Related to Karen Rader, 'Interacting with The Watchful Grasshopper; or, Why Live Animals Matter in Twentieth-Century Science Museums', in Thorsen et. al., Animals on Display (2013), pp. 176-191.
Description:

Rader notes that during the ate 1950s, 'The Boston Museum of Science... featured what exhibit designers dubbed "animal demonstrations," which entailed carefully monitored, hands-on contact between visitors and living animals. Museum education department staffers mediated these interactions: they invited children to touch animals like Black Beauty, a seven-foot-long indigo snake with unique camouflage markings, or the slightly more approachable Herkemiah and Cuddles, two pet porcupines whose quill-release mechanisms had been disabled.

What became the Boston Museum's most famous live animal demonstration arose by chance. After finding a fledgling owl and reviving the fluffy ball with a medicine dropper, two suburban Boston residents had called [museum director Bradford] Washburn to see if the museum wanted the tiny bird. Christened "Spooky," the young owl was featured in exhibit halls afer only a few weeks at the museum, and to museum staff, the owl took on near-human status as a charismatic educator...

Washburn claimed that Spooky and other live animal demostrations represented new educational successes because they were hands-on...

Later in the decade, the Boston Museum developed an arrangement that allowed more direct animal-visitor interaction: they hired teenaged "junior assistants" who were charged with caring for the museum's growing menagerie. High school students could get behind the scenes and learn about the animals - not only their natural history and behaviour bit also what it took to keep them healthy and happy for museum use, Washburn argued that these students were participating in "science in action" - and he featured the junior assistants in a museum newsletter story about educational outreach.' (179-180)