Natural history museums with live animals

I think that is a great example and thanks for mentioning it. The live exhibit / butterfly conservatory has taken up space over one of the dioramas which to be honest I would be far more interested in personally seeing than another butterfly house.

I cant remember whether the Whitney Hall of Oceanic Birds was still open or closed when I went to the AMNH (would have been around 2010 / 2011).

 

Could a zoo technically be considered a natural history museum that only has live animals?

 

Hmmmmm possibly, that is quite an interesting question really

 

There is a zoo in the USA in Arizona or New Mexico I believe that calls / brands itself "the living desert museum" (not sure if I've got the name right there).

It is a zoo / natural history museum but with a focus / theme on the local desert ecosystem.

 

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

 

I've always thought of them as such.

 

Yes, I think that must be the one I meant

 

The Delbridge Museum of Natural History at the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls, SD has a couple species of turtles housed in it. I can't remember the specific species off hand, would have to go back to my photos to see. At the entrance they also had a small exhibit with Von der Decken's hornbills and dwarf mongoose. Not really part of the museum per se, but nonetheless was still at the entrance to it.

 

Thank you for your comment ! and reminding me of animals in natural history displays located within zoos.

There is a small natural history educational display (very hard to call it a "museum" though as that would be quite a stretch) within the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City right by the entrance and it often contains an aquarium with axolotls.

 

The Houston Museum of Natural Science here in Houston, Texas has the Cockerell Butterfly Center, a three-story greenhouse with an indoor simulated rainforest and lots of butterflies. It opened in 1994, at the height of the craze for indoor rainforest exhibits. I think this early 90s fad did a lot to blur the lines between aquariums, natural history museums, and zoos. For museums, I imagine it didn’t seem like too much of a stretch as first, seemed like just a greenhouse. For aquariums, the focus at the time on the Amazon Rainforest in particular fave them a logical tie-in to the aquatic animals in the river of the same name. While it seems that most museums didn’t venture beyond insects, the aquariums experienced more mission creep, keeping birds and even mammals like monkeys and sloths. Once they had that experience, I’ve noticed that they’ve extended beyond their rainforest exhibits in their keeping of animals formerly only kept in zoos. Though personally I don’t see anything wrong with this mission creep as long as the aquariums and museums are doing it responsibly, which by and large the ones I’ve seen are. I especially find it refreshing to see live animals in a natural science museum instead of (or at least in addition to) mounted or replica specimens.

The only real exception, ie aquarium that has gone too far that I’ve encountered is the Dallas World Zoo. It’s AZA-accredited, but is a private for-profit facility, no board of directors, basically at the whim of its owner, a guy who made his fortune in high end corporate catering. When I first went there in the early 90s, it really was just an aquarium, with traditional tanks with fish and inverts, all on the smaller scale, no big walk-through tanks or anything like that. Any sharks they might have had were really small ones like you might see in a private homeowner’s tank – bamboo sharks, etc. Then they bought the building next to them and started to expand. Started keeping birds, and the first thing that gave me concern, about 1997, was they had a jaguar, and in a really small enclosure, which I did not like. That was probably about the last time I went, because I graduated from college and moved to Houston for grad school soon after that. They have continued to grow and expand since then, but not without controversy. It seems the owner is really big on having species that other zoos don’t have, which means he does a lot of collecting from the wild, in fact prides himself on it. There is also a lot of other sketchy stuff going on there: What Happened When One Man Built His Dream Zoo

Oh, and the above article does give a shout out to Zoochat!

 

The Houston Museum of Natural Science has a wonderful butterfly exhibit, they also have some other insects on display in that section. I think they also have horseshoe crabs in their ocean hall.

 

It seems that quite a number of natural history museums in Europe and North America (and presumably in other parts of the world) have gone with the concept of having a live butterfly house / exhibit on site as a part of the institution.

Why does everyone think this is a popular practice for these museums ?

Is it to attract more influx of visitors / money ?

Is there greater educational potential and recreational enjoyment for the visitors ?

Could it be the ease of care and inexpensiveness of raising the butterflies is a "win / win" ?

 

It is quite popular as museums try hard to be more attractive.

Note that butterflies are almost always imported from butterfly farms in the tropics as pupae.

 

Yes, this is what I thought one of the principal reasons for this would be.

To be honest though I would be a lot happier with Potosi pup fish, lemur leaf frogs, olms, axolotls, saphire tarantulas and Lord Howe island stick insects (though I am not representative of the general public at all).

 

I think the combination of reasons you posit is why it is done. Visitor numbers increase and butterfly exhibits align with the institutions's educational message. Several zoos have seasonal butterfly exhibits also, at least in North America. The Bronx Zoo, Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, and the Living Desert all come to mind.

 

I suppose butterfly houses are good to have on site in this sense.

However, I wonder if more natural history museums could also keep smaller critically endangered species on site and for the public to see the way that the Manchester museum in the UK does with amphibians ?

It could help in terms of research and housing these species in a time of biodiversity crisis and generally increase these institutions conservation output. Not to mention, it would be brilliant for educational purposes with the general public.

 

Though I haven't personally visited yet, the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History which is on the campus of Tel Aviv University in Tel Aviv, Israel has live invertebrate displays inside it's museum building. Those include several stick insects, hissing cockroaches, lubber grasshoppers, a nest of Camponotus, Gryllotalpa, crickets, grasshoppers, assassin bugs, scorpions, and a few spider species etc. The collections manager in their entomology department is friend of mine. I actually thought about sending him some specimens of Arizona native insects I have stored in my freezer. He doesn't oversee the live invertebrate displays, another curator and collection manager deal with that.

Meir Segals Garden University Zoo which is situated next to the museum building is actually a part of the museum, similar to Ralph Perkins II Wildlife Center & Woods Garden at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Like the wildlife center at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Meir Segals Garden University Zoo specializes in taxa native to its region, but that is not all they keep. Native Israeli/Palestinian species and subspecies kept at Meir Segals include Syrian rock hyrax, Palestine blind mole rat, Syrian striped hyena, Palestine jungle cat, Syrian golden jackal, Anatolian wild boar, Mesopotamian fallow deer, Palestine mountain gazelle, Nubian ibex, Palestine red fox, Tristam's jird, Sundevall's jird, Long eared hedgehog etc.

As far as natural history museums with live animal exhibits that I have personally visited, boy do I have a lot to contribute! I will share such examples in further posts I plan to make in this thread.

 

My memory might not be fully correct, but I believe the HMNS location in Sugar Land actually has more live animal exhibits than the main one in Houston, at least as far as amphibian exhibits are concerned. I would be happy to post correlating photographs in the forum.

 

As far as natural history museums with live animal exhibits are concerned, here is a list of ones I have been to, some of which were mentioned in this thread already, those being Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and both locations of the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

Outside of those collections, here is my list;

San Diego Natural History Museum - San Diego, San Diego County, California

Cabrillo Marine Aquarium - San Pedro, Los Angeles County, California (I bring them up because they call themselves or at least used to, a Marine Museum)

Western Science Center - Hemet, Riverside County, California

San Bernardino County Museum - Redlands, San Bernardino County, California

Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History - Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz County, California

Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History - Pacific Grove, Monterey County, California

Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (Both the main museum and it's Sea Center on the Pier) - Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County, California

Nevada State Museum - Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada

Arizona Museum of Natural History - Mesa, Maricopa County, Arizona

Arizona Sonora Desert Museum - Tucson, Pima County, Arizona

Flandrau Science Center & Planetarium at the University of Arizona - Tucson, Pima County, Arizona

International Wildlife Museum - Tucson, Pima County, Arizona

Las Cruces Museum of Nature & Science - Las Cruces, Dona Ana County, New Mexico

New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science - Albuquerque, Bernalillo County, New Mexico

Dr. Antonio Gennaro Museum of Natural History at Eastern New Mexico University - Portales, Roosevelt County, New Mexico

Witte Museum - San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

Garth & Jerri Frehner Museum of Natural History at Southern Utah University - Cedar City, Iron County, Utah

Monte L Bean Life Sciences Museum - Provo, Utah County, Utah

Utah Museum of Natural History - Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah

Florida Museum of Natural History - Gainesville, Alachua County, Florida

If anyone is interested in further details about these collections, I would be happy to share those with you.

 

@UngulateNerd92 Thank you so much for listing these museums !

That is quite an impressive list of different institutions that you have visited.

I'm intrigued, what live specimens do these museums keep in their collections ?