100th Blog Post! London's Natural History Museum

It felt like spring today as my roommate Kevin and I left out flat a little after 10 this morning. We were headed to the Kensington section of London to visit the Natural History Museum. A lot of people were out enjoying the warm and sunny weather. It's starting to look like spring too...many of the flowering trees are starting to open up.


Located on Exhibition Road next to the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum opened in 1881. Its collections had originated within the British Museum until it was decided that a separate facility was needed. This world class museum has over 70 million items. It is organized into five primary collections: Botany, Entomology (study of insects), Mineralogy, Palaeontology, and Zoology. Many of its artifacts are historically as well as scientifically significant, including specimens collected by Charles Darwin.


There are elevated walkways through several parts of the museum, as seen above in the dinosaur exhibit. Being an old building, all of the rooms were designed with high ceilings. As time went on and as more space was needed, the solution became building these elevated platforms to increase exhibition space without comprising the historic integrity of the building. You will notice that the suspension support system does not meet the side walls and is built around support columns, leaving the room untouched. The Victoria and Albert Museum next door has done the same thing in certain areas.


The dinosaur exhibit is one of the more popular collections in the museum, with several different dinosaur skeletons. This seemed to be a favorite among little kids...as the entire thing was clogged with parents and their children.


At the end of the raised platform, you enter a separate room and a ramp leads you down to the first floor. You hear loud screeching noises and roars, with danger signs on the walls (you can't see into the middle of the room - a high wall separates the ramp along the perimeter of the room from the center). When you get to the end, you are looking at the tail end of a teen-aged T-Rex who is moving about and showing his big teeth to the crowd.


The mammal exhibit has some really neat things. Some of the animals looked like they were real while others were obviously well done models. My favorite was the polar bear of course...see the resemblance? This one looked happy to see me - must have recognized me as his North American cousin.


There was a huge section on dolphins and whales. The museum does a great job of explaining not just what the animals look like and where they live, but how they move and how that ties in with how they eat and perform other basic functions. There were also true stories shown on a different display that explain how intelligent these animals are. Here are three true stories:

"Mary Lou McBride, on holiday from New York, was today saved from drowning by a most unlikely Sir Galahad. A 200 pound bottle-nosed dolphin swept Mary Lou to safety after her dinghy had capsized."

"When a performing dolphin died in Florida its tank-mate took over the act - without any training! It performed each trick perfectly."

"These West African fishermen have a novel way of fishing. They set their nets, and slap the water with sticks. Apparently in response, dolphins appear and drive the fishes towards the nets. Then both the dolphins and fishermen can feed..."


Here is a view of the whale display that is part of the mammal exhibit. This is looking down on the gallery from the second floor. The largest model in the center is of a blue whale. It brings back memories of elementary school, when in third grade during our unit on whaling our class made a fourteen foot-long papier-mache whale and hung it from the ceiling. Last I knew it was still there. My teacher was British - I wonder if this was where she got her inspiration?


...Just in case you ever wanted to know how to make whale noises, here you go. Who said museums are boring?


What a picture when it's out of context! This was actually part of an interactive exhibit about human behavior. This particular display was about using your senses, and asked kids what they would tell a reporter if they saw an alien (a light up model of a stereotypical looking alien life form was to the left of this picture). Kids would press the button and the alien display would light up for a minute and then go black. They would have to use their memories to try to explain what they had seen. As a journalism student, I found it especially relevant seeing as this is something we have to deal with all of the time! When we have to talk to witnesses at the scene of an event, many people tell different stories of what's going on. Sometimes it can be a real pain!


The next installment of Kevin jumping! We came across a display on perception, and it mentioned how little kids don't understand why a shadow forms and how they will try to jump on their shadow's head. Kevin, never missing such an opportunity, took his cue and I took the picture. I've yet to hear an explanation of how his picture-jumping tradition started, but I'll be sure to get one eventually!


This was a really cool entrance to one of the exhibits. It one bank of screens in the center that is 4 screens by 5 screens. The mirrors on the sides, top, and bottom, create the visual effect of a globe made up of these screens - representing the earth. If you look at the clouds and triangles on the edge on the lower half of the picture, you can see where the reflections start.


And finally, if you wanted to know what the insides of your lungs look like, this is your chance. This was the last exhibit we looked at - our next stop was Notting Hill and Portobello Road.