By Roxanne Oudeville
The SciCoMove project took part in the 2024 edition of the “Fête de la Science” (Science Fest), an outreach event during which associations, companies and laboratories can present their studies, projects and activities to the public. This cultural festival took place in Le Mans on Saturday October 12 and Sunday October 13, 2024, at the historic setting of the Abbaye de l’Épau. The SciCoMove project was presented in the form of a card game.
The game, named “Tatou compris” in reference to the animal chosen to represent the project, is based on the rules of the Memory game. The cards are made up of images that have to be turned over and matched in pairs, with the player with the most matches winning the game. The advantage of this game model is that it’s both simple to understand and well-known, making it accessible even to the youngest players. It also makes it possible to illustrate the game and add commentary and information on the project and the objects presented, by means of explanatory texts beneath the images.
The theme of this year’s Science Fest was “Oceans of Knowledge”. The project presentation had to be adapted to this theme. It was decided to use the same example as the one used for Researchers’ Night of 2023, namely the armadillo. This animal offered several advantages. Being exotic to the French public, it remains surprising to the public. As the specimen on display was a three-banded armadillo from Brazil, it provided a link between Europe and South America, and spoke to the exchanges at the heart of the project. This armadillo is also a specimen preserved in the archives of the Musée Vert in Le Mans. It was studied as part of the SciCoMove project by Nathalie Richard and Nicolas Morel. It therefore served as both a local and practical example to explain the study of the collections carried out during this project. It also made the link with the Science Festival theme, as the armadillo present in Le Mans has travelled and crossed oceans.
The cards in the game include information in the form of simple explanatory texts (to remain accessible to younger players). Those data covered the history of the “Great Discoveries”, and more specifically concerning South America, as well as general information on the armadillo (its diet, its main characteristics), on the Musée Vert and finally on the project itself.
The game was accompanied by a quiz, based on the information on the cards. The questions were designed to motivate children to retain the information. The quiz was not offered for every player, but adapted to the audience, the children over the age of ten. For older players, another quiz was proposed, more difficult as it did not rely on the cards but on the players’ general knowledge. The game and the quiz served both to attract families and to introduce the project. Over the two days, Alexia and Roxanne welcomed around sixty groups, or two to three hundred people, to the SciCoMove stand, for whom they were able to explain the project, its players, its purpose and its study centers in a playful atmosphere.

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
alexiacomte (November 6, 2024). Report on the “Tatou compris” game. SciCoMove — Scientific Collections on the Move. Retrieved April 28, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/12mut