Hundreds of thousands of Kiwi children have hunted through the specimen drawers of Auckland Museum’s Weird and Wonderful Gallery, but now the old favourites are joined by new interactive technologies and a hands-on lab space.

Live cockroaches and a massive array of bizarrely beautiful insects still feature in the gallery, but Weird and Wonderful visitors will now also see glowing, virtual bugs that respond to children’s movements and any changes to their sandpit ‘habitat’.

The new lab space caters for hands-on experiments in the gallery and will provide the hub for the museum’s weekly science series this summer. The iPad research table is loaded with apps to allow children to explore the natural world in an online environment.

The nest is the perfect spot for children to climb inside and read a book and kids can colour on a massive scale with the colouring window.

Weird and Wonderful Museum Trails

To celebrate the relaunch of Auckland’s favourite Weird and Wonderful Gallery, our dinosaur Basil has worked with our curators and guides to create a trail of all his favourite weird and wonderful treasures throughout the museum.

Be sure to pick up your free trail map when you come to the museum.