2. • The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known
as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago,
and is one of the largest such museums in the world.
• The museum is a popular natural-history museum for the size
and quality of its educational and scientific programs as well as
due to its extensive scientific-specimen and artifact collections
• The museum maintains a temporary exhibition program of
traveling shows as well as in-house produced topical exhibitions
5. THE MACHINE INSIDE
THE MACHINE INSIDE: Biomechanics is a brand new hands-on exhibition from The Field Museum, Chicago that
showcases animals and plants as sophisticated machines that are built for survival – complete with pumps, pipes,
insulation, motors, springs, and intelligence gathering devices.
Using real specimens, models, video footage, and interactive displays, Biomechanics investigates how cheetahs run so
fast and fleas jump so far; how the bite force of an extinct fish made it a top predator; how a Venus fly trap detects its
next meal; and how many other organisms function as machines in order to survive, move, and discover
CONTENTS
THE BIG IDEA
Biomechanics is a way of looking at living organisms: as machines built by evolution
Visitors will be invited to observe, compare, role-play, and explore. In doing so, they will learn
something that applies to far more than the subject at hand. Visitors will leave the exhibition
with a different perspective on the world around them
