Pitt Rivers Museum

I decided to go to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford the other week.  It is a good sized museum that actually has one part designated to natural history, while the other part is designated to anthropology type details.  I didn't realize this little fact while I was visiting and completely missed out on the human studies aspect.  This means I didn't see the shrunken heads they have there as well as the other displays they have covering different cultures of the world.  I learned of my loss by looking at the website dedicated to the museum <http://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/> after my visit.  I'm finding that my travels are not all well planned.  Thankfully the phrase, 'know before you go' doesn't carry repercussions that are extreme or life threatening when it comes to visiting museums.


When I first entered the museum one of the first things I noticed was the statues of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists that have contributed to what is showcased within the museum.  These statues can be seen lining the inner perimeter of the museum.  Besides the statues, the museum showcased a number of different dinosaur fossils, which although was not as extensive as what exists at Thanksgiving Point in Utah, I appreciated the sight of skeletons for animals I've seen alive.  It helped me, as a novice in the field of archeology, see how the logic followed from our knowledge of living animals to animals we've never seen before.

I also found some animals that had been stuffed.  It's nice that there is a way to preserve the animals after they die so others who don't see it alive can see what it looked like when it was alive.  

Seeing the stuffed animals reminded me of visits I made when I was younger to a neighbor.  I would describe him as a sculpture though he worked as a taxidermist.  He would sculpt the moulds and forms for the animal skins individually, because if the mould was not big enough the skins would wrinkle and fold when it was placed on the mould.  When he made the moulds he didn't just make the general shape of the animal but made the form of the animal in such a way as to detail the muscles and muscle groups according to the particular animal's anatomy.  I feel like I've seen many animals without their skins on, which somehow sounds risqué.  Seriously though, taxidermy done right can be the difference between skins on a marshmallow mould (where the animal may look bloated or wrinkly) and a good representation of the animal when it was alive.  It was cool to reminisce these times as I looked at their collection of exotic animals. 

I included a picture of the insect collection, although it isn't the complete collection in the Pitt Rivers Museum, for all those "Animal Crossing" junkies.  For those who are out of the loop, "Animal Crossing" is a video game where you can (among other things) establish a bug collection.  This is so much bigger and better than than the video game. ;-p
 
They also had samples of bones from birds in the museum, so I thought I would take a picture.  Who'd of thought their bones are hollow?  :-)

This is how the museum looks from the second floor, not too far from the bug collection and the colony of Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches.  Though I didn't hear the cockroaches hiss, they were large enough that I am happy to have never had to deal with them at any of my homes or apartments. 

My only hangup with the museum is that it closes earlier than I would have expected.  I was hoping to stay until 18:00, but found that they close the doors around 16:30.  I might have been lucky (or inconsiderate) though because they didn't kick me out until 17:00.