Science > American Museum of Natural History - Lab

The purpose of this lab is to give you a sense of the different ecosystems/biomes around the world and how people have and are changing them. Spend as much or as little time with the exhibits as you want, and realize that the places I have asked you to go represent a very small portion of the exhibits at the museum. There is a huge amount of stuff to see here. I have organized questions by their appropriate exhibit.

Answer the following questions in one or a few sentences.

 

Akeley Hall of African Mammals (note that it includes exhibits on 2^nd and 3^rd floor)

Walk around and pay particular attention to what rainforests (look for bongos, mandrills, and colobus monkeys) look like and what grasslands look like.

Apart from elephants, rhinos, and giraffes, what are the three largest animals on display?

• Buffalo
  
  
• Giant Eland
  
  
• Okapi

What do you think are the two most endangered animal species on display? Why? (Displays in this exhibit are a bit out of date, so don’t pay much attention to the maps of current vs. historical ranges.)

• Black Rhinoceros: there is only a couple of thousand of them left, and they only live in a few places

• Chimpanzee: there is less than 200,000 of them left, so they’re near extinct. Their habitat is vanishing because of intense deforestation, but they were also killed for commercial purposes.

Hall of Biodiversity/Milstein Hall of Ocean Life

Walk through the rainforest in the hall of biodiversity. Note similarities to the rainforests in the Hall of African Mammals.

Behind the rainforest is a display of threats to biodiversity. What are some of the greatest threats that the exhibit mentions?

• Urbanization

• Agriculture

• Deforestation

• Vacuuming Oceans

• Pollution
  

From the wall in the Hall of Biodiversity and from looking around the Hall of Ocean Life, do you think there are more species of vertebrates (animals with backbones) or invertebrates (animals without backbones) in the world?

There is a lot more invertebrates living in the world, - 97% of all animals have no vertebrate.

 

In the Hall of Ocean Life there is a model of a blue whale, the largest living animal on earth. Large animals reproduce slower than small animals; blue whales are among the slowest reproducing animals in the world (i.e. blue whale populations have one of the slowest growth potentials in the world). In the history of industrial whaling (early 1800’s – 1970’s), do you think blue whales were exploited first, in the middle, or last? Explain why.

Blue Whales were hunted almost to extinction in the first 40 years of the Twentieth Century. Because of their large size, they were not an easy prey to the early whale hunters, that is why it wasn’t typical for early hunters to catch them.

North American Mammals

List the three largest animals on display. How do these animals look similar and different to those you listed for Africa? What do you think explains the differences and similarities?

• Bison

• Alaska Brown Bear

• Alaska Moose

These animals are somewhat similar to the African large mammals. The biggest difference may be the thickness of their fur. Naturally, in the hot African climate animals don’t need a big fur to protect them from the cold, as opposed to the American mammals, of which some of the biggest ones live in Alaska. There is no bear in Africa either. The American mammals don’t need to be that fast either, since there is fewer other carnivores that wants to eat them.

Describe how North American prairie (depicted in bison display) looks different from the savannahs depicted in African Mammals.

The North American prairie has grasses, herbs and just a few trees. It is also a moderate temperature climate with a high rainfall. The prairies are also tall grass areas as opposed to the savannahs, were the climate is much drier, and the amount of rainfall is a lot less.

How does tundra (look in caribou displays) look different from prairie and savannah?

Tundra, as opposed to the prairie and savannah are areas on a colder, wetter climate. The vegetation includes several species of trees and bushes. The dominant vegetation is grasses, mosses, and lichens. There are only a few species with a large population.

North American Forests/Warburg Hall of New York State Environment

Note the diorama of animals living in the soil as you enter the exhibit on the first floor. How do you think agriculture influences this community?

As a result of agriculture, the natural habitats of many of these animals are destroyed or altered, so that it doesn’t provide the necessary food or protection. Some of these species are probably already extinct or will be, in some time.

How do temperate North American forests look different from the tropical rainforests depicted in the Hall of Biodiversity and Hall of African Mammals? What do you think causes these differences?

Rain forests get a huge amount of rain every year, making their vegetation and the number of animal species abundant. North American forests get a lot less rain, so they don’t grow as big as trees in the rainforest. Trees have broad flanges at the base of the trunk, they have large leaves. There are three layers in the rainforest, simply because trees get a lot more water and sunshine, so they can grow bigger. Also, there is a lot of lianas, and trees with large, fleshy fruits that are not typical in the North American forests.

Look at the diorama showing how farming has changed land use. How were forests in the northeast before European settlement different from forests we find here today?

Before the settlers, only Indians lived in North America. These people lived on harmony with the forest. They only cut down a small portion of it, since agriculture wasn’t the typical source of food for them. After the settlers started to populate the country, the forests were declining. They cut trees down so they can build houses, or simply because they needed the area for agricultural purposes.

 

 

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