RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

shit

The Franklin Institute: King Tut. Only U.S. stop. Skipping New York, skipping D.C. International appeal. Mummies, Gold and mystery. It will attract a million people. Minimum.

Up the street, poised to capitalize on museum spillover, The Academy of Natural Sciences goes into a brainstorming session. They need to pull out all the aces. And they respond with…

Heaping piles of shit. No really, shit behind glass. Lots of it. From all kinds of animals… feces. Lots of feces. I wonder how that meeting went.

——

“The Franklin Institute just scored King Tut. This is huge. What’s our strategy? How do we compete?”

“Australopithecus bones? An exhibit on early hominids complete with rare skulls and vertebrae. We can get the “Lucy jaw fragment.”

“Jaw fragment? Fuck that. Let’s get a Suchomimus tenerensis skeleton… a predatory Dinosaur larger than the T-Rex!”

“No room. How about a symposium on evolution? We’ll bring together the world’s greatest minds on the subject. It’ll generate huge media attention. We’ll help save science in America.”

“No. No. No. How about we collect the excrement of hundreds of animals and show it to people? People love excrement, even if they pretend that they don’t.”

“You might be on to something Professor Scatophile! King Tut’s got nothing on an exhibit detailing the many uses of cow manure. Get on it!

——

In case you’re planning on going to the shit exhibit, here are the highlights:

* Poop Has Many Names: Visitors are invited to push buttons on a world map to learn the language of poop in countries around the world.

* A New Alternative: This 3-D model of a modern sewage digester comes to life with pumps and aerators to show an environmentally responsible way to deal with human waste.

* Outhouse: Most kids have never seen an outhouse and this old-fashioned replica gives them a chance for an unusual photo opportunity.

* Worth Your Weight In…: African elephants are the biggest poopers of all land animals. Step on the scale to see how many hours (or minutes!) it takes an elephant to poop your body weight.

* Fecal Framework: This full-size, touchable replica of an African termite mound lets kids explore how termites glue their houses together with their own dung.

* Muck Spreading: Activate a video recording of a bull hippopotamus broadcasting dung with his tail.

* Dung Boots: Watch a rhinoceros kick and stomp its dung so he can mark his territory with a trail of smelly footprints.

* Ins & Outs: Listen in on a grizzly bear’s digestive tract and learn how food becomes poop.

* Fecal Fakers: See if you can spot animals that camouflage themselves by looking like bird droppings.

* Dung Beetle Race: See whose beetle is the fastest. Turn a rubber dung ball to move your beetle to the finish line.

* Beetles to the Rescue: Why aren’t we up to our eyeballs in dung? Activate this video clip to see a time-lapse recording of beetles cleaning up a dung pile.

* Who Dung It?: Animal scat is a great way to learn about the wild animals in your area. Learn to be a scat tracker by matching dung samples with the animals that made them.

* Diagnostic Doo: Check out the close-up world of dung through a veterinarian’s microscope. Can you see anything unusual?

* Touch a Coprolite: Dinosaurs left more than bones and teeth behind - some of their droppings were also preserved. Touch an 80 million year old fossilized turd.

* Fossil Feces: Activate several short interviews with a paleontologist who studies fossilized animal dung.

* Dangerous Droppings: This live animal exhibit is a recreated section through the wall of a house showing how mice enter our homes and live in our food cupboards.

* Buffalo Chip Courtship: Activate a video recording of sarus cranes performing a bizarre mating ritual. The male throws buffalo dung around to impress the female.

* Special Delivery: This live animal exhibit shows how box turtles spread berry seeds in their droppings.