Exotic animal exhibit at the Swaner EcoCenter shows the ‘Survival of the Slowest’

Animal lovers have the chance to get up-close and personal with an array of slow-moving creatures, including an eastern fox snake, a bearded dragon, Russian tortoise and a couple of sloths, when the Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter opens the “Survival of the Slowest” exhibit Saturday.

The bilingual interactive display, presented by Little Ray’s Nature Centre and Exhibitions, will show through Jan. 9, and features 18 species of animals that show there are sometimes advantages to not being big and fast, said Paul “Little Ray” Goulet, founder and CEO of Little Ray’s Nature Centre and Exhibitions.

“Survival of the Slowest’ looks at the module on fitness, and what does it mean to be fit?” Goulet said. “It doesn’t mean being big and strong. It means that you’ve adapted to your environment.”

While there is a benefit to being big and strong like the elephant and rhinoceros, size can also be a disadvantage, especially if there is a lack of food, according to Goulet.

“That’s one of the ideas behind the exhibit, that explores the counterintuitive survival strategies of the animals we have,” he said.

The exhibit at the EcoCenter measures 2,500 square feet, and includes 15 habitats and information boards, Goulet said.

“We wanted to make the habitats as large as we can and fit them in a reasonable space,” he said. “Every time we build the display, we build them a little differently, and we are constantly trying to improve. We want to make sure they are viewable for people, so it’s a balance of creating retreats where animals can go and get away, but still have people see them.”

Keepers will be on hand during business hours to talk about the animals and allow visitors to touch and hold them, said Hunter Klingensmith, the EcoCenter’s visitor experience coordinator.

“We will also offer private animal encounters, where people can book group appointments after hours for families and friends with the keepers to get some one-on-one time with the animals,” she said.

Other animals that are part of the exhibit include basilisks and hedgehogs.

Goulet founded Little Ray’s Nature Centre in Ottawa, Canada, with his wife Sheri 26 years ago, after doing in-person animal presentations at various schools.

“I wanted to go into teaching, and when I was in high school, I volunteered to go into schools and talk about pet reptiles to get experience for my resume,” Goulet said.

A few years later, while he was at college, Goulet got a call from a teacher who remembered one of his presentations.

“They remembered that I had some reptiles and asked me to come give a presentation to their class,” he said. “I did one show, and the next day seven other teachers called me to see if I would do some presentations in their classes.”

One thing led to another, and in 2000, the Goulets opened their first zoo center in Ottawa.

Soon afterwards, Goulet began getting calls from the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to help them retrieve and care for seized and confiscated animals.

“We were the first organization in Canada to import alligators back into the United States,” he said. “People would have alligators as pets, and the animals would grow too large to keep. So we began moving them back to Arizona and North Carolina.”

Today, Lucky Ray’s Nature Centre, which also has a division in Syracuse, New York, is the largest exotic-animal rescue organization in Canada, and one of the largest in North America, according to Goulet.

“We had to be creative in finding extra revenue streams to support our rescue efforts and the zoo, so we began exhibitions,” he said. “In 2008, we had our first full-scale museum exhibit, and we have been touring exhibits in the U.S. since 2014.”

The Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter had already forged a relationship with Little Ray’s Nature Centre, when they collaborated on bringing the “Nature’s Ninjas” exhibit to town in 2019, Klingensmith said.

“We originally met Paul at a museum conference and he was excited to come to Park City,” she said. “So when we heard about the “Survival of the Slowest’ exhibit, we knew we had to get it.”