Parents of 6- to 12-year olds beware. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History is targeting your children with its new evolutionary exhibit on mammals. The 25,000-square-foot Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals boasts almost 275 specimens. Lawrence Small, head of the Smithsonian Institute, noted: “Children of all ages will be very pleased” (as quoted in Schmid, 2003). And after glancing over a partial list of the animals that are included, I would say he is correct—children will be pleased. Yet, as they pass by the fierce-looking polar bear, the cuddly koalas, the yawning hippo, and the vampire bat feasting on a model of a scientist’s foot, they will unsuspectingly be indoctrinated with massive amounts of evolutionary teaching.

With four special “Discovery Zones,” the new exhibition provides children with hands-on activities to further ensure that they remember this evolutionary teaching. Using lights, audio, video, computer interactives, flip doors, push buttons, touchable and moveable objects, etc., the museum is aiming this exhibition at families with young children. The project manager of the new mammal hall observed that “children can step into a hominid’s footprint to see how their foot compares to it” (Boston, 2003). The fossilized footprint allegedly belongs to a 1.5-million-year-old hominid. From there, children can reach out and feel a leathery platypus egg or touch a beaver skull. The child is expected to unknowingly conclude: “I know platypuses and beavers are real. So hominids must be real too.”

Museum employees (if you’ll pardon the pun) make no bones about this hall advocating evolution. The news report released for the grand opening, proudly asserted that the exhibition explains how, as the world changed in the past 210 million years, mammals have evolved and become more diverse. Unlike traditional mammal dioramas, this hall views mammals in settings that tell specific stories of their evolution and adaptation over time, in response to their changing habitats. Robert Sullivan, associate director of the museum, stated: “This hall is about us. Everyone who visits this hall is a mammal…a successfully adapted mammal” (as quoted in Schmid, 2003). In fact, the exhibition’s theme is “Welcome to the Mammal Family Reunion” Come meet your relatives.” Commenting on the grand opening, Randolph Schmid, an MSNBC newswriter, observed: