American Museum of Natural History

American Museum of Natural History
21-07-2008

My wife and I spent almost 5 hours at this prestigious New York City establishment today, and the place is absolutely massive. The sheer enormity of the building, with its myriad of rooms and galleries, is slightly overwhelming to most visitors. It is similar to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (and I'm not even close to being an art lover) in that the structure is so large that one has to pick and choose the favourites to see before moving on. At both museums we skipped past entire rooms and still couldn't help spending hours wandering the cavernous hallways. We took more than a hundred shots, but due to the dim lighting I'm not sure how many I'll be able to post here on ZooBeat. I'm also not sure how many people are really that interested in taxidermy...haha.

There is a full-scale blue whale hanging from the ceiling of the aquatic animals room, many galleries full of a plethora of dinosaur bones and ancient fossils, and all sorts of other animal-related information. It would take days, weeks, maybe even months to digest all of the data that is contained within the 32 million artifacts that are contained within the building(s).

It is interesting to see some of the labelling of the animals, as the mammal halls were finished many, many years ago:

African wild dogs - called "Hunting Dogs"
Hamadryas baboon - called an "Anubis Baboon"
Black-and-white colobus monkeys - called "Mantled Monkeys"
Greater Kudu - "Greater Koodoo"
Lesser Kudu - "Lesser Koodoo"
Asian Lions from the "Gar Forest" (isn't it Gir???)
Some of the monkeys, and 2-3 of the lemurs, had weird names that I'd never heard before. Perhaps it's time for the museum to update their signs.

It was interesting to see a display of 11 mandrills, 2 sumatran rhinos, 2 black rhinos, 2 white rhinos, 3 okapis, at least 10 black-and-white colobus monkeys, 2 mountain beavers, 2 asian lions, dall sheep, at least 8 walrus, etc. I'm forgetting loads of other interesting displays, but a zoo is still much more interesting because I like to see the displays actually MOVE.

21-07-2008

What about the fossils?

21-07-2008

The dinosaur galleries were the most impressive area of the entire museum, with some enormous skeletons and bewildering facts around every corner. The sheer volume of information is staggering, not to mention the bustling crowd that was packed into the dino hall. The rest of the musem was comfortable to walk around in, but the dinos were by far the #1 attraction.

Also: I finally got to see a red-and-black colobus monkey and a proboscis monkey...but they would have been so much better alive.

23-07-2008

Isn't the Museum grand. I always take my daughter there every time I am in New York. It is like a biology book, with all the life size ( or over sized ) animals and realistic dioramas. I can sit in front of a diorama and just day dreaming.

23-07-2008

Museum is very good and has a feel of "twitching" some famous fossils instead of gypsum replicas.

BTW, dioramas in major museums influenced North American zoos. In Bronx Zoo, some exhibits (particularly in Mouse House and bird house) look extremely like dioramas.

23-07-2008

Hey Snowleopard, did you happen to visit the Field Museum when you were in Chicago? I've been to both the AMNH and the Field, and while both are amazing, the Field is the best IMHO. So many very unique displays and more animal mounts than even the AMNH, if you can imagine. The main lobby alone is breathtaking. They have Sue, the most complete t-rex skeleton ever discovered. Also, you can see the Tsavo lions from the Ghost and the Darkness film, the actual skulls and mounts. I highly reccomend if you get the chance to go.

24-07-2008

@groundskeeper24: I didn't visit the Field Museum while in Chicago, as I was too busy with Shedd, Brookfield and Lincoln Park. There are actually a number of terrific things to do in Chicago, and if the motels were cheaper then perhaps my wife and I would have stayed longer than 2 nights. We are on such a long road trip (8 weeks) that we are desperately attempting to keep our motel costs down. Small towns = cheap rooms, while the big cities are sometimes literally twice the price.