I was stunned to read this news release Monday:

"The Smithsonian's National Zoo Invertebrate Exhibit, home to dozens of small aquatic and terrestrial species without backbones, will close to the public Sunday, June 22. The last day to visit the Invertebrate House is Saturday, June 21."

Having the nation's zoo suddenly and with little public warning close a long-standing exhibit is unprecedented. Public comments on the Museum's Facebook page are overwhelmingly shocked and negative, including some from volunteers that work at the Zoo.

Invertebrates are 97 percent of all described animal species on earth. They are 80 percent of all multicellular species, plants and animals combined. The absence of this major group from any educational facility is problematic.

Remove the Kraken!

I chatted with Zoo Director Dennis Kelly this morning about his decision to close the exhibit. My first question was why the announcement was made so abruptly. Kelly said: "The short notice was my judgement that once an exhibit is scheduled for closure, it's difficult to maintain it to our standard of quality... The decommissioning process will take time and attention from the staff."

As someone who's worked with maintaining live education animals, I know it's impossible to not fall in love with them a little, even the ones that sting and bite. It's going to be emotionally difficult for the staff to find out their workplace is going away. To ask keepers to try to deliver quality public education experiences while also trying to find new homes for their spineless charges would not be kind.

Relocating collection animals can take months; in addition to transferring all the various permits to hold specific species, and all the health and breeding records for each individual, you also have to figure out how to transport animals safely and humanely. You can't just check your cuttlefish as a carry-on item.

The building space the Invert exhibit occupied will remain empty for the foreseeable future; the only plans are to clean the facility up. It's in the basement of a 1930's reptile center, so it's not exactly a state of the art facility for anything, even bugs and squid. The outdoor pollinator garden ("Pollenarium") will continue to be open, but the Butterfly House will be closed permanently.

There are no plans to lay exhibit staff off; they will be reassigned to other units. The Zoo has multiple openings right now, and several unfilled positions. Staffing has been an issue at the Zoo for a while; in December 2013 problems leading to a keeper injury and deaths of several mammals in the Zoo's care were blamed on lack of funding and too few staff.

I asked about how closure of this exhibit would affect the Zoo's participation in several major conservation breeding projects. The Zoo is the lead on Golden Orb Weaver spider (Nephila spp) breeding for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and also a major partner in coral breeding programs. Director Kelly was very clear that conservation breeding programs will continue, saying they will work with partner Smithsonian institutions, including the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Specifics on how that will happen though, "will be decided in the next few months." (By the way, the NMNH also has "deactivated" parts of its insect collections because of lack of staff.)

Cuttlefish at the Invertebrate Exhibit. Mehgan Murphy/Smithsonian's National Zoo

Will the Kraken Return?

The short answer to that question is "not anytime soon," I'm afraid. From the press release:

“The Invertebrate Exhibit is not included in the Zoo’s Strategic Five-Year Plan or its 20-Year Programmatic Master Plan. The long-term vision includes a future Hall of Biodiversity, which will include some invertebrate species.”

The Zoo's plan to shift focus is in line with national trends at zoos; instead of isolated big animals in cages, zoos are shifting to more of a biome-based exhibit model. This focuses more on how animals live together and habitat conservation, which is good both for animals and education. For example, the Amazonia exhibit may have leaf-cutting ants or the Nephila spiders added.

I was a little startled, though, when Kelly said the invertebrates “will hopefully come back sometime in the next two decades in a Hall of Biodiversity.” Will the "Hall of Biodiversity" be at least 90 percent invertebrates to reflect global biodiversity? And also...two decades before the inverts return?

Kelly said “Your point is exactly right; that will be taken into consideration as we design the Hall of Biodiversity.” Pamela Baker-Mason, Associate Director of Communications, interjected that "We have some other projects that will happen first." One of those is an upgrade to their Bird exhibit space in cooperation with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

I am Conflicted About All This

The National Zoo was founded in 1889, in a different world. Owls and hawks were hunted and shot, and putting an animal in a cage for the public to look at was enough. Now we hold zoos (rightfully) to much higher standards of education and animal care.

I have so much sympathy for the staff of the National Zoo. They inherited zoo facilities built decades before accessibility laws, new safety laws, and modern animal care rules. It takes a LOT of money to rehab an old building (which may also need asbestos and lead abatement) and bring it up to both human and Association of Zoo and Aquarium codes. The National Aquarium closed completely in Washington D.C. last year, and also gave away its collection animals.

I know from personal experience that rearing insects and marine invertebrates is harder than you might think. They get mites, fungal infections, viruses, and sexually-transmitted diseases. The cricket mass-rearing industry is still battling a virus that has ravaged cricket supplies.

The decision to mothball an exhibit in an older building, that isn't a major fundraising draw, and that doesn't contain charismatic megafauna like pandas and otters is a completely logical choice in a time of limited resources. People like cute fuzzy mammals. They are not that concerned about squid and spiders. The Zoo has an Adopt-A-Species donation drive, but while the logo has an octopus on it, none of the species you can adopt are actually invertebrates.

Smithsonian National Zoo

Kelly is faced with hard decisions about how to move an old, historic facility forward into the future. There is nothing he can do that will not be judged harshly, since he's changing things. People like progress, but they hate change. The National Zoo is a free zoo – they do not charge admission. In the words of the Director, "We are doing our best to reduce our dependence on taxpayers... We're generating new sources of revenues to execute our mission [of saving species]; grants, contracts, philanthropy, and selling hotdogs and carousel rides."

I would argue that the function of the National Zoo is not to provide "bread and circuses," but to help educate visitors about the living world. Invertebrates are critical; without them ecosystems would collapse.

But non-profits and federal agencies all are affected by shrinking budgets, and competing for donations. An otter will bring in more money and visitors than a grasshopper; that is a reality in a society that is entomophobic. I am unhappy about this, but have no solutions, other than to hope the inverts come back sooner than a decade from now.