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Connecting you to the latest opportunities and programs available for teens at the American Museum of Natural History.
Mission: To discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and education—knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe.
For all who are personally affected and all who are morally outraged by racial injustice, the Museum community stands with you and grieves with you. ⠀
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As part of the effort to create a foundation for honest, respectful, open dialogue, we also acknowledge the Museum’s own problematic history.⠀
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On June 2, our social media will pause in solidarity and respect.
Today’s Exhibit of the Day swims fast, dives deep, and goes far. The leatherback sea turtle has a flexible carapace, which is fitted together from small bony plates and covered with rubbery skin. It can dive deeper than other turtles and its hydrodynamic ridges help make it a faster swimmer, too. Leatherbacks feed on jellyfish, and they’re well adapted to their diet, with spiny throats to keep the slippery jellies down, and glands to remove excess salt. Unfortunately, bags, balloons, and other plastic trash look just like their favorite meal and can kill them by blocking their intestines. See this exhibit in the Museum’s Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians!
Photo: M. Shanley/© AMNH
Exhibit of the Day: have you ever seen the giant mosquito in our Hall of North American Forests? The Museum built this model in 1917 as part of an effort to educate the public about mosquito-borne illnesses. This mosquito is enlarged 47 times and is modeled after a male mosquito. Did you know? Males feed on pollen and couldn’t harm a fly! Only female mosquitoes have mouthparts through which they suck blood—so only they can transmit diseases.
Photo: D. Finnin/© AMNH
Today’s Exhibit of the Day: one of the longest animals, period. The lion’s mane jellyfish trails a “mane” of more than 800 stinging tentacles behind it, which can grow more than 100 feet (30 meters) long! In fact, the longest of these jellies—which inhabit the Arctic Ocean—are longer than the longest known blue whale. Their tentacles are covered in cells with venom that stuns prey such as other jellyfish, small crustaceans, and zooplankton. Many organisms depend on the lion’s mane, too: Some critters seek shelter under its umbrella while cleaning it of arthropods in return. Juvenile walleye pollock hide from danger in its tentacles!
Photo: R. Mickens/© AMNH
Long may today’s Exhibit of the Day reign. Say “hi” to the King Penguins from the Museum’s Hall of Birds of the World! King Penguins form vast colonies when they come ashore to mate. But satellite images suggest that the largest colony dropped 90 percent since 1982, from 500,000 breeding pairs to just 60,000 in 2018. King Penguins pair off twice every three years. The female lays a single egg, which parents take turns keeping warm by holding it on top of their feet and covering it with a flap of skin. Meanwhile, the other parent hunts for food.
Photo: D. Finnin/© AMNH
American Museum of Natural History
Join Museum Curator Ruth Angus as she examines the awe-inspiring leap from imagination to scientific achievement in space exploration. From novelist Jules Verne to astronaut Neil Armstrong, learn about how some of the most creative minds spurred unique scientific accomplishments, including human missions to space.
It's time for SpaceFest! Here's what we are up to today leading up to the 🚀 SpaceX Crew Dragon launch live from NASA's Kennedy Space Center! With commentary from Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson, Museum astrophysicist Jackie Faherty, and Museum Curator Michael Shara as they discuss the future for human missions to space.
SpaceFest schedule and links:
https://www.amnh.org/calendar/spacefest
BONUS: Suit up in your best space gear and tag @AMNH Instagram or Twitter! We'll be sharing your photos all day.
twitter.com/amnh
instagram.com/amnh
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Tune in to this online festival to celebrate the first US human mission to space in almost a decade.
In this Exhibit of the Day, hear the sad tale of the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius). These birds—not to be confused with carrier pigeons, domestic birds trained to carry messages—were once the most abundant bird in North America. Now extinct, they are only found in exhibits like this one and in scientific collections. Passenger Pigeons went from more than 3 billion to zero in mere decades. What contributed to their extinction by 1914? A mix of habitat destruction, hunting, and advancing technologies (like the railroad and the telegraph), which made the slaughter of birds easier and more profitable. You can find our Passenger Pigeon exhibit on the Museum’s third floor.
Photo: C. Chesek/ © AMNH
It’s an Exhibit of the Day and Meteorite Monday mash-up! Have you ever seen the Willamette Meteorite in the Museum’s Hall of the Universe? This large piece of iron and nickel was barreling through space at 40,000 miles per hour when it smashed into Earth like an oversized cannonball. The meteorite was found in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, where rainwater mixed with iron sulfide in the meteorite, making sulfuric acid. Little by little, the acid ate away at the rock, resulting in the cavities all over the meteorite’s surface.
Photo: D. Finnin/© AMNH
Let’s journey to the Museum’s Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians for today’s Exhibit of the Day. Rare and shy, American crocodiles prefer brackish coastal waters. With ears, eyes, and nostrils on the top of their heads, they can hear, see, and breathe while mostly submerged! With birds and mammals, the sex of the offspring is determined at fertilization—but not with crocs! What determines crocodile hatchlings’ sex? Temperature! Eggs incubated at 88°F to 91°F (31.1°C to 32.8°C) produce mostly male offspring, while temperatures below 88°F produce mostly females. Below 82°F, though, and the eggs won’t hatch.
Photo: M. Shanley/© AMNH
Gone, but not forgotten is today’s Exhibit of the Day from the Hall of Biodiversity. The dodo went extinct in the 1600s, when people and other predators invaded its island home. Mauritius, east of Madagascar, is the only place dodos ever lived. While the birds died out before anyone could take a photo, their skeletons offer clues to what they were like. For example, this bird couldn’t fly—it had small wings for a bird of its size, its sternum has no keel (the support birds need for flight muscles), and it had thick leg bones made for walking.
Photo: D. Finnin/© AMNH
Today’s Exhibit of the Day features the Asian elephants in the Museum's Hall of Asian Mammals. Female Asian elephants live together in a herd, often with young males, but adult bull males usually strike out on their own. What’s the difference between these elephants and their cousins in the Hall of African Mammals? Next time you visit, look closely. Asian elephants have smaller ears, aren’t as tall, their skulls have a hump, and they have more hind-foot toenails!
Photo: D. Finnin/© AMNH
Today’s Exhibit of the Day features the ocean’s record keepers, coral! Coral skeletons, like this one in the Museum’s Hall of Planet Earth, contain clues to long-ago climates. How? Coral reefs are built by large colonies of small invertebrate animals that grow skeletons from chemicals in seawater. The composition of the skeletons changes in response to fluctuations in the ocean, such as water temperature. As a result, reefs record local climate over the corals' lifetimes, including El Niño events, pollution, and human-caused climate change.
Photo: D. Finnin/© AMNH
Slither 🐍and hop 🐸 into this event happening at 2 PM!
LINK TO WATCH AT 2 PM ET: https://www.facebook.com/naturalhistory/videos/276890183483984/
Join Museum herpetologists Lauren Vonnahme and Arianna Kuhn, who will share some exciting facts about the snakes and frogs that live with them at home.
Join Museum herpetologists Lauren Vonnahme and Arianna Kuhn, who will share some exciting facts about the snakes and frogs that live with them at home. Submit a photo of your favorite reptile or amphibian to have it identified by the scientists, and ask any questions you have about these fascinating critters.
Send a photo of a reptile or amphibian, your name, and location to [email protected] to participate.
Exhibit of the Day: the Alaska brown bear diorama from the Hall of North American Mammals! Did you know that Alaska brown bears are the biggest bears on Earth? Those along the Gulf of Alaska are the largest of their kind, thanks to a steady diet of protein-rich salmon. The Museum’s Alaska brown bear diorama dates back to the early 1940s. For inspiration, Museum artists studied the anatomy and posture of bears. It took an exceptional team of sculptors and painters to bring this scene to life in 1941—and another talented team to brighten it up in 2012.
Photo: D. Finnin/© AMNH
Happy #WorldBeeDay! 🐝 Did you know that honey bees dance to help them navigate the world? When a successful forager bee returns to the pitch-black hive, it uses an elaborate dance pattern called the “waggle dance” to indicate both the direction of food in relation to the Sun and its distance from the hive. Worker bees don’t actually see the waggle dance—they feel it: their antennae are highly sensitive to air vibrations. These buzzing-critters are crucial to Earth’s ecosystems. Roughly one-third of all the food we eat requires pollination, and invertebrates—including bees—do a great majority of this work by traveling from flower to flower. Most of Earth’s plant communities, and many of our agricultural crops, would vanish without pollination.
Photo: Pixabay
Exhibit of the Day: the slice of giant sequoia from the Hall of North American Forests! The tree from whence this piece of sequoia came grew for more than 1,300 years before it was felled by a lumber company in 1891. When the tree sprouted around CE 550, the English language didn’t even exist! So how did this 16-foot (4.9-meter)- tree trunk fit into the Museum’s 12-foot (3.6-meter)- doorway? In pieces! The next time you visit, look closely and you will see the seams where the slice was put back together.
Photo: D. Finnin/© AMNH
were made for walking! Walking upright was a big evolutionary leap for human ancestors. The female is based on Lucy, the famed fossil that provided evidence for early bipedalism. Lucy’s species, Australopithecus afarensis, still had apelike skull proportions, relatively narrow shoulders, longish arms, relatively short legs, and a brain about one-third the size of a modern human brain. One thing that separates hominins (humans and extinct ancestors) from other apes is how we walk. In fact, bipedalism made other advances possible—including, eventually, bigger brains.
Photo: © AMNH
Exhibit of the Day: the Spectrum of Life in the Museum’s Hall of Biodiversity! Imagine the diversity of life on Earth, with some 1.7 million species known so far. Around 1,500 of these living things are gathered here. This 100-foot (30.5-meter)- wall is packed with organisms of all shapes and sizes. But one species with an outsized impact on our planet is missing: humans! Over tens of thousands of years, Homo sapiens has transformed the continents, the oceans, even Earth’s atmosphere. Everything we do affects the fate of millions of plant, animal, and microbial species.
Photo: R. Mickens/© AMNH
Today’s Exhibit of the Day features a bird with a lot of superlatives: the ostrich! It’s the world’s largest and fastest ground bird, and lays the world’s largest eggs! In this scene from the Hall of African Mammals, a male ostrich performs a “distraction display” while his chicks hide from nearby warthogs. Did you know? Both male and female ostriches can whistle, scream, and hiss, but only males produce the mating call known as “booming,” which can sound like a lion’s roar!
Photo: © AMNH
Today’s Exhibit of the Day? The largest meteorite on display in any museum: Ahnighito. This meteorite is a piece of an even bigger rock that burst as it tore through our atmosphere. At 34 tons, Ahnighito is so heavy it could sink through the Museum’s floor to the basement below! So what keeps it up? Six metal poles that extend straight down to Manhattan bedrock!
Photo: D. FInnin/© AMNH
Let’s travel to the open ocean for today’s Exhibit of the Day! It’s a feeding frenzy in the dolphin and tuna diorama. The location of their prey is constantly shifting, but these species often race together towards their next meal. Did you know dolphins have no functional olfactory nerve or lobe and can’t smell at all? To navigate and find food, these aquatic mammals use echolocation to send out rapid, high-pitched bursts of sound that bounce back when they encounter solid objects—even fish hiding beneath sand.
Photo: R. Mickens/© AMNH
For today’s Exhibit of the Day, let’s take a look at Life on the Forest Floor, which features dozens of decomposers. Don’t worry, they’re not really this big! This patch of leaf litter is enlarged 24 times to show off the variety of life on the forest floor. Did you know? Every year, 2 tons of dead plant and animal matter covers every acre of the forest. Without decomposers, plants would starve, and debris would block oxygen.
Photo: © AMNH
Today’s Exhibit of the Day goes out to all of the moms out there! Did you know a nine-banded armadillo mom has identical quadruplets, every single time? That means four male pups or four females. All from one egg, so no mix and match allowed! There are 21 armadillo species, ranging from 5 inches (13 centimeters) to 59 inches (150 centimeters) in size. Bony plates—unique among mammals—shield the backs of everyone.
Photo: © AMNH
Exhibit of the Day: 19 islands. 10 species of gigantic tortoises. Welcome to the Galápagos Islands! Some Galápagos tortoises weigh more than 660 pounds, making them the world’s largest living tortoises. Today around 20,000 tortoises live across the Galápagos Islands—just 10% of the estimated population before humans arrived. Numbers are increasing today thanks to conservation efforts. You can spot this exhibit in our Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians, which first opened in 1927 and was renovated in the 1970s.
Photo: M. Shanley/© AMNH
Today’s Exhibit of the Day is the Wolf diorama in the Hall of North American Mammals. It’s around midnight at Gunflint Lake, Minnesota, the temperature is below zero, and these wolves are out to grab a warm meal. To catch dinner, wolves will stay out all night long and sometimes roam more than 100 miles! This pair is ready to pursue prey for several miles in order to exhaust it, then bring it down in a joint effort. Group hunting is how wolves can prey on animals much bigger than themselves. If the wolves cannot close in quickly, they will give up and follow the scent of another prospect. As is common for carnivores that chase after their prey, wolf hunts fail far more often than they succeed.
Photo: R. Mickens/© AMNH
It’s time for the Exhibit of the Day! Have you ever seen the Museum’s Cro-Magnon diorama in the Hall of Human Origins? Don’t let the name fool you: Cro-Magnons are not a different species—they’re early modern humans who settled in Europe, where they overlapped with the Neanderthals, an extinct species that died out less than 40,000 years ago. Modern humans evolved in Africa but settled on every continent except Antarctica. What made these early modern humans so modern, besides their anatomy? Creative abilities, including making exquisite cave paintings, that were unprecedented.
Photo: R. Mickens /© AMNH
❤️Its Mothers Day on Sunday! Are you in need of a Mother's Day card? Here's what we have to offer. ❤️
Museums can help you find more Mother's Day cards by searching the hashtag #MomIGotYouThisArt on twitter.com/amnh.
Paintings by Charles Knight, © AMNH Library.
Today at 1:30pm EST join us for a FIELD TRIP TO MARS!
We will learn if are volcanoes still active on Mars? What does Mars smell like? Where did the water that was once on Mars go? Get answers to these questions—and ask your own! #StayHome
Join the Museum’s Director of Astrovisualization Carter Emmart and astrophysicist Jackie Faherty during a real-time flyover across the Martian landscape. Fly over canyons, hover past impact craters, and trace the trackways of the exploration rover, Opportunity.
Fly through the universe with our other live stream events: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
Are volcanoes still active on Mars? What does Mars smell like? Where did the water that was once on Mars go? Get answers to these questions—and ask your own,...
Exhibit of the Day: Here’s the tiger diorama in the Hall of Asian Mammals, which first made its debut at the Museum in the 1930s. In this scene, a female tiger enjoys a drink while her cubs relax, hidden from predators by the tall grass. While tigers can eat a lot—up to 88 pounds (40 kilograms) at once—they hardly ever catch their prey. They succeed only about 10% of the time! Another fun tiger fact? Tiger stripes are good for camouflage. And like human fingerprints, each set of stripes is unique. In fact, researchers can identify individual animals by their stripes.
Photo: R. Mickens/© AMNH
200 Central Park West
New York, NY
10024
By Subway: Take the B (weekdays only) or C to 81st Street. Two blocks west of the Museum, the 1 train stops at Broadway and West 79th Street. By Bus: The M79 bus travels east/west on W. 79th Street across Central Park, with a stop next to the Museum on W. 81st Street. Other buses also stop at or near the Museum, including the M7, M10, M11, M86 and M104 buses.
| Monday | 10:00 - 17:45 |
| Tuesday | 10:00 - 17:45 |
| Wednesday | 10:00 - 17:45 |
| Thursday | 10:00 - 17:45 |
| Friday | 10:00 - 17:45 |
| Saturday | 10:00 - 17:45 |
| Sunday | 10:00 - 17:45 |
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AMNH Microbiome Science Visualization Course For their last day of class, they presented their final projects on how the purpose, scope, and data collection methods of the American Gut Project allows researchers to learn how diet influences the human microbiome, lifestyle, and disease. We learned how the human microbiome becomes threatened, and the consequences it has overall on human health.
AMNH Microbiome Science Visualization Course Last week students performed lab tasks: they used micropipettes, counted bacterial colonies on agar plates, and classified bacterial colonies based on physical characteristics. They analyzed amplified genetic material through agarose gel electrophoresis, which helped conclude patterns, correlations, and trends in the visualization of large data sets that are likely to go unnoticed in text-based data.
In the previous #AMNHLang post, we introduced the nature data collection app the Lang Program used to record the number of insects they spot in NYC. With a total of 269 observations cataloged from their excursion to Central Park, they then embarked on content creation for social media in hopes that like-minded citizen scientists (like you!) would participate in the #CityNatureChallange2020 🏙️🐝🔍an international project led by iNaturalist happening on April 24-27 this year. The City Nature Challenge is an event where people find and document plants and wildlife in cities across the globe. It’s a competition where metro areas are in a contest against each other to see who can make the most observations of nature, who can find the most species, and who can engage the most people. We hope you will participate this year–there is a link in our bio to see the results from the 2019 challenge. With the app, you can identify species in under 30 seconds—as demonstrated here by a student observing a Morpho butterfly 🦋 in The Butterfly Conservatory at the Museum. If you would like to participate in the challenge, start practicing! We look forward to sharing more student-curated science content with you.
At today's Teen SciCafe Harvard's Rachel Carmody spoke about how all human cultures use cooking and other means to process food. Here we see three student volunteers partaking in a taste test between a raw sweet potato and a cooked one! 🍠🍠🍠 Listen to their observations. ___ We learned that cooking increases the calories we extract from food and gained insight as to how it gives humans an evolutionary edge and why it may present challenges for our present and future. #amnhTeenSciCafe The Leakey Foundation
The Youth & Alumni Committee (YAC) and Staff at the American Museum of Natural History helped create a jungle tree with pools noodles, a camera tripod, recycled butcher paper, and even repurposed the use of faux leaves from a prior project. Check out our Instagram page to see the Orangutan bean bag activity, also curated by YAC.
Here is a timelapse of our Youth & Alumni Committee members and Staff creating a jungle tree for the Teen SciCafe! #AMNHTeens #AMNHTeenSciCafe
Happy Valentine's Day! 💝 Check out these featured "sweethearts" from @AMNHTeens Instagram story. Instagram.com/amnhteens
Whoa. Dancing while conducting an atmospheric experiment!
The Discovery Room at the American Museum of
200 Central Park WCentro Rose para a Terra e o Espaço
200 Central Park WАмериканский музей естественной истории
200 Central Park WCalle 81–Museo de Historia Natural
1 W 81st StMuseo di storia naturale (New York)
Central Park West at 79th StreetAmerican Museum of Natural History
200 Central Park WMuseu Americano de História Natural
200 Central Park WThe Museum of American Natural History
Central Park West and 77th St,81st Street – Museum of Natural History (IND
West 81st St & Central Park West, New York, NY 10024
Edge of Empires: Pagans, Jews and Christians
15 East 84th St.
