The gargoyles of the Natural History MuseumIn December we stopped off at the Natural History Museum so I could say "Hello" to the whale.
For my entire life, the entrance hall of the Museum has been dominated by a Diplodocus skeleton. walking into the museum you were faced with this incredible reminder of the planet's ancient past and the incredible beasts it was home to. The skeleton was actually a cast, and became iconic, in part because prior to arriving in the Hintze Hall it was stolen for a Disney film. Then one day some numpty decided to call this massive animal "Dippy". What the f...?
IT'S A DINOSAUR! for crying out loud, not a bloody cartoon character for pre-school children. A dinosaur - a terrible lizard! The whole reason dinosaurs are fascinating to children (and adults) is that they are terrifying. They're monsters that are bigger than anything we see on land these days (yeah, I know there were small dinosaurs, but don't cramp my outrage). Treat these skeletons with respect!
Anyway...
A decision was made drive out the dinosaur and put something else in the hall as part of a re-fit. So now the Hintze Hall has a blue whale skeleton instead.
Now, when I was kid the whale room had a life-size model of blue whale hanging from the ceiling. For some reason it terrified me. For umpteen years I refused to go in the whale room without tantrums. Even now there's a moment of hesitation (but fewer tantrums). As a result, I'm quite happy with the idea of a whale replacing the dinosaur.
However, when you walk in it looks rather odd:
The whale is facing straight at you, which is good, but unless you're up on whale physiology it's not totally obvious where the flesh would be, so the effect is slightly muted. Once you start walking around and looking at it from other angles, it starts to grow on you.
One thing we noticed was that there were a lot more people in the upper gallery of the hall than normal - people, including us, are going up there to get eye-to-eye socket with a big airborne mammal:
As before, the hall's alcoves have interesting beasties:
American Mastodon skeletonNo relation to the heavy metal band whose second album is named Leviathan and has a whale on the cover (coincidence? I think not!)
We were mainly there for the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition. All the photos are of course copyright, but you can see a few in the gallery.
We also stopped in to an interesting exhibition on things that live in the dark. Being a museum, it was all dead things apart from a few fish, but there was lots of Things In Jars, which is something they do very well:
Sloane's Viperfish (Chauliodus sloani), which along with belly-lights and a lure on its dorsal fin has the longest teeth of any fish relative to its body size
Bearded Seadevil (Linophryne coronata) auditioning for Alien. The dangly thing is a barbel - a lure with a light on the end to attract food, and possibly also matesPreviously we were here as part of our Darwin weekend, and on this visit found more Darwin-related stuff (which I didn't photograph) such as the taxidermied remains of his pet armadillo.
The Hintze Hall Whale at night