You can sign all you want, invertebrate lovers, but the National Zoo is closing its exhibit devoted to the creatures to the public this Saturday.

More than 880 people have signed a petition to save the exhibit — home to the common cuttlefish, corals, water scorpions and butterflies. It reads in part:

The closure of the Invertebrate House leaves the National Zoo with no invertebrate exhibit. Yet, as numerous as they are on the planet, invertebrates remain so unstudied that major new discoveries are still being made in publicly-funded museum research programs.
…
Watching octopi and cuttlefish explore their tanks is, to many visitors, equally as engaging as viewing elephants and pandas. Creating and sharing knowledge about invertebrates, the most numerous species of animals on Earth occupying habitats that encompass virtually our entire planet, is squarely within the National Zoo’s mission.

Your attempts will not work. In a lengthy Facebook post, National Zoo director Dennis Kelly
says, “I understand your frustration with the timing of our announcement” but the funding is simply not in place at the moment.

We’ll always have the Christmas photo shoot.