Ontario Museum's Bat Cave

[Cheryl Jones]

The ROM's New Bat Cave Opens!
"Completely renovated and updated, the new, permanent Bat Cave is larger and more interactive with animatronic technology as well as audiovisual displays guiding visitors through a multi-sensory journey inside a recreated bat habitat. From the shadowy cave mouth, home to hundreds of roosting bats, to its finale, featuring a dramatization of the nightly exodus of the bat colony taking flight, the new Bat Cave promises a fascinating immersive and educational adventure."
For info:
http://wx.toronto.ca/festevents.nsf/71f ... enDocument

Museum press release with details of the cave and experience:
http://www.rom.on.ca/news/releases/publ ... v2j6fzgay1
"Four years in development, the original Bat Cave design was based on fieldwork conducted in the St. Clair Cave during March 1984 by a ROM crew that included curators, artists, preparators and a photographer. The team documented all aspects of the cave, including its design and ecology. The artists also took casts of the walls and roof of the cave system, including the rocks, stalactites and stalagmites—everything but the temperature and smell of the cave was ultimately reproduced. Designers of the 2010 Bat Cave drew on the original research as well as data gathered during a recent field trip to Jamaica. As a result, the renovated Bat Cave features new, high resolution images, video clips of bats in flight, a more realistic cave floor and emphasizes the variety of animals that live alongside the bats."

Exhibit page
http://www.rom.on.ca/exhibitions/nhistory/nhbatcave.php