fed. They're not they're not ever
hungry.
They're not cared for.
They're well cared for.
They're used to being around children.
They're used to being handled. So this
is probably the safest place and the
only place that you should touch a
snake. So that's another thing that we
really try to drive home, because we
have a lot of minimum snakes in
our area. This is where you can
do this. You do not do this
in your backyard. It could be very
yes. Leave them.
B. All right, so we're going to
move on to bearded dragon.
I could do the bearded dragon. So
we have three bearded dragons. These guys
can live eight to twelve years old
in captivity, out in the wild. That
can obviously be very different. They're
native to Australia. We have nye and
fang, who are just your, like, general
bearded dragon species. And then bindi,
who is a leatherback nye, is named
after Bill Nye, the science guy, who
is a scientist, educator. A lot of
kids nowadays don't really know him, but
he is wonderful. And then Fang is
named after Fang Hong. And then
Bindi, who is our leatherback bearded
dragon, is named after Bindi. Irwin Bendy
was pretty sick last year, but since
then, she's recovered pretty nicely from a
lot of her health issues. So we're
happy to have her still with us.
She's getting up there in years, though.
Yeah, that was nice.
And that was the first time we've
ever really had to take, like, a
bearded dragon. And we had to do
those shots. That was like our first
big thing.
With so Vindi had to have a
shot every day, every other day.
Yeah, well, I think it was every
day and the different arms every day.
She had to have a shot. And
so you had to switch arms that
you were going to put it.
In underneath their scales because
obviously you can't go through her scales.
And she started to learn like, that's
what was going to happen. She feel
like they're pretty smart.
Oh, they definitely have personality.
Especially Wendy.
Definitely have personality. Yeah, they're
great. And they're the ones that
have to have UV light. And they
have to have one of the ones
yeah, one of the ones that has
to have UV light. And the heat.
The heat is very critical in that
because they're desert dwellers, so they
want it to be 90 degrees in
there, which is why if you're in
the reptile room and you're standing up
there, it's always warm. I can't do
anything about that. It's supposed to be
that we need.
It to be warm.
That's all right. But it's always warm
in the reptile room.
But Nai is also she's one of
my favorite, but me and her have
been through a couple of incidences. She's
a great one to take to an
outreach event. We take a lot of
our animals sometimes to outreach events
to have a booth so people can
see them and then maybe be interested
in coming to visit the science center
later. And I was at the library,
the Fort Long Beach Library with an
old co worker. And we're all set
up. We're about to start the event,
and we decided to walk around to
the other booths to see what people
have. And I'm holding an eye in
my hand, just like, had her right
there. And then all of a sudden,
she decides to just release all of
her bowels into my hand. And
I felt like I couldn't just let
it drop on the ground like I
would if I was here at work
because I didn't want to ruin the
library's carpet. And so I just decided
to just hold all of her pee
and all of her poop just sitting
there right in my hand. And it
smells awful.
And like, you to get it out
of your head.
It took me well, the whole outreach
to smell didn't until we got back
to the science center. And I sprayed
lysol on my hand. I sprayed WD
40 on my hand, and then I
sprayed everything. I wanted some other
smell than that on my hand. And
then it finally came out. But my
coworker was just on the ground laughing
in the middle of the.
Library because it was funny.
It was very funny, but it was
also so sneaky. And so I ran
outside with her, plopped her right down
in the grass, and she's just staring
at me. Nai has no remorse, nothing.
She's just happy she was able to.
Get all that out. And then we
took her back inside, and I did
not hold her the rest of the
event.
It was gross. Yeah. I would say
that probably had them all, the animals.
I would say that grande dragons is
probably one of the it'll sync up
a whole room. Like, if they go
hotting during, like, a field trip or
something, it ends up being there the
whole time.
That happened to me last week as
well. In the middle of the field
trip, these poor, kindergartner girls were
like, what's that smell? And I looked
down into Bindi's enclosure, and she had
just pooped everywhere. I'm so sorry, you
guys. It happens.
Yeah. And then we just kept going.
Okay, Diane, do you want to do
crested geckos?
Sure. We have three crested geckos right
now. We have Katie and Catherine, and
they're really sweet. You can handle them.
About the time that they were donated
to us, it was somebody in my
neighborhood had them, and they had used
them to breed, and they were getting
ready to travel and do some other
things. So they didn't necessarily want
the responsibility of caring for them
anymore. And they're not hard to care
for, actually. But one of them had
their tail and the other one didn't.
So this is about the same time
that they had came out with the
first picture of a black hole NASA
had. So we decided to name them
Katie and Catherine after two NASA female
NASA scientists, catherine B and Catherine
Johnson, who recently passed away. She
loved to be, like, 101 years old,
was one of the hidden figures, one
of the original NASA computers, when
people were computers, manually computing
before computers actually existed. And she
did a lot of the math on
the trajectories and things like that for
the moonshot. And then Katie is a
computer scientist, Katie Bowman, and she
helped write the algorithms that helped
piece together that black hole picture. So
I absolutely love that because this
kind of spans the history of females
working in space. And so you can
see this original mathematician scientist
that worked for NASA, and then now
you can see, like, the next generation
that is still actively working and
pursuing space exploration. And then
Fletcher this one fletcher is a new
one, and he is very skittish.
Yeah, he's not quite handleable yet.
Yeah, I was trying to take Rosie
Dell pictures with him in December, and
I put her in the cage with
him, and it accidentally touched him, and
he freaked out, jumped out of the
cage on the ground, pick him up.
He was just like, I didn't want
to be still. I didn't want to
be touched.
Also, if you look inside his enclosure,
you probably won't be able to see
him.
You might see his feet or something.
He's still really nervous, and that
happens too.
There's some of the animals that we
never handle unless it's like an emergency
situation. They're going to the vet or
something like that, because that's just
not their thing. And then there's some
that are completely used to it. We
handle them on a regular basis, and
that's just something that we recognize,
and we tell people, well, no, we
don't handle that animal. That's not what
they do.
Speaking of that, we'll talk about the
leopard geckos. Hero, which is one of
the recent ones we got, actually is
super great to take out. She's very
and hypatia. Right, too.
Or just hero?
Hypatia is new as well. I don't
think I've taken him out because
Hero is a girl, but Hero is
really great. She's named after Hero of
Alexandria. We also have hypatia, Edwin
and Walter, which Walter is the oldest
one that's been here. They can live
to be about six to ten years.
And they are a species of gecko
that can lose their tail and then
grow it back. And they also have
eyelids, unlike the crested geckos. And
speaking of Edwin, he's actually named
after Edwin Hubble. The Hubble Space
Telescope is named in his honor. So
I don't know if it was.
Walter, if it was Louie, because they
were named after the Alvarez's, but one
of them would bite.
Yes.
I can't tell you how many times
I've been bitten, Louie, because I would
get bitten all the time by them.
It's embarrassing because when you start
to bleed, you're like, okay, well,
remember Louie.
Had bitten me one time, because they
don't have really, like, a lot of
teeth or anything like that that are
really sharp, but the jaw strength is
there, and so he kind of made
me bleed a little bit.
I've only had one of our animals
bite me, and we haven't gotten to
them yet.
I want to hear that story now.
Okay, so the last set of reptiles
are the tortoises and the turtles. So
obviously we have two tortoises. They're
African spirit tortoises, or silkata
tortoises. They can live over 70 years,
so, like, probably closer to 100 h
range. Since they're living here with us,
they'll be here long after we're all
gone.
And they will get huge.
Oh, yes. Like 200 plus pounds.
Yeah, I think it depends on the
tortoise. I think those guys only get
to. About £100.
Okay.
Yeah, but it's pretty big.
So those two guys are Sebastian, named
after Johan Sebastian Bach, who's a German
composer from the Borough period, and then
Wolfgang, named after Woofing Emma deus
Millsar. He was an Austrian composer in
the classical period.
And I think Harley should tell her
Wolfgang story.
He is my travel companion. We had
a family who knew
Sebastian.
They used to live here. They used
to live here. And when they lived
here, they were friends with Sebastian's
owners. Wolfgang and Sebastian, quote, had
playdates when they were tiny tortoises.
So the family that had Wolfgang had
moved to North Carolina and had him
up there for a little bit of
time and then decided that the cold
was just, like, too harsh on him.
And so they reached out to us
to see if we could take him
in. But they're in North Carolina. So
I just so happened to be going
up to North Carolina for a wedding
and was just like, I can go
pick him up, I guess.
You're welcome.
It just came out of my mouth.
I don't know why, but I picked
him up, and it was me and
my boyfriend and my dog, and we
were going on that trip, and so
we brought a big container from work.
They had our trip, and then on
our way back here to Fort Walton,
we picked up Wolfgang. The family was
wonderful. They were so sad to be
having to give him to us, but
they gave us, like, a heating pad,
and they were great. So we got
Wolfgang. He's in the car. We're 9
hours away, so we start driving back.
And you know, when they use the
bathroom because it's in the car, I
have a hatchback car, so it was
like you could smell it.
So we would stop.
We'd lift them out of there. And
then we'd also let my dog run
around, who was just kind of ignored
the tortoise, which I was kind.
Of like, what are you doing?
But, yeah, they just ran in the
field together.
I think we stopped a total of.
Three times to let him get out
and walk around and stretch his legs.
But each time he was pretty nervous,
and he still is, kind of. I
think he's getting used to his new
enclosure and walking around and seeing
all the people come up to him.
But, yeah, me and Wolfgang are buddies.
Before I forget, speaking of Sebastian, he
does have social media. You can follow
him on Facebook, Instagram, and picked up
you can just look up Sebastian the
Tortoise, and it'll be on there sometimes.
You will see Wolfgang.
Yes. You're both on Wednesdays. So then
our other turtles that we have, we
have turtle ponds outside. I'm not going
to name them all, but we do
have Tully, a red yard slider that
is actually invasive to Florida. We also
have Sammy at the box. Turtle we
have more box turtles, including her, and
they're native to Florida. Then we have
Scooter and Leonardo. Scooters are
rivercooter, and then Leonardo is a false
map turtle, and they live together with
another red haired slider in a separate
pond. So if you want to learn
more about the other ones that we
have, come visit and see them because
there's too many to enable them. And
now we'll move on to some that
are just kind of by themselves. So
we have Brian. He's a Madagascar giant
day gecko. He lived ten to 15
years.
He is also one that is not
handled. He's very skittish. I opened his
cage one time, I can't remember what
I was doing, but opened it up
and he happened to be right there.
And he's on the end of all
of our enclosures. And he got up
on the little shelf and ran all
the way across. Yes, he did. So
I had to go grab him
and put him back into the enclosure.
He likes to stay in his house
and all he needs to be in
there.
But he's so pretty. He is so
pretty.
Did you follow our social media? He's
always been very bright green gecko that
you'll see. He's very pretty. We also
have ayanna Our Savannah monitor. She can
live ten to 15 years.
As well, and she's my road trip
buddy.
Talk to her about her just a
little bit.
Her health is not good at all.
She's relatively young. They think she's
about three and a half years old.
But she's never really thrived since we've
had her. That has, I think, a
lot to do with the husband tree.
Before she came to us, we had
an amazing friend of mine that built
her habitat from scratch and wouldn't let
us give him a dime for the
materials or his time or anything.
Wonderful, wonderful family that helped us
with that. And our local vet sort
of threw her hands up and said,
I think you should probably take her
to the University of Florida Veterinary
Medical Clinic to teaching hospital. And
so we were able to get appointment
down there. We road tripped. We spent
the night in a hotel in Gainesville.
She spent the whole day at the
hospital. And I think what they walked
away with was a diagnosis of heart
disease. And this is kind of interesting
because they put her on two medications.
We have to give them to her
daily. And those medications work well in
dogs and cats, but they don't have
a lot of experience with these medications
in reptiles because they weren't sure
reptiles got heart disease. So she's kind
of like an experiment in herself. She
is still very listless. You know, we
get her out daily, we make her
walk around. She's one of those ones
that needs a certain range of heat
and humidity. Now, I think that she's
a little bit perkier than she has
been in the past. Let me get
her out and make her walk around.
If it's a sunny day, we'll put
her outside. But, yeah, it's and the
reason we went to all of this
effort, I mean, that was, like $1200,
that visit, by the time you take
into consideration the hotel, and it was
$900 that day, and it's about $80
a month in medication for her. But
she's young. We took that on and
said we want her to have her
best life. She's sassy, but she's also
still very sweet personality wise. So I
don't know what her future looks like,
but we will be here every single
day syringe feeding her her medications
and doing everything that we can to
make sure that she has the best
life that she can have, given her
current medical situation.
Next, we have Alex. He is our
Rosier Tarantula. So depending on if he's
male, he'll live about four years, and
if he's female, he'll live about 20
years. And then the next big group
is our birds. So we have Cece,
Ivan, Simon, and then our parakeet. So
Cece is our blue and gold macaw.
You'll see her, she has an enclosure
outside. She can love about 50 to
60 years. And something that's really cool
is she can mimic human vocalizations, and
so can Ivan. But Ivan does do
it more often than she does. Do
you have any stories you want to
share about that?
She faced me. She loves her husband.
She prefers males.
She absolutely prefers male. Her
upbringing, she was raised from an egg
by a guy, and she definitely is
partial to males. And honestly, they have
a certain look. She loves tanner. Tanner
is one of our volunteers, and she
will sit on his shoulder and lick
his ear and give him kisses. If
I walk up to her, she's.
Like, he can pet her belly.
She doesn't like any of us. But
we did help hold her. We all,
like, had her help her. Yeah, but
that was because Tanner had far away.
Yes, tanner had taken her out to
do that. Yeah.
I would say that it's not the
snakes that scare me here. It's the
birds.
Yeah. Because he can have a pretty
bad bite. So Iron is an African
Grey. He can live 60 plus years.
And he's actually as vocalizations and
he's as smart as a toddler. We
also have Simon, our Nancy Conyer. He
can live 18 to 30 years. And
then our parakeets, which I'm sure you
guys know what parakeets are, but they
can live about five to eight years.
We have two females and one male.
The males named Flori after having Flori,
and the females were residing, their name
still. And now let's talk through the
mammals real quick. We have our guinea
pigs. They can live about four to
five years. We have Penrose, who is
the alpha in the group, guests and
then Genzel.
And they squeal for their breakfast every
morning. They're hungry.
We also have our hedgehogs. We have
Amy, Ella and Felix. They're pretty great.
They're nocturnal enamels, just like our
sugar gliders. They can live about nine
to twelve years. So we have Pierre,
Beck, Stevie and Neil. So Pierre and
Beck are named after Pierre Curie and
Henry Beckerl, which they actually work
together as well as Marie Curie too.
Pierre is the animal at Bitney.
Really? Yes.
I was giving him some sugary, little
dried papaya and he was being cute,
licking my finger. And I just kind
of looked away as he was liking
my finger. And then he said, took
a little bite, something. It just scared
me. It didn't hurt that bad. It
just felt like a little pinch.
But they have sharks.
Yeah, and something weird about them. I've
had more than one of them. They
just kind of like will lick your
hand. Sometimes I feel like it's like
the fault from you or something like
that that just like will lick your
hand.
It's really weird.
We also have Stevie, who she was
actually born with in a Pathalia. It's
basically a birth defect. So her eyes
aren't fully developed, so she can't see.
And that's why she actually is awake
during the day and asleep sometimes. And
she kind of just like is up
whenever she wants to be up, honestly.
Because sugar letters are nocturnal, so
usually they would be asleep during the
daytime. But she's our one that is
always out and about during the day
and then deals. He is our newest
one.
Then we have our daegus. These can
live to be about six to eight
years. We have Crick and then Salmon
who live together. These guys love to
run on their wheels all day, every
day, every day.
They're very noisy because those wheels
just turn, turn.
Then we have our rats. We have
Templeton, who was named after the
Templeton Prize. John Templeton. Then we
have Rufus, who is named after Rufus
Porter and Nobel, who was named after
the Nobel Prize. Rufus and Nobel are
our naked rats and Templeton is their
fuzzy little friend to help keep them
more.
And we also named Rufus Rufus because
of Rufus the naked mole rat. Yes,
we had to do that.
And then we also have May, who
is named after May Britt Moser.
Yes. And he is a very pretty,
like, gold rat. He is a very
pretty, colorful and.
Then we have our lion fish, which
in full disclosure, we trade out often
because they are captured live. Alex Fogg
who's like the marine science coordinator
for Oak Lucia County goes out and
catches the lion fish for us and
brings them here. Now, you know, they're
an invasive species and they're really
horrible. They're beautiful, but they are
awful. So we've had the first pair
that we had lived about two years
and then we had another pair and
one of those recently passed away. And
then we just picked up some brand
new ones from Alex last week.
Three very tiny smaller ones and one.
Set of really different color pattern.
It's really dark, so be sure to
check them out when you come in.
But we named them after the Cousteau's
because there's such ocean explorers and I
don't think people I mean, when I
was growing up, it was always Jacques
Cousteau who everybody talked about and I
don't know that kids today would know
who Jacques Cousteau is. Yeah, so that's
why we named them after them. Then
we have some other fish in our
ponds. As soon as we built the
first pond outside the city, fort Walton
Beach came and dropped in some of
those mosquito larval eating fish and oh
my gosh, did they proliferate. There are
so many of them in our ponds.
And then we have the catfish that
are the suckerfish that help to keep
the ponds clean as well. So we've
pretty much run through the animals that
we have here pretty quickly. You can
read all about them on our website
or come in and visit them.
There's different times, especially during
spring break. I think there is even
a day.
That we'll be doing a special yes,
there is day.
You can always over the summer we'll
have Creature Features, and then if you
come on a field trip, obviously Creature
Features will be in your rotation. And
then also if you do a birthday
party, you can choose animal so far
we've seen and you can come and
during your birthday party you'll get to
have a Creature feature just for your
party as well.
And if you'd like to become a
supporter of one of our animal
ambassadors, you can look that up on
our website. There's an animal sponsorship
and that would help to support the
cost of feeding them. I think probably
the most expensive animals to feed here
are the parrots. The bird food is
incredibly expensive and they waste a lot
of it. And we have a full
time staff member, so we have somebody
here seven days a week. It takes
them anywhere from four to 7 hours,
depending on whose cage needs to be
cleaned. So our animal support is really
quite pricey. So we always love that.
You can get your name or your
logo on the website on the animals
cage itself. If you walk previously, some
of them have this animal supported by
and you can have your name on
there.
Then you get four free passes to
come in for general admission. And then
you actually get to have a meet
and greet with your animal that you
sponsor. There's only a few that we
won't actually take out for you. Like
we mentioned, Fletcher probably wouldn't
be the best Brian or Brian if
you sponsor them, but for the most
part we'll be able to take them
out. You guys can pet them, see
them, just have a really cute one
on one meeting with them.
And then we have another program. Our
Virtual Message, which We Started During
The Pandemic when We Were Closed. We
Were Trying To Look For Some Ways
to Generate Revenue to Take Care Of
Our Animals, and That's Ecscience.org
Virtualmessage, and We Can Take One Of
Our Animals Out, and You Just Give
US A Message that You Want US
To Say while We're Holding The Animals,
we'll Send You The Video Of It,
and Then You Can Share that with
Whoever You're Trying To Send Your Message
To.
Yeah, so that can be like, if
you're wanting to say happy birthday to
someone or congratulations, whatever you
want to say, or even if you
just want.
To say hi, and it's cuter than
a potato gram.
Yes. We have featured animals sebastian,
Alexandro, Pier, and Vet or Felix for
those that you guys can pick from.
So if you guys are interested in
seeing some of these animals or seeing
some other really cool animals, our next
big event to see those animals, besides
the field trip or anything like that,
is the Spring Workshops Animal Day, which
is on March 23. We will be
having Animal Tales come, and he will
be doing two shows, and those are
just an additional $5 per admission
ticket. But other than that, we will
also be having some animal activities set
up in our front classroom that will
be with general admission, and then we
will have educators walking around with
some of our animals. That is also
included in general admission.
And anytime you're visiting a museum, if
we don't have a creature feature or
something going on and you want to
touch a snake or play with a
snake or do something like that, always
ask at the front desk.
We might have staff here that can
do that. Absolutely.
If we have staff available, we're happy
to accommodate that because we want people
to interact with our animals, and we
want you to get over your fear
of snake because they're great animals. I
mean, they're lovely creatures.
I think that's all for this episode.
We haven't really decided what we'll talk
about next, but I'm sure it's going
to be awesome. So we'll see you
guys in two weeks. Bye. Thanks for
listening to this week's episode of
Cultivate Curiosity.
If you have any questions, feel free
to email at socialmedia@ecscience.org.
Tune in for our next episode in
two weeks.