Smithsonian mammal hall stuffed, ready for visitors

WASHINGTON - A towering moose stands nose to nose with a furry little pika. A porcupine huddles nearby in a child-level display. Around a corner, a vampire bat sets tooth to a sleeping scientist's foot.

A spectacular display of the taxidermist's art goes on view to the public today when the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (www.mnh.si.edu) opens its new mammal hall.

"This hall is about us," said Robert Sullivan, associate director of the museum. "Everyone who visits this hall is a mammal . . . a successfully adapted mammal."

The new exhibition contains 11 fossils and 274 preserved animals in dynamic displays, as they would have been seen in life.

"Children of all ages will be very pleased," said Lawrence Small, head of the Smithsonian Institution.

A pair of lions attacks a water buffalo. A giraffe, front legs splayed, stretches for a drink of water while a second reaches an impressive tongue upward to pull in some leaves for a meal.

Recalling a real incident, a vampire bat rests on a model of a scientist's foot - a display Sullivan expects youngsters to love "because it will gross out their parents."

In the arctic section, startled viewers suddenly see a polar bear looking down from above, while in the African savanna a hippo yawns, displaying a mouthful that would traumatize an orthodontist.

"We're setting a new standard in taxidermy here," said Sullivan, explaining that museum scientists told their taxidermists, "We don't want to show animals in the dullest moment of their lives . . . as most museums do."

Visitors entering the exhibition first meet a wall of photos of various mammals - animals that share such characteristics as specialized ear bones and secrete milk to feed their young. Included are cats and dogs, manatees, apes and monkeys.

All mammals are descended from a common ancestor. The exhibition discusses how evolution produced today's great variety from the tiny shrew-like creature, Morganucodon oelheri.

Affectionately known as Morgie to the scientists, this creature lived in the shadow of dinosaurs 210-million years ago.

An eight-minute video traces that evolution for visitors, who watch in the company of Harriet, a life-size sculpture of a chimpanzee seated on one of the benches.

Visitors can walk over clear glass atop casts of footprints of an ancient hominid in Africa, enjoy the sights and sounds of an African thunderstorm displayed on screens in the walls, and touch bear paws and feel blubber.

None of the animals on display was killed for this exhibit, Sullivan points out.

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