Museum of Natural History in NYC

This weekend I visited the Museum of Natural History in NYC with my sisters. My two favorite exhibits at the Museum were the North American Mammals and the Hall of South American Peoples. When I first walked in the first thing I saw were the underwater animals. I was very shocked and disturbed to see how large they were.

Look at the size of the crab in comparison to the lobster! 

I went to the Hall of North American Mammals first upon hearing from a tour guide that it was “fire,” whatever that meant. I really enjoyed seeing all of the different animals and it made me want to travel around the world to see new things. There were animals like foxes, bears, mosquitoes, mountain lions, and lynxes. They are all taxidermied animals, which is creepy to think about.

The next exhibit, the Hall of South American Peoples was very interesting and disturbing. I was most interested to read about there war rituals in the process of the shrinking head. After battles the people who won would cut off the losers head and then shrink the skin and put it over a rock. Later, they would hand the shrunken heads around the village to prevent the avenging souls from coming back. They showed all of the different outfits of the warriors of different time periods which were very interesting because they ranged from full body amour using sea shells to covering themselves in very thick bundles of hay, all very unique outfits.

Armor made of shells

Shrunken Head

On a lighter note, the gem exhibit was very pretty to look at. I’ve never seen diamonds or gem so big. Some were bigger than the size of my head. A girl can dream! What was ever more interesting is that most of them were donated to the museum, which means people actually owned and wore them!