A different kind of animal pack swarmed the Alaska Zoo on Friday -- Anchorage eighth-graders.
With backpacks strung over their shoulders, more than 100 Mears Middle School students piled out of buses and made their way into the zoo to better understand how Alaska animals survive.
"This provides the students with a real-world opportunity to experience what the classroom can't provide," language arts teacher Doug Williams said.
Throughout the day, the students visited stations scattered around the zoo, pressing their papers and pencils to the glass of some exhibits or holding them strategically in their hands for other less convenient exhibits, to answer basic survival questions about zoo animals who act as ambassadors for their species.
"This makes the students be more attentive and appreciative," parent and chaperone Anthony Panichello said. "For the day-to-day skills, this helps them learn, by answering questions and engaging."
And as much as the children were learning, they were also having fun just marveling at the animals, most of which were out and about in their enclosures.
Thirteen-year-old Asia McKnight's camera hung around her neck as she walked through the zoo's pathways, many of which were already strung with winter lights. As she spoke, she often referred to her wet and wrinkled questionnaire packet as she listed off "interesting" details she'd learned on her trip.
"One interesting thing, I think, was that musk ox hair is ten times warmer than a sheep's -- I think," McKnight said, pausing for a moment. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is."
But what the former California kid was most excited for was a chance to see the wolves -- and she did when a zoo caretaker took Denali out of his enclosure.
"Wolves are kind of like me and my family; on the outside they seem kind of wild and crazy, but on the inside it's love."
The gray wolves have been at the zoo since May 2006. When they came in, zoo education director Stephanie Hartman said, they were only two or three weeks old. The handlers have been working with them ever since.
"They know how to behave," Hartman said.
To bring Denali, the alpha wolf in the pack, out for the students to have a more personal encounter, Hartman used a simple double clasping chain system and gave him a hard-boiled egg and kibble in a peanut butter ball to chew on.
As Hartman answered questions for the students, she rubbed Denali's thick gray coat and McKnight's camera clicked.
Denali wasn't the the only animal at the zoo to make a special appearance, though. The red-tailed hawk spread its wings, the great horned owl locked its piercing yellow eyes with the students, and a porcupine came out to greet them.