Surviving Slowly

The Museum of Nature has galleries going off this dramatic interior atrium with its skylight. I like to go to the top and work my way down through the galleries as I visit. 

This moose is inscribed into the floor at the entrance.

Survival Of The Slowest is a temporary exhibit going on here at present, featuring displays and animals who resort to slowness to thrive.

Dumeril's Monitor is one of them, a lizard living in southeast Asia. Attaining a maximum size of 140 cms long, this reptile hunts a varied array of prey- crustaceans, fish, frogs, insects, and small mammals. Its specialty is crabs.

Panels on the differences between animals who rely on speed and those that conserve energy are found throughout the exhibit.

The pancake tortoise calls Kenya and Tanzania home. 

Curled up around a branch was a green tree python. Native to northern Australia and New Guinea, this snake preys on small mammals and lizards. Because it lives in a warm environment, it doesn't have to move around a lot to maintain body temperature. Their style of hunting is more sit and wait, and so they can get along quite nicely not moving about, thus conserving energy.

More displays. Some animals must use speed- whether that means in hunting or in thwarting the hunter. And yet speed comes at a cost- an animal burns through energy when they're all out.