Is it Real?

I came across an interesting article the other day that addressed a situation which regularly occurs at the Museum. Meaning to read it at a later time, I continued on with another obligation and then lost track of the article. That bothered me greatly--nearly as much as the theme of that piece bothers me. It pondered why folks like me often overhear children asking their adult guardian if, almost interchangeably so, whether a specimen on display is "real" or whether it is "alive." 

For those outside of my profession, such frustration with that might seem misplaced. Allow me to further explain my reaction:

It usually seems that beyond the bounds of a museum, many children (say above age five) demonstrate the ability of distinguishing between animals who are alive and those who are dead. They may have already experienced the misfortune of losing a pet, or having come upon a motionless insect on hot pavement, are in that instant capable of recognizing that it is no longer alive. 

Junior Naturalists found a dead promethea silk moth (Callosamia promethea)
just outside the Museum's doors and were amazed by its anatomy. 
We compared it to other dead insect specimens in a display during a break in programming. 

Now, that's a very simplified and specific analysis of living and dead animals. In reality, different cultures perceive life and death in different manners. While some students on our field trips have asserted that a rock in our collection or that the Namakagon River have their own state of life or being, others may be more rigid in their definition--the only living beings in our building are people and perhaps the occasional, unwanted insect pest. Likely, to the majority of our visitors, the latter is true--the taxidermy mount of a mountain lion in our classroom is most certainly not alive.

Is this mountain lion (Puma concolor) real? A great example answer used by the 
folks at the Peggy Notebeart Nature Museum in Chicago is, "That cougar is 
real and used to be alive, but it is no longer living."

Just yesterday I visited a small group of grade school children participating in our Junior Naturalists program. They squirmed as they attempted to sit in a relatively uniform circle while listening to us adults talk. As I moved to show off a taxidermy mount of a northern flying squirrel that I had prepared myself, I didn't hear one child shout out to question whether it was dead. Then among a handful of simultaneous comments I heard it: "Oooh, is it real?!"

I hear this one phrase far more often than any other youthful interrogations regarding a specimen's state of life (or more accurately, death). Maybe our mounts are simply of such impeccable quality that the animals look to be alive--but of that I'm not so sure. Maybe, being the child's first encounter with a flying squirrel, they don't know how the mount differs from the living animal. This train of thought eventually gets me to question a mount's "realness." If only the skin and fur remain from the actual animal--the internal organs, eyes, and other visceral parts of a mount becoming man-made materials--was the squirrel I held before the children still considered a "real" squirrel? 

These three curious girls appreciate having the pelts of real raccoons,
foxes, and other animals available in our Discovery Nook to learn from.

Sometimes, an answer requires a deeper understanding of the origin of such a question than is possible. I'm sure that there is a psychological and/or societal influence behind questions like these. Just hours after being asked if the squirrel was real, I was put on to "The Future of Life" by the acclaimed E.O. Wilson. Wilson wrote that, "between six and nine, children become interested in wild creatures for the first time, and aware that animals can suffer pain and distress. From nine to twelve, their knowledge and interest in the natural world rises sharply...." I suppose literature like this is a good place to further my understanding. 

I'll likely come to fathom these experiences more as time goes on, but for now I will continue to find myself bewildered when children ask if our cougar is real, and even more so when some parents answer "no."