Spiders Alive! at the Natural History Museum
Spiders Alive!, the
new exhibition in the live animal hall of the American Museum of Natural
History (former host of Frogs: A Chorus
of Colors and Lizards and Snakes:
Alive!), urges you repeatedly not to be worried. Don’t be afraid, claim the curators of this
fine and informative exhibit (among them noted invertebrate zoologist Norman
Platnick), for spiders get a bad rap.
They are relatively unobtrusive and clear the countryside of countless
insects who would otherwise bite at our flesh and devour our crops. There are not nearly so many poisonous or
even dangerous spiders as to legitimately inspire widespread
arachnophobia. Still, as you traverse
the long, dark hall in which Spiders has
taken up residence, it’s hard not to worry that there will be a sudden power
failure, or that all the enclosures will break at once, and like some
ridiculous SyFy channel horror movie we will be trapped within along with our
eight-legged friends. Am I allowed no
neuroses?
It is to
the credit of Spiders (running,
speaking of which, through December) that it refuses to go that route; that is
to say, the route of the ridiculous gore flick.
There are not too many stories of venomous critters to spoil the dreams
of any of the younger members of your party, just good old-fashioned fact. And yet, as they always do, the museum
manages to pull off fact in such a very entertaining way.
Spiders is not unlike other AMNH
exhibits exploring some of the smaller members of the animal kingdom, including
Creatures of Light: Nature’s
Bioluminescence, which is currently running at the museum as well. As in Creatures,
there are tiny critters blown to 70 times their proportion and hanging off
the ceiling, well-lit handfuls of information dotting the walls, and designed
creatively and artistically to invoke both a cave and a maze. In doing so, Spiders uses the dark similarly to Creatures, but seems so much brighter, and seems, in contrast to
its bioluminescent brother upstairs, to be dealing with much more science than
beauty.
Spiders are
beautiful, sure, but in a different, more concrete way than sea jellies and
glowworms. We are treated to this odd
arachnoid beauty by the live specimens that serve as the main attraction in the
long, straight hall off the Grand Gallery that will serve as their home for the
next five months. They are small, mainly
stationary, and strange—not majestic in the way that some lizards and snakes
are, nor bouncing back and forth (no pun intended) between reclusive and
caffeinated like many frogs. They have
their own otherworldly approach to life behind the glass. They carry on with their routines, as
evidenced by their intricate webs, but they remain stubbornly still and silent,
if such a creature can be described as silent.
It is a unique experience to see these creatures up close. Many could wound or even kill with a bite,
but, so assure the placards, they just aren’t interested. “Their venom,” said a museum worker running
a presentation in the hall; “is a last resort.”
Not a last resort as it is for a bee, which dies after a sting, just because
arachnids haven’t the time or the energy.
Their lives are too hectic.
Spiders (and scorpions, included in the exhibit, though
not as prominently) are in a constant race with nature, eating, building, and procreating
before the end of their preternaturally short lives. Their hustle and bustle is now contained to
one atrium of one building in a massive city filled with similar bustle, in
which it seems their human counterparts are racing with the clock
themselves. Spiders, which seem to
operate on an entirely different plane than the human race, have something in common with us after all.
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