Animal Pilots

Расположение: eng-name / eng-name / eng-name

We are used to considering birds as the “kings of the air” and have forgotten that our closest relatives - mammals – have acquired amazing abilities to fly or glide. By the way, every fifth species of mammals can fly. Besides, animal flight experience is no less than 150 million years! We are inviting you to learn more about talented gliders and fluffy pilots at the “Animal Pilots” exhibition at Darwin Museum.

Unlike birds, who set off to flight by "running and jumping up", mammals had to master their skills in jumping from one tree to another in search of food and new habitats, as well as to flee predators, thus covering considerable distances in the air. In the process of evolution, some species have acquired special adaptations to gliding and parachuting, and even “powered flight”.

The main invention of gliding animals - the gliding membrane - allowed them not only to control the distance and speed, but also to change the direction of movement during flight. You will:

• see gliding marsupials and rodents;
• meet the gliding champion jumping 140 meters;
• learn how a tail can be useful during flight;
• compare the flying skills of the flying squirrel, greater glider, and colugos.

Bats and fruit bats independently of birds invented powered flight. Bats have developed some unique skills different from birds:

• they use all their limbs to fly,
• have a special way of taking off and landing,
• have special tactile cells on their wings and perfectly navigate in the dark using echolocation. 

At the exhibition, you will meet all representatives of the order Chiroptera from the rich collection of the State Darwin Museum. A selection of interesting biological facts will tell you about their lifestyle and importance in the ecosystem of our planet.

Many of the “animal pilots” are nocturnal, so you will have a rare opportunity to see them very close, as well as to admire magnificent illustrations from natural science books of the 18-19th centuries, such as “Brehm's Animal Life” by Alfred Edmund Brehm, "The Mammals of Australia" by John Gould, "Art Forms in Nature " by Ernst Haeckel and others.

 

Things to do:

Visitors of different ages will be able: 

• to play the board game "I wish to fly!", dedicated to flying, gliding, and parachuting animals,
• make souvenirs during a creative workshop "The New Year's Vampire"
• make an original photograph – a souvenir of the exhibition.

Illustration from the book "The Mammals of Australia" by John Gould

Illustration from the book "Art Forms in Nature" by Ernst Haeckel