We're here at the newly renovated Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum
where I worked when I was a student at BYU, so I pulled some strings and got
special access for behind-the-scenes
sneak peak.
The Bean Museum strives to educate people about the relationship between living
and non-living things throughout the world. And if you've been to the museum
before you haven't seen it like this because there's so much new stuff,
like this center atrium which has 2 new giraffes that stand 17 feet tall.
They came from a collection in Arizona, which is not their natural habitat
It also features the world's largest
world. It is the largest, most accurate
fiberglass globe in the world. Let's take a look around
the museum.
When ever in your life would you be this close to a wolf?
Not at the zoo. At least, it's not recommended. But at the Bean museum, you can really get close
and see all the detail
of these creatures. This is the apex predator collection on the top floor the
museum
and it discusses the relationship between predator and prey and how they
both rely on each other in the
balance of life. And you will see things like this that may be a little scary
chasing the smaller, fluffier,
Bambi-like creatures, but remember they're just
having dinner and you can really see that whole interaction
in detail here at the Bean museum.
What are you looking at?
Hypothetical situation: you're being attacked by a pack of wolves;
what do you do? If you're a musk ox, you get your family together,
you stand shoulder to shoulder, and you put your baby's behind you.
It's one example how pray can protect themselves against predators.
Bean Museum.
And this scene probably wouldn't happen in nature. It's
unlikely, at least. But it was too epic to not show it to you
and this whole apex predator collection was donated by one man. He had these
mounts in his garage.
I don't know what you have in your garage, but it's probably not as cool as this.
It took five semi trucks to get the whole collection here
and you're only seeing a third of it, so you're not seeing
two-thirds of it, that's how math works. But the museum will be rotating through all
these collections
as the months and years go by, so there's always new things to see the Bean Museum.
You gotta keep coming back.
Charlotte, the rose hair tarantula, and I would like to tell you another fun fact
about the museum.
It is home to millions of specimens housed in research collections
right here and they're used by BYU all the time. That's interesting, right?
Yeah!
No, this is not someone's food storage. It is a research collection.
It's part of a huge and very valuable repository of specimens
that the museum keeps on site for research. It's not open to the general
public, though, so
get a look while you can.
Elephant in the room. This exhibit features the African elephant that
stands nearly twelve feet high
It also features some threatened, endangered, and extinct species
as well as some of the reasons for their struggle to survive. Spoiler alert: it has to
do with humans.
So this exhibit is all about how you can protect your planet. Definitely check this
one out.
This is the Boyd K. Packer gallery.
Interesting tidbit about president Packer: he borrowed birds from the Bean museum to
help make
his drawings as accurate as possible. So I thought I would
try my hand at it as well.
It's a seagull.
His are better.
As a part of its tribute to President Packer, the museum includes this replica
of the Packer family den, complete with furniture from the actual Packer family
home.
I don't know what they're sitting on now, but it's not this.
I'm here in the Africa exhibit, which is one of the only exhibits
that is carried over from the old museum. I'm here with my good friend
Otis, the African spurred tortoise. We had some good times,
didn't we? Yeah. Otis is part of the live animal show,
which has been going on at the museum for about twenty years,
which is about how Otis is and you'll be happy to know that is
continuing in the new museum.
Hi! We had some good times,
you ate a lot of carrots. I feed you
a lot of carrots. We knew how to party.
I don't have any more. I'm sorry.
But Otis is a big part the live animal show. That's not a fat joke.
If only he could talk. What stories he would tell.
I'm just gonna put this back.