This museum has been here open to public since 1835 and the Dinosaur has been greeting visitors for more than 100 years. That speaks about the heritage of this monument. The museum has various sections like Dinosaurs, Human life, Geology, Insects and many others, each one better than the other. Its not just a museum, but there are many scientists, palaeontologists,entomologist and archaeologists working here at the lower floors where there is a labyrinth of shelves stocked with fossils and bones. I started with the Dinosaur exhbit and what amazed me the most was the Animatronic Dino's there. I can imagine how enthralled the kids will be at the sight of these Dino's that moved and made noise because I was. The ambiance was set to take us to the Jurassic era. Most of the atrifact there did speak about the non commercial story of Dinos that is generally not depicted in movies. For example herbivore Dino's has pebbles in their belly to help grind food and the chicken does the same! Here is a video to give you a glimpse of what I saw.
What would take one hours of reading to understand will just take a few minutes to understand with the exhibits, I must admit that I went though this section twice.
. The next section was marine and animal life. As I walked in this massive hall my jaw dropped at the sight of a full size model of a giant blue whale! the largest living creature ever to be on Earth ( yes even Dino's were not this big).
The skeletons of these large mammals overhung the models giving a very good perception. There was loads I learnt from this spectacular place. For example a whale uses 90% of its lung capacity compared to a human which is 15%.Whale milk is made of 45% fat as to a human milk which is 5%. This is for the offspring to gain weight as quickly as possible but as an infant it already weights 3 tonnes! There is an illusive whale that lives around the Antarctic which has a fairytale unicorn kind of horn and one in 500 of these beautiful creature called Narwhal has 2 of them.The use of this point long horn is not to poke and intimidate fellow mates but to use it to direct the sound waves!
Many of you reading this might have seen innumerable pictures of whales and wondering where is the lips of a whale and how does it ever open it.
Hope this picture on the left explains.One more interesting fact i learnt was that 80% of the space in the head of a sperm whale is a tank filled with wax. It solidifies the wax and warms it to make it liquid to me a buoyancy tank. So that its easier to float or Dive!
The yellow section over the skull is the bulbous Wax tank.
The rules of nature sometimes feels so unreal that the largest creature on earth only feeds on the smallest. zooplankton and phytoplankton, using not a super sharp canine teeth that we imagine large monsters to have but humble comb like tooth to filter the water from its food.
As I wanlked further to see more I let the child in me do the thing it likes the most. Draw. Here is my attempt.
Going further I explored the insect section where the fabulous world of insects which is so critical to the ecology was exhibited with large scale models telling a story to remember. For example a one cubic feet of earth on a forest surface is on average home to 3000 types of insects which is a testimny to the fact that till this very day insectologist discover hundreds of new species in the jungles of papua new guinea and amazon.
On my second session of the following weekend I was lucky enough to participate in a live seminar about bats in the museum where a member from one of the bat clubs had come to share knowledge about Bats. I did get the chance to have some bat poo on my hands to grind them to fine dust just to make the point that its not slimy!. I also learnt that Bats are extremely clean creature because they have to fly hence they groom themselves well, but not they don't clean their toilets at all which is good because their poo is an extremely good manure.
Bats on an average live for 30 years which totally took me by surprise. That is long for such a small and active creature. The common belief that bats are blind was dispelled and their hearing capability was far superior to us was reinstated. I did get the opportunity to see a live bat and to even touch it. I was the only adult amongst the kids standing tall to do this, I am not shy in hiding my excitement.The kids and I walked with the same grin on the smile thinking "Bats are super Cool"
The next section was about mineralogy. This was a bit on the technical side because there was thousands, I kid you not thousands. A section called the Vault housed some of the most expensive stones like rarest of rare diamonds and Lunar rock samples along with some asteroids and meteorites. On every single sample the chemical composition was mentioned which did not much good for me but the colours, vibrance, texture one them facinated me.
. I came to know that most of the asteroids that made it to earth surface are nothing but chunks of Iron in purest form. The crystalline structure on a the cross section is what scientist study to understand how the raw materials for the creation of our home was even before earth formed. yes they are all much older than our own Earth!
All in all the, no matter where I go the museums are still hold the number one places on my places to visit list, not that it kills time, but when you walk out the doors you walk out with more information than what you had when you walked in.That too for FREE!
On the lighter side of things I did travel to east ham with my mates to see the Indianess of this part of the metropolitan city and I did see it evidently. It looked like a street right from India. I did head to my favourite south Indian restaurant, 'Sharavana Bhavan' which was also here to enjoy a mouth watering pancake called 'Masala Dosa'.
. Followed by the supposedly hilarious movie 'hang over part two' at the O2 arena.
. I also got the opportunity to witness a brazalian samba dance group. The beats and the hip shaking beautiful girls did make me stay ans watch for a few minutes. For more pictures:
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