Cleveland Museum of Natural History presents Whales | Tohora, an exhibition on view through January 27, 2013. Whales | Tohorā is an experience that brings adults and children eye to eye with some of the world’s most elusive creatures.
Whale Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Featuring a massive 17.8 meter fully articulated sperm whale skeleton, Whales | Tohorā showcases amazing and rare specimens from The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa’s whale collection, one of the largest in the world. Visitors will see life-size and scale models of whales common to the South Pacific, including a beaked whale skull created by Weta Workshop and ancient and contemporary whalebone treasures such as weapons and chiefly adornments. The intricacies of whale biology and the bloody history of whaling in New Zealand are examined, and visitors also have a unique opportunity to encounter whales through video portholes and be transported into their underwater world via two large immersive projections.
The Whale Lab is full of interactive science. Children can crawl through a life-size replica of the largest living creature’s heart – the blue whale. The extraordinary evolutionary journey of whales from land to the sea is shown by casts of fossil whale ancestors. Animated renderings of these early forebears show the transition of leaving land and completely adapting to a life in the sea. Visitors can tune in to a range of whale sounds and discover how scientists and amateur trackers identify individual whales on their migration through the Pacific Ocean. The Whale Lab also features ‘Search & Destroy’, an experience that takes visitors to the ocean depths with a sperm whale on a hunt in search of giant squid, recreated from real data and sounds collected directly from a real sperm whale!
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History
1 Wade Oval Drive University Circle
Cleveland OH 44106-1767 U.S.A. 216.231.4600
800.317.9155
www.cmnh.org