Hello everyone, with all the talk about the museum like pieces and education in the 2024 spring dlc thread I felt like starting a dedicated one to it! Namely I want this to be a place where people can post some of the cool educational pieces your local zoo/ aquarium does, so we can collect a thread for building inspiration! Any form of educational “thing” is welcomed, from cool signs, to taxidermy, to interactive sets, to anything in between! So I’ll start first!
The “Zoo” I am highlighting is the Squam Lake Natural Science Center. It is a zoo of rescued local animals found in New England, tucked in the mountain ranges of my home state New Hampshire! This place is dedicated to interactive learning, and many of thing things I will be showing won’t even make up half of what is there. If you have kids I seriously couldn’t recommend it enough. With the background information out of the way I’ll show some of the cool things they do:
This is an adorable interactive food web, it highlights who eats who. Not pictured but in the same building is a machine which shows the interaction between predator and prey. It allows you to raise or decrease the prey population in response to lack of food, disease, or there being plenty of food. All of which will affect the predator population.
This is a taxidermy osprey with a nest. Once again a cool way of displaying wildlife without requiring living specimens. This place is full of taxidermy animals. I don’t know why but this one stuck out to me. Other than this osprey, they also have a bunch of animals showing what life can live in a dead tree! This includes raccoons, to owls, to bats. Perhaps some of the coolest is the taxidermy bears you can “find in a cave”, you can only see the bears by going through a crawl space, and the crawl space actually looks like a cave!
Here is another cool interactive set, showing off scat and other signs of local wildlife! You can lift the knobs to show who did what, you can see which marks are left by a male deer, moose, or a porcupine. In this section are also skulls, antlers, and even a skeleton you can “build yourself”.
Remember that crawl space I mentioned? Well here it is! Not only does the wall have some adorable paintings, but there are a ton of liftable plaques to learn about black bears!
This cute little picnic is showing what black bears can eat! Once again a cool way to provide personality to a zoo, way more fun than just a basic sign. In this area we also can see what to do to avoid bears, and how not to leave out food to attract them.
Here we see the animals that can live in a tree! Not pictured is the bat who lives under the bark, the mouse who lives in the roots, or the owl circling above!
A bit more typical for zoos, but here we have what defines a raptor, featuring animals native to my state! I do like the educational signs in game, but I would like some more specific things. Once I start to learn how to apply custom files I’m sure I can start to scratch some of this itch. In the bird and raptor area there is even a game you can play. You have to guide your ball the “bird” to the end while avoiding the holes which are predators and man made issues. Tones of beautiful taxidermy, and even little flaps you can lift to identify different groups of birds.
Ever wondered what lived in the dirt, just below your feet? Here is some educational statues. Showing the mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and arthropods that call the earth home. Not pictured is this piece is found in a building dedicated to the ground, showing off ants and all the other little creatures that live in the soil and mud. It even has a little kitchen which shows off what worms and other animals do to recycle nutrients.
We have something like this in game already, but here we have an interact-able soundboard featuring native frog species. I have yet to use the sound paws in game, I have no idea how to upload files in game. I’m sure I can figure it out somehow.
So to finish this off I wanted to show how this zoo uses play to help with learning. Not pictured here is a big tree with stairs inside. On that tree you can see a big stuft spider hanging off the limbs which you can see the back of. Near that spider you can see a giant web made out of ropes. You can climb that web, and enter a small crawl way. Inside of it is pretty dark, with little areas you can feel to identify objects. Which is supposed to mimic how spiders feel their way around. Inside this building are also animal pelts, and another crawl space showing more animals that live underground.
This place is really cool, and I couldn’t stress how underrated I find it. I’ll also say I am biased as I used to go here as a kid all the time. Still, I really think this can be beneficial for our future builds! Zoos form an important corner stone for animal education, so I’m curious to see what other zoos do.
The “Zoo” I am highlighting is the Squam Lake Natural Science Center. It is a zoo of rescued local animals found in New England, tucked in the mountain ranges of my home state New Hampshire! This place is dedicated to interactive learning, and many of thing things I will be showing won’t even make up half of what is there. If you have kids I seriously couldn’t recommend it enough. With the background information out of the way I’ll show some of the cool things they do:
This is an adorable interactive food web, it highlights who eats who. Not pictured but in the same building is a machine which shows the interaction between predator and prey. It allows you to raise or decrease the prey population in response to lack of food, disease, or there being plenty of food. All of which will affect the predator population.
This is a taxidermy osprey with a nest. Once again a cool way of displaying wildlife without requiring living specimens. This place is full of taxidermy animals. I don’t know why but this one stuck out to me. Other than this osprey, they also have a bunch of animals showing what life can live in a dead tree! This includes raccoons, to owls, to bats. Perhaps some of the coolest is the taxidermy bears you can “find in a cave”, you can only see the bears by going through a crawl space, and the crawl space actually looks like a cave!
Here is another cool interactive set, showing off scat and other signs of local wildlife! You can lift the knobs to show who did what, you can see which marks are left by a male deer, moose, or a porcupine. In this section are also skulls, antlers, and even a skeleton you can “build yourself”.
Remember that crawl space I mentioned? Well here it is! Not only does the wall have some adorable paintings, but there are a ton of liftable plaques to learn about black bears!
This cute little picnic is showing what black bears can eat! Once again a cool way to provide personality to a zoo, way more fun than just a basic sign. In this area we also can see what to do to avoid bears, and how not to leave out food to attract them.
Here we see the animals that can live in a tree! Not pictured is the bat who lives under the bark, the mouse who lives in the roots, or the owl circling above!
A bit more typical for zoos, but here we have what defines a raptor, featuring animals native to my state! I do like the educational signs in game, but I would like some more specific things. Once I start to learn how to apply custom files I’m sure I can start to scratch some of this itch. In the bird and raptor area there is even a game you can play. You have to guide your ball the “bird” to the end while avoiding the holes which are predators and man made issues. Tones of beautiful taxidermy, and even little flaps you can lift to identify different groups of birds.
Ever wondered what lived in the dirt, just below your feet? Here is some educational statues. Showing the mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and arthropods that call the earth home. Not pictured is this piece is found in a building dedicated to the ground, showing off ants and all the other little creatures that live in the soil and mud. It even has a little kitchen which shows off what worms and other animals do to recycle nutrients.
We have something like this in game already, but here we have an interact-able soundboard featuring native frog species. I have yet to use the sound paws in game, I have no idea how to upload files in game. I’m sure I can figure it out somehow.
So to finish this off I wanted to show how this zoo uses play to help with learning. Not pictured here is a big tree with stairs inside. On that tree you can see a big stuft spider hanging off the limbs which you can see the back of. Near that spider you can see a giant web made out of ropes. You can climb that web, and enter a small crawl way. Inside of it is pretty dark, with little areas you can feel to identify objects. Which is supposed to mimic how spiders feel their way around. Inside this building are also animal pelts, and another crawl space showing more animals that live underground.
This place is really cool, and I couldn’t stress how underrated I find it. I’ll also say I am biased as I used to go here as a kid all the time. Still, I really think this can be beneficial for our future builds! Zoos form an important corner stone for animal education, so I’m curious to see what other zoos do.
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First is in their Bird’s World exhibit, a sign talking about the different kinds of bills and webbing on birds feet that help them swim and eat 
