WILD

This photo is taken from the mezzanine of the WILD exhibition. The signage is completely touchscreens which seems to make kids more interested (one of them found out the scientific name for warthogs and it spread through their class like wildfire). The mezzanine that I\'m standing on has a display about some of the forerunners of evolution (Wallace, Darwin etc.).

This looks really awesome!

I guess many of these specimens came from Melbourne Zoo. Is it just me or is the zebra at top left larger than it should be? It seems significantly bigger than the wildebeest nearby, but it might be an illusion.

The museum seems to have many modern features, what year did it open? Is it a natural history musuem?

If it's any help none of the walls are at right angles.

When this exhibition opened I read an article saying that it was built to showcase the museum's own collection. Museums Victoria have three sites around the city and as an organisation are a lot older than this new building (which opened in 2000).

It's predominantly a natural history museum with a lot of its focus on Victoria. Here's the website.

Exhibitions: Melbourne Museum

I will endevour to visit when the Birds of Paradise exhibition is on, to see how this room works properly. I took a virtual tour of it here: Wild - Virtual Exhibition: Melbourne Museum

What I meant by my comment earlier was that the museums probably acquired a number of the exotic specimens from Melbourne Zoo over the years, not just when this museum opened.

What an impressive hall! The upcoming BoP exhibition looks decent too.

Oh, I get you. I could imagine a lot of these species on exhibit at the zoo over the years but some of specimens in this hall are pretty incredible and this is probably the closest I'll come to seeing them. A giant armadillo, a shoebill stork, pangolins, and even some extinct species (thylacine and pig-footed bandicoot).

Just pop over to Singapore and you could see the Shoebill and Pangolin. Giant Armadillo might be a bit trickier...

I think most museum collections are heavily supplemented with zoo specimens, with some zoo characters immortalised as museum specimens, e.g. Rajah the elephant at the Auckland Museum and Chi Chi the panda at the Natural History Museum in London.

It's not really a zoo specimen but Melbourne Museum is home to Phar Lap's body.

But not his bones

These are displayed at Te Papa (NZ's national museum), although they were sent to Australia (Melbourne?) for an exhibition this year, not sure if they have returned yet.