
For being a relatively small town, Cambridge, England, has a lot of museums. I already showed you the Sedgwick and the Cambridge Science Centre. Today we’re visiting the Museum of Zoology.
The museum is hidden in a densely built courtyard, behind lecture halls and other buildings. You know you’ve found it when you spot the whale skeleton.
Inside, the museum has more skeletons, but these are a bit smaller than the whale outside.
This one is still big!
The hippo is much smaller, though. Aww.
Besides skeletons, the museum also has a large collection of shells. (I asked Twitter whether I could call those exoskeletons, but the people there said no. Anyway, skeletons and shells.)
The shell on the right looks like math.
The museum also has a collection of specimens that were collected by Darwin, like these barnacles:
The zoological museum is part of the department of Zoology, just like the Sedgwick museum belongs to the department of Earth Sciences. There are several other Cambridge museums that are part of the university. I visited the museum of anthropology just before I left, and sadly never made it to the museum of history of science, but will keep that in mind as future destination.
It’s a great place, but unfortunately it’s closed for redevelopment for the next three years:
http://news.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/2013/01/10/museum-of-zoology-wins-heritage-lottery-fund-support/
Glad we left Cambridge when we did, then. Hardly any point in staying if the Museum of Zoology is closed.