Natural Science Museum

The Mustangs statue at the base of the Natural Science Museum is dedicated to the "spirited horses that carried the men who made Texas." Humans believe horses to be powerful animals who represent the a variety of things for different cultures. In America, horses represent the past, fighting for freedom and building community, a possible meaning behind the statue. By looking at the statue, it can be inferred that humans like to make totems of revered animals because they believe they serve as good representations or reminders. The latter more visible in the dinosaur items on the north side of the Museum.
The north side of the museum is home to seats that are modeled after the vertebra from a mosasaur, a large marine reptile that lived during the Cretaceous Period. The seats are actually 8 times the length of the real vertebra, but do work as an interesting reminder to humans, that animals like these used to exist. The seats, like the exhibits in the museum in a way, are a form of experiential learning. By seeing a real physical manifestation of these ancient animals, or even animals that are still around, humans are given the opportunity to learn about these animals in an exciting way.

Located on the first floor, (if coming in on west side of the museum, to your right against the wall) is the top of a Steppe bison's skull. According to the information card, "the steppe bison lived in the dry grasslands of North America and Mexico 500,000 to 10,000 years ago." The skull of this animal is being used to educate students and other visitors on an animal that once roamed this planet. To see an animal on display in a museum is very different to seeing an animal on display in someone's home as a trophy to a hunt. As my power animal however, I can imagine that the act of displaying remains of anything is quite unusual. I would wonder why humans felt the need to exhibit animals in this way and if the animals being shown were killed or died of natural causes. 

On the third floor, there was a display case of a family of American bison. In the case, you could see a large male, and a medium size female and her young calf. The note on the case described how the majority of bison were slaughtered in the late 1800s due to commercialized hunting. I found this portion of the animal exhibit to be extremely interesting, because seeing true to life representations of these animals helped me imagine them more clearly. I did ponder at how the museum attained the stuffed animals and was comforted when I saw a sign advertising that very question. After calling I learned that only a fraction of the stuffed animals I was observing were actually real, the rest being mock ups. This wasn't disappointing, because it meant that not very many animals were harmed to facilitate this form of learning, but it also left me feeling that it was very ambiguous.

The fourth floor had the most information, I felt, displayed with the animals. For instance, depicted below is the human skeleton being compared to the skeleton of a chimpanzee.

More than likely, again my spirit animal would feel that the remains of these animals, however educational, served no purpose because to really learn from an animal it is best to observe while truly living free in its original habitat. If the roles were switched and I were one of the animals on display, I would feel like a science project, watching person after person walk by and stare. Personally though, I think that it is important for people to learn about all of these different animals in any way they can whether it be through observing them in the museum or in their natural habitat. I do not believe the animals on floors 1, 3, and 4 were being displayed in a disrespectful manner, rather in way to represent the way they may have been in life.