Well, waddle you know … check out these fun facts about the Polk Penguin Conservation Center!

• More than 1,000 individuals – consultants, architects and tradesmen – worked on the project from start to finish.
• While digging on the construction site for the building and parking lot, ink tattoo bottles from the early 1920s were found intact 10 feet below the surface.
• The 360-degree, 4-D Endurance experience is over 145 feet wide and 20 feet tall and utilizes five 4K laser projectors, nine water nozzles, four hurricane fans and one snow machine. The original 1912 recording of “The Wearing of the Green” can be heard – the song was playing on the ship’s gramophone the night the Endurance was crushed in the ice.
• The oak lumber used on the Endurance 4-D experience is reclaimed from buildings and barns in metro Detroit that were salvaged. The oak was originally milled in the late 1800s/early 1900s and would have been the exact type and age of lumber used to build the original Endurance.
• The real-life photo of the iceberg that inspired the exterior design of the building is incorporated into the Endurance 4-D experience (see if you can find it).
• In order to complete the penguin habitat, two separate scaffold “worlds” were simultaneously created – one for the lower pool rock work and another for the ceiling. More than 100 pieces of scaffolding were installed and utilized during the process with more than 50 people working at one time.
• Each element of rock work and ice work, both in the pool and out, was sculpted out of concrete completely by hand.
• The penguin habitat has the ability to produce over a yard of snow and ice per day.
• The wave technology in the aquatic area is the same that is utilized at wave pools; there are three settings for the penguins to enjoy.
• The largest acrylic viewing window in the underwater gallery weighs 37,000 pounds.
• The heads-up display technology in the underwater gallery was developed in the automotive industry by Denso and is used in cars such as the new Corvette.
• The penguin center has near net-zero water goals through the recirculation and treatment of the habitat- and animal-management pools, wash-down systems and exterior fountain-skate area.
• A custom iridescent paint was developed for the metal panel system on the exterior, giving the building a different look depending on the time of day and angle of viewing. The paint is aptly named “Iceberg”.