Spider-Girl and Captain America, apparently taking a day off from fighting crime, combined their pint-size super strength Saturday to charm penguins.
Almost every time the brother-sister superhero duo cheered, one of the Akron Zoo’s black-and-white Humboldts dived into a 16,000-gallon tank and surged through the water, twisting and turning against a glass wall so the pint-size superheroes could marvel at their animal superpowers.
“Wow,” Spider-Girl Elizabeth Flores-Soler, 9, of Hartville, said to her Captain America brother, Andrew, 8, as they watched the flightless birds do underwater loop-the-loops like daredevil pilots in the air.
Showoffs.
The zoo was awash in visitors wearing plastic six-pack abs, flowing capes and spandex who came to celebrate Earth Day and honor superhero animals and superhero people making a difference in conservation and sustainability.
Liam Egan, 4, of Stow, was too bashful Saturday to say his name.
But as his father — Phil Patrick — hoisted Liam onto his hip, the boy purposefully unzipped his jacket to show a stranger his blue shirt with a big “S” inside an upside-down triangle.
Liam, it turned out, was a shy, smaller version of his dad, dressed as Superman with a red cape that was attached by Velcro to his shoulders.
If Liam was Superman, he’d use his strength to move around buildings, he said.
But many people want to be Superman so they can fly, said Debra Swank, an education specialist at the zoo who spent Saturday teaching visitors about many of the superherolike abilities animals have.
Superman, she said, has nothing on an Arctic tern.
The tiny bird, which weighs about as much as a half-cup of water, migrates every year from an Arctic breeding ground to the Antarctic and back again. And because the birds often live 30 years or more, Arctic terns migrate about 1.5 million miles over their lives.
That’s about the same as flying three trips between Earth and the moon, Swank said.
On the ground, meanwhile, iguanas have superpowers of their own.
The large green lizards have ultraviolet vision, Swank said, and can spy the ripest fruits because they glow brightest in iguana’s vision.
But a superpower also helps iguanas survive an attack, she said. If a predator grabs a lizard by its green- and black-striped tail, the iguana has groups of muscles that allow it to break off its tail anywhere from the base to tip so it can escape.
The superpower works so well, Swank said, there’s hardly any blood.
And no matter where an iguana breaks its tail —on a green stripe or black — the new tail will grow the same color, she said.
Back at the penguin exhibit, Spider-Girl traditionally can scale the sides of buildings and shoot giant webs from mechanical devices on her wrists, while Captain America depends on Super Soldier Serum and Vita-Ray treatment for his strength, speed and agility.
But neither Spider-Girl Elizabeth nor her brother Captain America Andrew would choose that.
If they could pick any superpower, both said they’d want the ability to change into whatever they wanted to be.
On Saturday, Elizabeth said she’d turn herself into a penguin so she could dive into the water and swim alongside the Humboldts.
Andrew said he’d transform into a musk ox, a 700-pound creature with horns and long hair that roams the Arctic using its hooves to dig for food.
Do penguins and musk oxen get along?
“Probably,” Andrew said as he chased his sister toward their next zoo adventure, both still wearing their superhero masks.
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.