Some of the Upper IV students went on a short visit to the Cole Museum in the University of Reading to view the specimens that demonstrate the variety of life. They tried to explore the different features that allowed some species to survive and also looked at evidence of evoluition by looking at fossils of extinct animals.
“Since we didn’t go on the trip with the rest of our year group, it was really nice to get out of school and have a little outing of our own. We went to Reading University’s Cole Museum of Zoology, and it was super interesting as there were a lot of really cool specimens for us to take a look at and the entire experience was very fun. There were a lot of cool things to see, like the large asian elephant skeleton on display in the middle of the room, and overall we had a great time.”
Luna, Upper IV
“As we were not on the residential, for our biology activity we visited the Cole Museum of Zoology (at reading university), and we were amazed by the incredible range of animal specimens on display. One of the highlights was the enormous skeleton of an Indian elephant, which stood at nearly 2.7 metres tall in the centre of the room. We also read about some fascinating adaptations animals have developed – for example, spiders can detect prey and danger with hairs on their bodies. We took part in a range of fun challenges that involved closely examining the names of specimens and reading all the displays carefully. One task asked us to find a specimen with a synonym for the word “wrong” in its name – after lots of searching, we proudly discovered in the last two minutes that it was the false vampire bat! Overall it was very interesting and one of my highlights of the week- I would definitely recommend going!”
Anshula, Upper IV
“When Dr Spencer announced we were going to the University of Reading to visit the Cole Museum, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. But when we stepped inside, being towered over by the bones of an African Elephant, I was more than impressed. Although the room was quite small, It was packed with different organisms- one of my favourites was looking at the portuguese man of war- did you know it isn’t a single organism, it’s made up of a colony of different ones? We were also given a quiz to complete while we were there, and it was very fun to complete- although a little stressful when we ran out of time at the end. I also enjoyed looking at their collections of different types of arachnids and bees.”
Tejas, Upper IV