The Animal Museum

Strange things are afoot at the….Beaty Biodiversity Museum. Who knew that there were so many bizarre and fascinating things hidden at a what feels like deep underground bunker within UBC? The awe-inspiring 26 metre long skeleton of a blue whale, hung in the atrium, does not prepare you for how “dark” the rest of the museum is.

Although, not be as grand and well known as the Museums of Natural History in New York and London, it was a fun and slightly creepy way to spend the afternoon. The 20,000 square feet museum, with its 26 narrow rows of taxidermied and bottled specimens, reminded me of the book stacks found in libraries.

Sean and I started the zigzag at the Cowan tetrapod collection, which contains over 40,000 specimens of mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles.

That was followed by the marine invertebrate collection, the herbarium, the entomological collection, the fish museum, the fossil collection and discovery lab.

But enough chit chat. Let’s get to the good stuff. Disclaimer: you might not want to be eating when viewing these pictures.

Reminded me of Interpol’s cd cover for Our Love to be Admired.

Little lemur.

The creepy wasn’t the lying down. It was the cotton eyes.

What lies beneath.

Watery beasts.

Suckers.

Giger-esque creatures.

Antlers galore.

Our favourite part of the museum was the taxidermied animals, particularly the horned animals. Although sad but yet beautiful in the way it was displayed, these weren’t the things that gave me icky shivers. It was all the watery beasts in bottles of formaldehyde. And the skinned crocodile. That one made me yelp.

Although the admission was on the expensive side, it is definitely worth checking out. There is much fascinating and repulsive things to take in. And if biodiversity is not your bag, at least you can escape the summer heat in this concrete underground facility.

View more photos of the Beaty Biodiversity Museum on my Flickr album.