As Mid-America Science Museum prepares to close, the Amazon Voyage: Vicious Fishes and Other Riches exhibit will soon be packed up and sent to its next location, leaving the museum educators looking for a way to keep the three stingrays that have called the museum home from the beginning.
"They are three little freshwater stingrays exactly like what you would find in the Amazon River," said director of education Shena Ball. "When we got them, they were so tiny, and since we've done research we've learned that they actually were babies when they arrived at the museum."
Ball said the Potamotrygon Motoro stingrays have been a hit, not only with visitors but the staff, and have spent their entire lives at the museum.
As talk of the closing and renovations became more frequent, the educators started talking about ways they could keep the stingrays, which they have named Lucky, Malcom and Pat.
"So we started doing our research on how to keep them and it was Diane (Lafollete) who said, 'If you can find a way to do it, you can keep them,'" Ball said. "We've found that most people that have tried to keep these rays usually end up not providing them what they need to survive, but being here they have gotten so big and they're really thriving."
The stingrays, she said, eat worms and ghost shrimp.
"Every morning, we dig up their food outside and we're all going to chip in and get them ghost shrimp for treats," she said. "And it's really amazing, they will eat right out of our hands."
To keep the stingrays, the museum will require a $7,500 tank and filtering system. The educators have set up an account on http://www.gofundme.com/bc1pgc to achieve their donation goal.
"We had researched options of places to send them and talked to other museums who have kept them before, but we're just too attached to them to send them off to someone else," Ball said.
The plan as of now is to keep the stingrays in the education office, not for public view, at least temporarily while construction is taking place. But in the future, Ball said there is a possibility that the stingrays could be located in the tinkering studio, contributing to the creativity of that space.
"We would love to have them out on the floor for people to see them -- but not pet or feed them -- but for now we're just concerned about making sure they're here and they're well taken care of until we reopen," she said. "A lot of our office space was lost to give additional museum floor space, but the education staff was the first group to get their permanent offices. They will be in with us, away from construction and happy."
Local on 07/29/2014