Lego Exhibit at the Zoo

We had a beautiful day to visit the zoo and see its new exhibit,Creatures of Habitat, which features Lego brick sculptures, each telling the story of endangered or threatened species around the world. The Lego sculptures were built by Lego certified professional, Sean Kenney. Kenney, one of only six Lego certified professional artisans in the world, built more than 30 life-size animal sculptures from hundreds of thousands of Lego bricks, the largest of which, a polar bear, is comprised of more than 95,000 Legos.

Upon entering the zoo, B&L were each given blue and green Legos to put on a wallboard that, once filled in, will portray paw prints from a variety of different animals. The wall to which Legos could be attached was very cool -- made me wish we had an area in our basement like this. The Lego sculptures are scattered throughout the zoo, and Bryn spotted the first one, which was enclosed in glass: Most of the sculptures that we saw are three-dimensional, but the ones in the monkey house were one-dimensional and provided a space for zoo visitors to provide the face of a gorilla and an oranguatan.
The Lego exhibit was interactive in that docents and volunteers manned every other sculpture and talked about why the animals are in danger (the kingfishers on Guam are extinct in the wild because invasive tree snakes, not indigenous to Guam, came to outnumber the birds.)Bryn liked a station in which she got to care for (toy) baby terrapins, as the zoo staff do, before returning them to the brakish water in which they live. The highlight of today's visit, though, was our time at the polar bear exhibit. One of the polar bears was right by the glass, and he was under water, playing with a large ball.


The kids also really enjoyed watching the sea otters, which used a waterfall in their exhibit as a slide. We ran out of time
before seeing all of the Lego sculptures, so another trip is in our future. Cards are given out at each exhibit, and I believe once
all 10 cards are collected visitors can claim their prize (a tiny Lego animal sculpture) at the gift shop. For anyone reading this blog who will be in Philadelphia, the Lego exhibit is worth seeing when you're in town. The exhibit is not expected to travel to other zoos, which I think is a shame. One staffperson told me that they may auction off some of the sculptures at the conclusion of the exhibit in October, including these penguins, as a means of raising money for Borneo and some of the other habitats of the endangered animals featured in the exhibit.