Today’s Exhibit of the Day? 🐛🐞🐜 The Museum’s Life on the Forest Floor Diorama. To create this up-close look—full of decomposing debris and hungry critters—Museum artists studied specimens under a microscope and then created models 24x larger than life!

🚀 Ever since the Big Bang, everything in the universe has been in constant motion—including constellations in the night sky. Join Curator Jackie Faherty as she discusses how the motion of the stars around us, and even our position in the Milky Way galaxy, will change! ⬇️

👂 The magnificent ears of a black-tailed jackrabbit can measure 20 percent of the animal’s entire body length. If this ratio applied to humans, an average person's ears would be 13 in (33 cm) tall! Large ears release heat, helping this hare cool down in its arid habitat.

Meet the northern walking stick—a master of camouflage. Its color and shape fool predators into thinking it’s an inedible twig. In fact, its camouflage is so thorough that its eggs resemble tiny seeds!

What does the gundi do for self defense? When frightened, it plays dead! Entering a trance-like state, this northern African rodent freezes, lays on its side, & stops breathing—sometimes holding its breath for a full minute. Scientists think "playing possum" confuses predators.

You can spot Patagotitan mayorum on the Museum’s Fourth Floor! Plan your visit:

You don’t see one of these every day… or ever. 🦕 Meet The Titanosaur. At 122 ft (37.2 m) long & ~70 tons, this sauropod was heavier than 10 African elephants—it was one of the largest animals to ever walk the Earth! This gigantic herbivore lived ~95 million years ago.

Bald is beautiful, just ask the Northern Bald Ibis! Scientists think its featherless face, neck, & throat help regulate this bird’s body temperature. The bare skin may assist in releasing some of the heat that its dark plumage is prone to absorbing.

Have you ever seen a tropical gasflame? 👀 This colorful critter is a nudibranch. Notice the tentacle-like structures on its body? They’re called cerata: Nudibranchs use them to store stinging cells from prey like jellyfish, converting their meals into a form of self defense.

It's Trilobite Tuesday! New 3D scans of Ceraurus pleurexanthemus show that trilobite heads were made of semi-independent modules—and the eyes played a key developmental role. Read more from RGGS Comparative Biology Ph.D. grad Ernesto Vargas-Parra + Curator Melanie Hopkins:

Meet the dhole. This Asian canid typically lives in groups of ~12 individuals—sometimes socializing with other groups to form “super packs” of 30+ members. Teamwork enables them to hunt prey 10x their size. Dholes also allow their pups to feed first on kills.

Have you ever seen one of these at the beach? Also known as “sand crabs” or “sand fleas,” Pacific mole crabs migrate with the tides, feeding on plankton brought in by the waves. These critters use their back legs to get around, and they burrow backwards, too.

My my… what big teeth you have! Meet the Pacific stargazer, an ambush hunter spends most of its life buried beneath the sand. Its upturned face allows it to see even when most of its body is concealed. And? It's capable of stunning prey with electrical shocks of up to 50 volts!

Happy Trilobite “Twosday!” A close look at this Isotelus gigas reveals a surprise: There’s another trilobite partially buried beneath it—a 2.4-in- (6-cm-) long Amphilichas! Such captured-in-time interactions provide scientists with insight into life in the Ordovician seas.

True to its name, the European Bee-eater is an insect-eater with a taste for bees. But how does it deal with its prey’s pesky stingers? This crafty bird is able to catch bees, stun them, and tear their stingers out before flinging them into the air to gulp them down!

Today's Exhibit of the Day? A colossal amethyst geode! At ~13 ft (4 m) tall & 9,000 lbs (4,082 kg), it's as heavy as 3 compact cars. Formed 135 million years ago, it started as colorless quartz—becoming purple after millennia of natural radiation, heat, & trace contaminants.

How does the Venezuelan pebble toad escape danger? When threatened by a predator, like a tarantula, it tucks in its limbs and rolls downhill like a pebble. At just 1.2 in (30 mm) long, this lightweight toad isn't hurt by its speedy descent.

Behold the dazzling red-bellied mud snake! Growing up to 6.8 ft (2.1 m) long, this reptile can be found in swampy areas of the southeastern US. When threatened, this non-venomous snake flashes its vibrant underbelly—mimicking the colors of venomous coral snakes.

What eldritch horror is this? If you thought it was a bird with legs growing from its chest, look again: Male Bronze-winged Jacanas can scoop up their offspring & carry them under their wings! This species uses its large feet to wade in the shallows in parts of Southeast Asia.

It’s Trilobite Tuesday! The Lower Cambrian Gigantopygus, pictured, was once known only from partial specimens. Today, a few dozen complete examples have been recovered from Morocco’s Issafen​​ Formation—a locale that's revealed an amazing array of 500-million-year-old trilobites.