natural history (the last museum part 3)

Location: Auckland War Memorial Museum

Gallery: Natural History

the second floor of the auckland museum was my favourite as you'll see in the next two posts. where the third floor was a monument to the battles between humans (especially those involving humans from new zealand) the second floor was all about new zealand's nature inhabitants.

now as a great deal of new zealand's more impressive biology (since humans arrived anyway) lived in the water the auckland museum greets you to their natural history hall with a rather impressive model reef.

the ocean part of the hall is one of the best i'd seen in new zealand. their sting ray... though not the first i'd seen... was the neatest. every other museum mounted their replica rays top side up so you'd see their eyes. here in auckland they have it belly side up, you you get a cool view of the gills, and the very neat ray mouth!

having found fossil fresh water myledaphus ray teeth in drumheller i always like getting to see a real ray to compare to.

the fishie display case was really neat too. though i had an idea a lot of fish lived around the north island i had no idea they were this diverse!... again i'm used to seeing the fish of the much colder south island... they have some pretty cool stuff up here!

they of course also had a great white shark statue. you think i'd be used to seeing them by now what with the one at te papa (which is the exact same... if you don't believe me check it out for yourself!) and that mega megalodon at puke ariki. yet this one still startled me...

they also had a cool swordfish. though i couldn't help feel i'd seen it before as it too also looked like one i'd seen at te papa (again check it out if you doubt me...).

wow a trigger fish. i have no idea they had trigger fish here in new zealand!?! i love trigger fish.

closing off the ocean hall and marking your entry into the rest of the natural history hall was a small baleen whale skeleton.


despite there not really being any around auckland they have an albatross. ours at the otago make a bit more sense as there's albatross within a 45 minute drive of the museum.

further down was a more senseical birds of new zealand, many of which can be found around auckland.


well okay and some more that are not like these, the birds of the southren alps display.

it wasn't too bad a natural history gallery overall. i guess after seeing so many over the quest, and this (hopefully) being my last i guess i was just hard to impress at the moment.

fortunately there was more to the gallery around the corner. the next section would bring a smile to my face... that is if i had lips or the capability of smiling anyways.

next the best part of the museum...