Happy Pride Month to you all! And Happy Birthday to myself!
(Fitting since I am somewhat non binary and at least partially asexuall, but I am still figuring those out because none of these terms fit 100% to how I feel, but no mather!)
My birthday was on the 4th of June, and today I finally found some time to post about it! To celebrate my birthday (and also Pride month, I always combine these two occations) I went to the museum for evolution that opened in my general area. I got a newspaper clipping wraped in wrapping paper to inform me of the opening of the museum with my other gifts xD xD
So anyways, let's get on with my museum trip!
Yes, the evolutionary museum had a live lizard! He was placed nexto a few cases with taxidermy, so he scared me when he first moved. But once I got over that I enjoyed that he was so curriouse! He even looked at the camera!
This was the little garden with moving & roaring dinosaurs. They also had a bunch of plaques with dinosaur facts!
In the rest of the museum there were almost exclusively taxidermy animals. I don't know if you noticed but they never get the felines quite right. I am not sure if that is because they have a difficult bone structure or something, but all the other animals looked so alive! And I was at a lot of these taxidermy nature museums over the years but the cats always look really fucked up in comparison. Just zoom into that one nexto the bear! xD xD
This was one of my favourite sections! This was the mountain section and the snow leopard looks so fluffy! When alive they can jump up to 15 meters in one jump. That is a world record in the animal kingdom!
This a lesser known feline. It is called a clouded leopard, or Nebelparder in German. And fun fact: When I was in primary school everyone in my class tryed to tell me that I made that animal up xD I was always a nerd for animals so I can understand why other 6-7 year olds didn't know about that species, but it made me really upset in the moment! They are really cool because they can climb on the underside of branches, upsidedown. And they drop on their prey (monkeys) from that position!
That weird guy up on the branch is called binturong or simply bearcat. It smells like popcorn! Yes, really! That is caused by a chemical in their urine, they use that smell to mark their terretory. And they are native to Southeast Asia.
In this one you can see how insanely big tigers are! The cat on the branch is a leopard. And as far as I know they are both adults! The leopard looks like a housecat in comparisson, even though it was also fairly large.
These big reptiles are komodo dragons. They are the largest living lizards on the planet! Until 2009 it was believed that they killed their prey with toxic bacteria in their "dirty" mouthes. But in that year scientists found out that they actually produce their own venom, which can bring down a waterbuffalo by stopping their blood from clotting and drastically dropping their blood preasure. When the animal collapses the komodo dragon can eat.
This one was especially fascinating to me because it is a tylacine or Tasmanian Tiger! They went extinct somewhere between the 1980s and the 2000s. But some do believe that very few specimens still live somewhere in Australia. They were the largest carnivor masurpial in the modern time. And it is crazy that a museum in Austria has a stuffed version!
And if we stick with the Australia theme here are some great kangaroos. And in the backround is a dingo. The kangaroos really were taller than me! xD xD
The Australia section really had all the greatest hits of australian animals. In this example we have a Kiwi, a Kea and Kakapo. Yes that bird really is named Kakapo xD
My mums favourite, the African Elephant! I don't know if I mentioned this but the entire livingroom is full of elephant statues and paintings! And in the back is the most dangerouse animal in Africa (luckily it was dead :D) the hippo!
The kings of the savana! And the namesakes for my cat Simba. They actually managed to do the faces really well here! Maybe big cats are easyer to taxidermy ?
I think this is one of the rarer rhino species on earth. The broad mouthed rhinos. At least there was a sign about them nexto this section, which also mentioned the other rare and long extinct rhinos in history. Like the wolly rhino.
I never really thought about it but a taxidermy monkey is really odd... kinda like a taxidermy human. Because we are very similar to them. Has anyone ever taxidermied a human? I get why that is ethically horrible to do! But there surely has to be at least one!
This big guy startled me! Because that tunnel underneath him is where you come into the room, and I turned around and thought there was actually a mountain lion in this museum xD Idk why I came to THAT conclusion either since all the other animals were stuffed, but they also stalk prey from behind in real life. So it kinda makes sense! I think the saying goes that if you see a puma it wants you to see it. If it were to hunt you, you wouldn't know until it jumped you.
Apart from the different penguins you can clearly see the difference between a seal and a sea lion here! Because sea lions stand a little more upright on their flippers and they have outward facing little ears, while seals only have hidden ear holes.
(I suspect these polar bears are synthetic, because they are a little to small to be real, but a museum can't have everything they are majestic anyways) Also there are a few puffins on the right. I always loved those because they seem like a mix between a penguin and a regular bird xD Also love their diving hunting strategy!
That tiny fossil on the left is a pterodactyl! It belongs to the pterosaurs. And their sizes vary wildly! The biggest one is the Quetzalcoatlus, it as about giraffe sized! The size difference between the Quetzalcoatlus and this specimen (I can't remember the exact name on the plaque, sorry! :O) is insane! not even the Quetzalcoatlus's babys were that small!
If you look back to the picture of the garden with the dinosaurs, you can see a huge metall globe! YOu can go inside that globe and in there are the dinosaur fossils at the bottom and when you go up the stairs you can read about all the different prehistoric time periods, like the Triassic and the Jurassic, with each time having a small display with a fossil or model coresponding to the time period. For example the Triceratops skull was for the Cretaceous period.
I just noticed that I kinda covered the evolution backwards xD xD Starting with the animals that live today and now we are with the dinosaurs xD Like a timetravel mission, but our time machine is traveling only backwards xD By the way, the Tyranosaurus rex also lived during the Cretaceous period.
This is one of the most majestic photos I took that day! Again in that metall globe! It really looks like that cloudy bubble aestetic that was popular in the 2000s. The timeline goes from the beginning of life at the top, downward toward the dinosaurs from before!
They also had these Takins, at least I think that is what they are. Because they didn't have a sign for them. The museum was right nexto a zoo, and I think the zoo and the museum somehow belong together, so it makes sense that they have some life animals. Anyways Takins can climb very well and they are known to climb on trees sometimes.
And now that we are at the end of my museum adventure I thought I would share a quick peak at what I got for my birthday, because I think it is funny how well my family and friends know me! Because I think very little now 19 year olds would enjoy books, puzzles and museums as much as I do! xD
For a quick overview: I got a Drakwing Duck comic (huge fan!) the book "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawkings, (love science and physics), a puzzle, some skin care, like lotion, sunscreen and a few small tubes of balm for dry skin, as well as cologne. Oh, and the shoes because you have to dress nice for my exams I will be having soon, where you can't wear sneakers. And of cource the newspaper clipping!
xD Just realised that being nerdy/ having weird special interests is a kinda stereotype for LGBTQ+ people because that sometimes blurrs together with the Autism and ADHD people. So my post is extra fitting!
Now enjoy your pride month!
And stay curriouse!