Beaty Biodiversity Museum - Vancouver
By Coleman
Activity:
You're not going to believe this, but yesterday I was staring down a moose. Its nostrils were literally inches away from my face. And its antlers were huge, way bigger than my arms even. As for its legs and tail I couldn't tell you. You see it was stuffed, preserved, you know whatever a taxidermist does.Where was I? The Beaty Biodiversity Museum at U.B.C. Before you yawn and tell your Mom you have a headache, listen to this: The Beaty Biodiversity Museum has 40,000 vertebrates and 18,000 of these alone are mammals. That's the family moose belong to. It has an 82 foot skeleton of a blue whale hanging in the entrance. It's so big. You have to see it to believe it.
I tell ya I learned a lot at that museum. Altogether it has two million specimens of fossils, plants, fish, birds, mammals, marine life, insects, you name it, and I'll bet they have it. My Mom loved the section on bugs. She had no idea how many different types of lice and fleas are out there. That must be why the Georgia Strait newspaper awarded them "The Best Collection of Weird Things in Drawers." Speaking of drawers you could literally spend a week opening and closing drawers to see what's inside. If you like surprises, you've come to the right place.
The Beaty Museum also has some rare specimens you hardly ever see like the red panda and Vancouver Island marmot. Even extinct ones like the passenger pigeon. Some of the fossils date back 500 million years ago; that's way before the time of dinosaurs.
If you get bored there's a Discovery Lab where you can hang out doing science activities, reading, or even making something.
Science was never my favorite subject at school, but after visiting the Beaty Museum I promised Mom I would try harder. She always likes it when I say that.
Details:
The Beaty Biodiversity Museum is located at the University of British Columbia. The address is 2212 Main Mall, Vancouver and the phone number, 604-827-4955.www.beatymuseum.ubc.ca