SimplyAbuDhabi XLIX

The neighbouring Nature Discovery Garden brings the story firmly into the present. Grassland, woodland, wetland, and pond habitats demonstrate the surprising biodiversity that can flourish even in the middle of one of the world’s largest cities. Frogs, newts, dragonflies, birds, insects, and plants become part of a living collection that changes with the seasons. But this is not simply an attractive urban garden. Sensors collect environmental and acoustic information, helping scientists study the complex ecosystems developing around the museum. Visitors therefore find themselves inside both an exhibition and a living laboratory, where the nature under investigation is not an ancient fossil or faraway species but the wildlife occupying the same patch of London. It is a wonderfully simple extension of the museum’s purpose: natural history is not confined to the past, and nature is not something that exists only somewhere else. The Natural History Museum is the embodiment of the enduring human impulse to understand both the world around us and everything still waiting to be discovered. Simply Abu Dhabi | 139