Visiting the new museum is well worth the wait caused by the renovations to and expansion of the old museum. The museum first opened in 1879 and was North Carolina's first public museum. The addition to the old museum makes it the largest natural history museum in the southeastern United States.
When you visit the museum, you can see nearly 3,500 live animals representing 270 species or subspecies; this is enough to qualify the museum as a mid-sized zoo! The majority of the animals, 2,000 of them, are arthropods and marine invertebrates. Also included are many species of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
In addition to the live animals, the museum has several exquisitely constructed dioramas showing different ecosystems found in North Carolina.
Be sure to watch "Wilderness North Carolina" in the first floor auditorium when you visit the museum. This 17-minute film captures beautiful wild areas and wild animals found in North Carolina. From American oyster catchers on Battery Island and black bears at Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge to gray tree frog breeding season in Wake County, you can see it in "Wilderness North Carolina."
The first floor of the museum is occupied by the "Coastal North Carolina" exhibit -- be sure to look up to see the the skeletons of a 65-foot-long blue whale, a 50-foot right whale, a 55-foot sperm whale and a 30-foot humpback whale.
The second floor contains the "Mountains to the Sea" exhibit, a two-story diorama complete with native plants, live animals and a running mountain waterfall. Also on the second floor is "In the Dark," a traveling exhibit developed by the Cincinnati Museum Center. "In the Dark" is a hands-on interactive exhibit which allows visitors to experience life from the perspective of animals that live in the dark, from bats and cave-dwelling creatures to animals that live in the dark depths of the oceans. Admission to "In the Dark" is $3 for adults, $1 for children under 11 years and seniors over 60 and free to Friends of the Museum members (more information about the Friends of the Museum program later in this article). The next traveling exhibit to be hosted by the museum will be "The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park and the Lost World," showing from October 2000 to January 2001. You can bet I will be there for that exhibit!
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