Concurrent Exhibition—

Caves: The Inside Story

GREENWICH — “Caves: The Inside Story,” a new exhibition at The Bruce Museum, explores the adventure and science of caves with re-creations, demonstrations, animal specimens, and interactive exhibits. On view through June 18, the exhibition offers visitors of all ages the chance to explore what it feels like to be a caver and to learn how caves are formed. Visitors can also discover how some cave dwellers have adapted to survive in the dark cave environment and how to interpret the clues that our prehistoric ancestors and other cave dwellers left behind long ago.

Touchable minerals, hands-on displays, and a video show how some caves are created, hollowed out from limestone rock. The stalactites and other strange crystals that grow and decorate caves give clues not only to how caves are formed but also to what climates were like thousands of years ago.

In limestone cave country, streams often run only short distances before disappearing underground to join cave rivers that support aquatic cave life. These run for miles before reappearing as springs or joining above ground watercourses. Museum visitors can trace the paths of underground streams and rivers on a cave country map.

After an introduction to caving equipment and a video on a cave rescue operation, some visitors may wish to don a helmet with a light, try out other protective gear, and even negotiate a re-created volcanic lava tube cave tunnel.

Visitors are invited to touch and identify hidden, cave-related objects, listen to cave sounds, and use a hand-held echolocating device that helps blind people identify the location of objects around them.

In this world of darkness, survival depends on using senses other than sight to find food, avoid predators, and get from one place to the next. No green plants can grow away from the energy of sunlight, so cave food resources mainly consist of dead plants and animals and other debris washed into the cave and the droppings and dead bodies of cave animals themselves. A cave food-web puzzle challenges the visitor to make the connections.

One area of the exhibition features a cave diorama with cave animals whose special adaptive features or behaviors help them survive part or all of their life in the dark cave environment. An aquarium allows visitors to observe live Mexican cave fish.

Over generations of living in darkness, these amazing creatures have lost eyes and skin color but have adapted to their environment by developing highly sensitive organs along the side of their bodies. These organs can detect even very small movements in the surrounding water, helping them navigate around obstacles and zero in on their prey.

Bats are temporary residents of cave but are renowned for their ability to use echolocation, requiring an enhanced sense of hearing as they fly through the dark passages to find their roosts and pups. At least two bird species, oilbirds and swiftlets, do the same.

Visitors can try out an echo chamber to create and listen to their own echoes. They also can listen to recordings of bats and oilbirds as they echolocate, or use a bat detector to eavesdrop on other sounds bats can hear that are normally too high-pitched for the human ear.

People from earliest times and all over the world have occupied caves. They have also decorated caves with handprints, symbols, drawings and exquisite life-like paintings of wildlife. The art, tools and bones left behind by our early ancestors provide clues not only to their physical appearance and culture but also to the climate and the fauna of the place and time when these prehistoric peoples lived.

Drawing inspiration from the Chauvet cave in France, “Caves: The Inside Story” re-creates a cavern occupied and decorated by Upper Paleolithic artists 30,000 years ago and shared with the giant Cave bear, Ursus spelaeus.

The museum has a series of April Vacation Workshops planned. In “Caves and Creatures in Them!” running Tuesday, April 19 until Friday, April 22, daily at 10:30 am, students in grades 1 to 3 can explore the museum’s exhibitions and learn about caves and cave wildlife and then work on a related craft project.

Children can attend the full series or just the program of their choice. Subjects will change each day: Tuesday, climbing spiders; Wednesday, flying bats; Thursday, slinky tube snakes; and Friday, cave showbox dioramas. Cost is $7 per child per day ($5 for museum members), which covers all materials. Reservations are required; call the museum, 203-869-0376.

Individualized and/or modified workshops for individuals with special needs will be offered each day from 1 to 3 pm. Call the museum’s director of education, Robin Garr, at 203-869-6786 extension 325, for reservations. Cost is $7 per person, or $5 for museum members, per day, plus one additional friend or sibling participating at no additional charge.

The museum will host a Caves Family Day on Sunday, April 23, from 1 to 4 pm. Activities for the whole family will include gallery hunts and hands-on crafts.

At 1:30 and 4 pm, Rob Mies of The Organization for Bat Conservation will present “A Live Bat Encounter.” At 2:30 p.m. Chris Evers of Animal Embassy will present “Snakes and Spiders of Caves,” with live creatures. All activities are free with museum admission.

A three-part series of lectures focusing on the mysteries and wonder of caves will also be offered, beginning Wednesday, May 17, and continuing on June 14 and June 28.

Visit BruceMuseum.org for full details about the museum and its programs.