EuroTrip '08 - Berlin, part VI, Natural History Muesum 2

What's that impossible-looking thing? The one that looks like an insect with four compound eyes on a giant stalk coming out of its head?

It's some species of cicada. I guess entomological readers can pitch in an help with the exact Latin name.

The body looks like a cicada; the head looks vaguely familiar but maybe that was just a nightmare I had sometime.

The people to ask are here.

So......... a flash of enlightenment?

And that cicada, or whatever it is, looks like an alien invader from a 50s monster/sci fi movie. Cool!

One thing that has stuck in my mind that I learned in this museum: aardvark is an ungulate. A lovely phrase.

Ah, found it. I had snapped a picture of both the exhibit label as well as the wax effigy. That alien invader cicada was named Bocydium globulare. The function of the globes was said to be unknown; in an adult they are hollow.

This is currently one of the best museums I know in Berlin! Good for you to have had a chance to see it while you were here.

I love the pictures of the aardvark. They're such funny animals to me. I know they're anteaters and not related to either pigs or rabbits, but it's as though nature said, "Let's make a pig with rabbit ears...and a big long tail!"