Blank Park Zoo provided the closing ceremony for this year’s summer reading program at Cole Library. More than 130 youth and adults came to hear a program about amazing adaptions many of the animals have come up with over the course of their lives.
Some of those adaptations explored included coloring of animals, adaptations to eye sight and coloring to discourage other animals from eating, or defensive measures like poisonous exteriors or tough outer shells.
Animals from the zoo included the blue tongued skink and tenrec, but the zoo also had elements from other animals, like a turtle shell, a cane toad, peacock feather, snake skin and chinchilla coat to talk about adaptations those animals made.
Each attendee was also given a free pass to visit the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines.
Youth feel the textures on turtle shells, snake skin, chinchilla fur, cane toad and other items brought by the Blank Park zoo at the conclusion of the event.