So our last week of Wildlife Adventures finally came! We had been looking forward to this as much as the explorers that accompanied us. On Tuesday, our class learned about caves and the many living things which inhabit them. We learned how a cave is "alive", ever growing as long as it is left untouched. We found out the difference between a stalactite and a stalagmite is quite easy to differentiate. StalacTites are found at the TOP of the cave, while stalaGmites are found on the ground of the cave. In regards to our cave critters, we discovered that some of them are only guests in the cave (trogloxenes), some are cave lovers (troglophiles), and then there are those that depend on the cave for survival (troglobytes). After learning all about our cave friends, we made our own bat! Next, we went outside to try our own little echolocation to find our friends throughout the “cave”.
Thursday was a blast, we enjoyed
the outdoors as we hiked our way up to Timpanogos Cave. This was quite a long journey for our shorter
explorers, but they were all troopers.
We all kept going to reach our goal – the cave where we would soon feel
and see the environment of a cave critter.
We stopped for lunch at the cave’s entrance, where we were able to learn
about the fossils within the mountain from one of the park rangers. This was a special, yet unexpected
treat! They even explained how the cave
forms for us before we even entered the cave.
When we finally got to enter the cave, our guide, Ranger Nick, explained
a few rules to us. Since the cave is "alive" and continuously growing, we don’t want to hurt it so we needed to keep our
hands to ourselves and not touch the rock formations. We learned that the oils from our hands could
damage the rock and cause it to stop growing.
Our little explorers didn’t have a problem with this at all and were
super excited to see the cave. As we
went further into the caves, Ranger Nick turned all the lights off for us so
that we could “see” how cave critters live, in complete darkness. Later on, we learned that there is one cave
formation that no one knows how it forms, the helictites. These formations are stalactites that defy
gravity! So how do they form? Ranger Nick suggested that maybe one of our
explorers would one day find the answer.
This week was definitely an adventure for our explorers and Timpanogos
Cave definitely gave us all a lot to think about.
As always, come visit the Bean
Museum Monday through Friday from 10-9 and Saturday from 10-5 for some free
fun!
Heather, Museum Educator
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