The Ice Mammoth Cometh

Curly came to the Horicon Marsh Education & Visitor Center in 2015 as part of the introduction to the Explorium. The statue tied into the Great Hunting Grounds theme being featured at the time.

Fun Facts about Curly

  • Curly was named after Louis “Curly” Radke, a Horicon native and head of the local Izaak Walton League.
  • Thousands of pieces of rebar — more than 3 miles — was used to construct Curly.
  • Curly weighs 7,000 lbs. That’s 3.5 tons!
  • 300 lbs. are from 3,555 feet of wire alone.
  • Curly is comprised of 16,646 individual pieces.
  • It took 1,300 hours to complete the sculpture.
  • Curly was created by artist Curt Walker of Taylor Studios in Illinois.

Visitors to the Horicon Marsh Education & Visitor Center can’t pass up a photo opportunity with everyone’s favorite mammoth, Curly!

More about Mammoths

Along with their long, shaggy coat, woolly mammoths were famous for their extra-long tusks, which measured up to 15 feet on the biggest males. They were used to plow the snow in search for food.

The fur of the woolly mammoth ranged in color from red-brown to pale ocher.

As massive as they were (about 13 feet long and 5 to 7 tons), human hunters coveted these beasts for their warm pelts (which could keep an entire family warm at night) as well as their tasty meat. Much patience, planning and cooperation was required to bring down a single woolly mammoth.

From about 3,000 to 12,000 years ago, the woolly mammoth was one of the most popular subjects of Neolithic artists, who daubed images of the shaggy beast on the walls of numerous caves.

Woolly mammoths had four inches of solid fat underneath their skin, an added layer of insulation that helped keep them warm in severe conditions.

By the end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, almost all the world’s mammoths had succumbed to climate change and human predation.

The northern reaches of Siberia are very cold, which helps to explain why a number of woolly mammoths have been found mummified nearly intact in solid blocks of ice.

Video by Taylor Studios, Inc.