National Museum of Nature and ScienceUeno Park
Sex in Nature (生きものたちの性)
The museum's first special exhibition on sex as a theme, covering the diversity of sex in animals and plants through form, behaviour, sex determination and parenting.
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Preview: written before the show opened
In the second chapter, a male peacock spider just 4 to 6 mm long dances for a female across a giant screen, and you can feel his courtship vibrations through a vibrating plate. That's Maria Fernanda Cardoso's video work On the Origin of Art I-II (2016), set among the specimens.
It's the museum's first special exhibition about sex, in five chapters: what males and females look like, courtship and mating, how sex is decided, parenting, and reproducing without a partner at all. The middle holds the surprises: animals that change sex as they grow, ones whose sex is set by temperature, and a beetle that is part male, part female. The museum's own small print admits that not every animal has been shown to feel romance, and the labels say "love" anyway.
The museum warns that the show includes sexual content. Adults pay ¥2,300, school students ¥600. On weekends and holidays, book a free time slot on ARTPASS. Your ticket also covers the permanent galleries that day.
Look for
The peacock spider's dance
Look for Cardoso's On the Origin of Art I-II, where a male spider of 4 to 6 mm courts a female on a huge screen and a plate lets you feel his vibrations.
Lions and sika deer in pairs
Stuffed male and female lions and sika deer stand side by side in the first chapter, so you can compare the sexes up close.
Ribbon-tailed astrapias
A stuffed male and female of this bird of paradise stand together in the courtship chapter, which mixes specimens with film and sound recordings.
The gynandromorph beetle
A rhinoceros beetle specimen whose body carries both male and female cells, in the chapter on how sex is decided.
Good for
- Nerding Out
- Rainy Days
With kids
Under-6s get in free and school students pay ¥600; children of primary-school age and younger must come with a guardian. The museum warns that the show includes sexual content, so decide in advance whether it suits your kids.
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Nearby
Image credits
4
- National Museum of Nature and ScienceDaderot, CC0
- National Museum of Western ArtJoyofmuseums, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Tokyo National MuseumWiiii, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Tokyo Metropolitan Art MuseumJoe Mabel, CC BY-SA 2.0