Trip to the Field Museum

[mycolorfulheart]

Last weekend I visited the Field museum in Chicago. It's a natural history museum, but they have alot of Asian and Egyptian artifacts as well. They had this really amazing exhibit that showed really early fossils, all the way up through the last ice age. So cool! I didn't get any pics of this unfortunately, but I got some in the reptile exhibit I thought you guys might like.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/brockley2/466b5287.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/brockley2/6220c58e.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/brockley2/54b836d6.jpg

No garters! :(

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/brockley2/f52781d2.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/brockley2/801c6390.jpg


All the animals are stuffed, which is a little saddening. I know why they did it, but it still just doesn't feel right to look into an animal's face and see lifeless glass eyes staring back at you. Some of the exhibits here were amazing however; it gets you up close and personal so you really have a perspective on how large an animal is. There was a skeleton of a ground tree sloth that was as big as most of the dinosaurs. So cool!

[mycolorfulheart]

One more: walrus skeleton.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/brockley2/adf3f161.jpg

[Stefan-A]

Thanks for posting the pictures. :)

I don't know about the dinosaurs, they've all been smaller than I imagined when I've been to exhibits and museums. :) They look bigger in the movies.

They never manage to make the suffed animals look lifelike anyway and the poses are usually ridiculous. Fortunately, many of the stuffed animals are several decades old, so the demand isn't that big. They've rarely used healthy animals either, I know that a few dead pet snakes have ended up stuffed in museums. :)

[Loren]

Pretty cool that they had a striped racer. Too bad theirs is stuffed, and looks half way emaciated.
They are common where I went hiking a couple days ago, but I have yet to catch one, as they are very fast and wary, as their sign says. Often, all you hear is the noise and see the movement in the grass as they disappear, and you are left thinking " I think that was one".


Fortunately, I came across someone that needed to find a home for one.
http://www.thamnophis.com/thamphotos/data//500/medium/California_Striped_Racer.jpg

They are truly awesome snakes. Insanely fast and agile, it grabs small mice from my hand with lightning speed as I enter the top of the cage, and hits them perfectly every time.

[Zephyr]

Looks like a garter kinda. :O

[adamanteus]

I agree with Stefan that the stuffed exhibits rarely look like the real thing. Fortunately my local museum (Manchester Museum) houses a live reptile collection, which changes periodically..
At present they have Brachylophus fasciata, which I had never seen in the flesh before.... I'm trying to figure out a good way to steal it!:D

[adamanteus]

Here's a pic.... Not the best, but Molly took it!:D

http://www.thamnophis.com/thamphotos/data//537/medium/Brachylophus_fasciata.jpg

Brachylophus fasciata.

[adamanteus]

They also have a T. rex..... but I think it's a dead one!:D

http://www.thamnophis.com/thamphotos/data//537/medium/T_rex.jpg

[Stefan-A]

Dead, or severly malnourished. ;)

[mycolorfulheart]

James, your local museum looks very old school and nerdy....wish I could visit it!

The worst stuffed animals were the tigers. They're so amazing in real life, but stuffed they lose all their personality/fire/intensity.