Zooish, does the natural history museum or any of Singapore's other biodiversity attractions have live invertebrate displays like insects, spiders, scorpions, etc.?
I don't remember seeing invertebrate displays in pictures from the zoo or its sister parks.
Zooish, does the natural history museum or any of Singapore's other biodiversity attractions have live invertebrate displays like insects, spiders, scorpions, etc.?
I don't remember seeing invertebrate displays in pictures from the zoo or its sister parks.
Yes, they do, but not much and with common species. The museum has 2 tanks for Asian Forest Scorpions and Gray's Stick Insects.
The Zoo's Fragile Forest exhibit has butterflies, stick insects, Madagascan Hissing Cockroaches, tarantulas, scorpions, rhinoceros beetles, giant millipedes and snails. The Night Safari's Naracoorte Cave exhibit has Asian Forest Scorpions (notice the trend here), whip scorpions and giant centipedes.
There is also the Butterfly Park Insect Kingdom on Sentosa Island which has a butterfly aviary and displays of scorpions (again) and rhinoceros beetles. It is a pretty run-down facility and has more dead (mounted) insect specimens than live ones.
What an awful exhibit!
Those birds are not lifelike mounts but merely study skins, which are useful for research only but not for display - they look unnatural and creepy to visitors, not educational.
Couldn't the museum find some fresh birds and hire a normal taxidermist to do the job?!
There is nothing wrong with this display, which comprises collections dating back decades to my knowledge; the museum is not going to actively kill and collect fresh birds just to keep people like you happy
What an awful exhibit!
Those birds are not lifelike mounts but merely study skins, which are useful for research only but not for display - they look unnatural and creepy to visitors, not educational.
Couldn't the museum find some fresh birds and hire a normal taxidermist to do the job?!
They do look creepy with cotton stuffed in their eye sockets! I'll pass on your feedback to the museum, maybe Jurong Bird Park can donate some of their birds
I belive that you mean that ironically Zooish, but I don't think that this would be a bad idea. It's still better than put the dead animals in the bin.
I don't know about that.
On the one hand, from what I have seen, the building architecture appears more creative than the exhibits.
But on the other hand, the facility is basically a vast study collection and it could do a great service by simply generating support for such collections. This case of skins is not in itself a problem, IMO. The question is how do they interpret it for visitors who are not studying biologists? If done well, it could be really engrossing.
The posing of the skins as they have does make most of them resemble projectiles. Better to have lined them up all showing a dorsal view perhaps even in a drawer so they can be interpreted as what they are rather than Frankenbirds.
The museum displays the specimens in various ways. For the bird specimens, there are also mounted pieces, as well as skins laid flat showing the dorsal view. For reptiles, amphibians and marine organisms, there are also specimens in formalin jars.
As Zooplantman mentioned, the facility is first and foremost a study collection and will opt for the most practical option in treating specimens for ease of storage. As the museum matures, I suspect more mounted pieces will be put on display to make the displays more appealing.
The museum displays the specimens in various ways. For the bird specimens, there are also mounted pieces, as well as skins laid flat showing the dorsal view.
Can you provide pics of bird mounts please?
Anyway, devoting such a large case to study skins it just a waste of exhibit space (which could be occupied by real mounts on perches).
For even better viewing opportunities, the skins can be exhibited in a 2-sided vertical flat glass display, supported by acrylic rods.
