An AI Otter Guides the New Everglades Theater at MODS

The Museum of Discovery and Science in Fort Lauderdale opens the Everglades Theater on June 18, a room where the walls are the Everglades and the guide is an artificial intelligence in the shape of a river otter.

The theater is the centerpiece of Phase 1 of Build a Better World: The Future Begins with You, the museum’s newest permanent exhibit gallery. The museum, which goes by MODS, calls it a first of its kind: an AI-guided, challenge-based theater built out of cinematic visuals and interactive gaming technology, sponsored by the Broward County Cultural Division.

Five games, one wetland

Guests do not sit and watch. They stand on a floor laid out like a boardwalk while projected wetland wraps the room, and they play, using gesture control rather than buttons. The theater opens with five experiences.

Endangered Everglades puts guests to work as conservation problem-solvers, identifying invasive species including Burmese pythons, blue tilapia and Old World climbing ferns, and learning how each one disrupts native habitat. Guests also count endangered species, which is how the game gets at the idea that observation and data are what conservation decisions are built on.

Mighty Mangroves has guests planting mangrove seedlings and exploring the root systems, which hold shorelines together, shelter young animals and help protect the communities behind them.

Nighttime Magic moves into the Everglades after dark and makes the case for darkness itself. Guests learn what light pollution costs fireflies, bats and owls, and how different lighting choices give it back.

Seasons in the Everglades hands over the plumbing. Guests adjust canals, gates and pump stations and watch what happens to wetlands, wildlife and people across the wet and dry seasons. South Florida’s water is managed water, and this is the game that says so.

Wilderness Wetlands Home lets guests build an Everglades from parts: uplands, sawgrass marshes, cypress swamps, mangroves and coral reefs, assembled until the connections between them start to show.

Who Lilly is

Running through all of it is Lilly, an AI-powered North American river otter who serves as the guide. An otter is a good choice for the job. It is the animal in a South Florida wetland that a child will happily follow anywhere, and putting a familiar face on a system as complicated as the Everglades is the oldest trick in interpretation, updated here with a technology that can answer back.

“Build a Better World: The Future Begins with You reflects the Museum’s commitment to helping children and families understand the natural world while building the character strengths needed to care for it,” said Joseph P. Cox, president and CEO of MODS.

“The Everglades Theater brings that mission to life through immersive technology, artificial intelligence and hands-on gameplay that explore the ecosystems shaping South Florida. Most importantly, it helps children see that they can make a difference, strengthening their confidence and critical thinking skills as they work together.”

The whole gallery is designed around four character strengths the museum names outright: caring, confidence, cooperation and critical thinking. The games are cooperative for that reason, and the through line is that small actions add up, which is a more useful message for an eight-year-old than a lecture on ecosystem collapse.

What else is in Phase 1, and what comes next

The Everglades Theater is one of three signature experiences in Phase 1. The gallery also holds the Mangrove Mangal Climber, sponsored by JM Family Enterprises, and the Atlantic and Pacific Coral Reef Aquariums, supported by Weston Nissan/Weston Volvo and the Hudson Family Foundation. Phase 2 opens in fall 2026.

Phase 1 was made possible by Lilly Endowment Inc., which selected MODS as one of only 23 children’s museums in the country to take part in a national effort focused on character development and meaningful learning for children and families.

“Broward County Cultural Division is proud to support creative experiences that connect residents and visitors with Broward’s culture, environment and sense of place,” said Phillip Dunlap, director of the Broward County Cultural Division. “The Everglades Theater offers families a memorable new way to experience the stories, landscapes and natural heritage that make South Florida unique.”

The Everglades is a hard thing to show a visitor. It is flat, it is slow, most of it is water moving at a pace you cannot see, and the parts that make it work are seasonal. A room that lets a child open a gate and watch the marsh answer is a reasonable way in.

Elsewhere in South Florida: a Florida panther kitten rescued and raised at Naples Zoo and a rare olive ridley nest on a Florida beach.