My wife and I spent almost 5 hours at this prestigious New York City establishment today, and the place is absolutely massive. The sheer enormity of the building, with its myriad of rooms and galleries, is slightly overwhelming to most visitors. It is similar to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (and I'm not even close to being an art lover) in that the structure is so large that one has to pick and choose the favourites to see before moving on. At both museums we skipped past entire rooms and still couldn't help spending hours wandering the cavernous hallways. We took more than a hundred shots, but due to the dim lighting I'm not sure how many I'll be able to post here on ZooBeat. I'm also not sure how many people are really that interested in taxidermy...haha.
There is a full-scale blue whale hanging from the ceiling of the aquatic animals room, many galleries full of a plethora of dinosaur bones and ancient fossils, and all sorts of other animal-related information. It would take days, weeks, maybe even months to digest all of the data that is contained within the 32 million artifacts that are contained within the building(s).
It is interesting to see some of the labelling of the animals, as the mammal halls were finished many, many years ago:
African wild dogs - called "Hunting Dogs"
Hamadryas baboon - called an "Anubis Baboon"
Black-and-white colobus monkeys - called "Mantled Monkeys"
Greater Kudu - "Greater Koodoo"
Lesser Kudu - "Lesser Koodoo"
Asian Lions from the "Gar Forest" (isn't it Gir???)
Some of the monkeys, and 2-3 of the lemurs, had weird names that I'd never heard before. Perhaps it's time for the museum to update their signs.
It was interesting to see a display of 11 mandrills, 2 sumatran rhinos, 2 black rhinos, 2 white rhinos, 3 okapis, at least 10 black-and-white colobus monkeys, 2 mountain beavers, 2 asian lions, dall sheep, at least 8 walrus, etc. I'm forgetting loads of other interesting displays, but a zoo is still much more interesting because I like to see the displays actually MOVE.
There is a full-scale blue whale hanging from the ceiling of the aquatic animals room, many galleries full of a plethora of dinosaur bones and ancient fossils, and all sorts of other animal-related information. It would take days, weeks, maybe even months to digest all of the data that is contained within the 32 million artifacts that are contained within the building(s).
It is interesting to see some of the labelling of the animals, as the mammal halls were finished many, many years ago:
African wild dogs - called "Hunting Dogs"
Hamadryas baboon - called an "Anubis Baboon"
Black-and-white colobus monkeys - called "Mantled Monkeys"
Greater Kudu - "Greater Koodoo"
Lesser Kudu - "Lesser Koodoo"
Asian Lions from the "Gar Forest" (isn't it Gir???)
Some of the monkeys, and 2-3 of the lemurs, had weird names that I'd never heard before. Perhaps it's time for the museum to update their signs.
It was interesting to see a display of 11 mandrills, 2 sumatran rhinos, 2 black rhinos, 2 white rhinos, 3 okapis, at least 10 black-and-white colobus monkeys, 2 mountain beavers, 2 asian lions, dall sheep, at least 8 walrus, etc. I'm forgetting loads of other interesting displays, but a zoo is still much more interesting because I like to see the displays actually MOVE.
