The International Year on Biodiversity continues
14 May 2010
The city, as usual, lives its own life, sparkling with lights, overshadowing the Sun with smog and clouds of smoke, glimpsing with crowds of hurrying to somewhere people, who are maneuvering in the labyrinths of huge buildings. And nearby to all these is going a parallel, nearly always invisible for our eyes, life of other creatures. We consider them illegal pretenders for our territory, and they consider us only as the elements of their environment.
On the 14th of May at Tula Exotarium was opened an exhibition which discovers secrets and tricks of the animals to which they use to be able to survive nearby humans.
Invisible conquerors of the world
Not only humans have settled on all continents. Together with humans the new space was conquered by their constant, even though unwanted, companions – rats, cockroaches, mice. These creatures are strikingly devoted to us, because humans for them are a source of comfortable and relatively safe life. They fight for this life using all their armory: a perfect reaction, large fecundity, enviable vitality. By the way, they fight not only with us, but also with each other.
Outcasts, guests and lodgers
Remains of wild animals try to survive among human’s bustle… If interests of humans and animals are interfering, the latter receive an “honorary” title - pest, and it must be driven out or it must be destroyed. Some species still can adapt to such neighborhood, and they even receive some benefit from it, others go away, if still there is place where to go. Some animals (and there is quite a lot of them – 844 species during the last 500 years!) were driven out by humans from our planet forever. We will never see these animals, but at the exhibition they are still present in the form of photographs and pictures – this is all which remains of them:
It is becoming more and more difficult for animals to find their place under the sun. Some species find a possibility to save their life only in nature reservations or in zoos.
Some animals survive on one territory with humans thanks to their charm or ability to bring use.
The most of these animals are not easy to see in wild nature, but it is possible to admire them in Tula Exotarium at the exhibition “To be able to survive nearby humans”, and you can even get acquainted with some of them more closely on week-ends. Also, on week-ends all visitors who wish can take part in the master-class “Hand-made articles of rubbish”.
