Museum exhibits wrapping up this week
It’s last call for two engaging exhibits at The Exploration Place. The city’s premier museum and science centre has a pair of feature shows on display, but only for the rest of this week. One is called Animal Gibberish and the other entitled Clovis - The Caribou Hunters. Both are on loan from the Sherbrooke Museum of Nature & Science until Sunday. It’s the final window to look into the lives of animal communication and the ancient world of the continent’s eastern Aboriginal culture.
Clovis - The Caribou Hunters
“About 15,000 years ago, glaciers started to move out of Canada’s southern part, thus leaving the space for tundra to grow,” said The Exploration Place curator Alyssa Tobin. “Three thousand years later, around 12,000 years before today, hunters coming from New-England in the United States took advantage of mild summer days to venture to the north to hunt caribous. They reached the Megantic region in Quebec. Since the place seemed favourable for hunting, they stayed for a while. They were among the first humans to stay in eastern Canada.”
The modern name for this indigenous culture is Clovis. We know them from signature characteristics on artifacts that have survived the millennia, like fluted points and the use of stone on tools.
“Even within British Columbia, archeologists can identify First Nations by era-based tool making techniques,” Tobin explained. “Clovis people had telltale projectile points that also tell us something about what they ate. They were big-game hunters.”
The study of the Clovis people uncovered information on their housing, textiles, social structures, and general lifestyle. Much evidence survived for modern scientists to examine, and that forms the basis of the exhibit. One of the display’s definitive features is a full-sized caribou hide teepee that viewers can get up close and personal with. You can knock on the door of our 12,000-year-old neighbours.
“We have proof now that even here in our own Lheidli T’enneh territory, the Aboriginal culture of this area dates back at least 9,000 years,” said Tobin. “Being able to look back into so many aspects of life from that time period – in the case of the Clovis culture it is even older – we have been able to really deepen the view of how North American civilizations lived long before European cultures came across the ocean.”
Clovis - The Caribou Hunters unfolds in two scenes, Tobin explained. The first transports us 12,000 years back in time in the tundra to discover the lifestyle of the first nomads to have roamed the southeast of Canada. The second scene brings us back to present time, with the archeologists who discovered and interpreted the clues of the passage of these first occupants. She called it “a great archeofantastic adventure” that only has a few days remaining, so come now and be whisked through time.
Animal Gibberish
What are they saying, those animals?
Creatures express themselves in many ways to convey simple messages, such as “I like you,” or “Danger!” or “I’m hungry.” The more social animals are, the more unique their ways of communicating. The Exploration Place lets us in on some of their animalistic chit-chat.
“Discover who does what and send messages just like the animals do,” said Tobin. “Dogs, cats, and horses are all part of it. Learn how they express themselves in many ways. Animal Gibberish explores these communication channels to uncover the secrets of animal language.”
This is a very hands-on and ears-on exhibition that uses screens, speakers and games to draw people of all ages into the animal conversation. You’ll pick up on some educational signals. You’ll decipher some key messages animals are sending. You won’t be able to stop talking about how animals communicate, and that includes us humans.
“Some of it is visual, some of it sound, but the exhibit even demonstrates some of the smells involved in the non-verbal communication between animals,” Tobin said. “Kids love to stand at the station where you observe animals on a screen to see which ones you’d most like to NOT disturb, because the animals sense your presence and react to you. It gives them a little thrill to see a gorilla beat its chest or the elk trumpet. And by kids, let’s be honest, I mean everybody. Even the staff likes to go to that one.”
Some of the displays in Animal Gibberish are triggered by motion sensors, so they kick in when someone walks by.
Some invite hands to reach out and touch, like the wooden frogs with the serrated spines and handstick. When you can stroke them against each other, the sound mimics the voice of those frogs in the wild.
Or the texture buttons that let fingers stroke different versions of fur, which triggers a video clip of the sampled animal.
“It is very interactive and very hands-on,” said Tobin.
It might have gibberish in the title, but this is an animal exhibit that’s easy to understand.