Kerala Biodiversity Museum

The first of its kind in India, the Kerala Biodiversity Museum was inaugurated in January 2018. The museum is situated inside a newly renovated 19th century storage house situated by the T.S. Canal (Trivandrum-Shoranur). The museum boasts of life-sized replicas of various animals and ecological environments including the underwater ecosystem, the forest ecosystem, and so on. Other exhibits include a collection of the different varieties of rice found in Kerala, and the many varieties of shells found in India. There are LCD screens that reproduce sounds of a few selected birds, outline the international and national organisations at work in various geographical levels to protect the ecosystem, display the ecological zones of the country, and have videos on reptiles, mammals, amphibians, endangered species and their habitats, etc. Also on display are the projects, which have been undertaken by various institutions, based on the interaction between tribes and their environment, habits, and culture.

The museum has an entire room dedicated to an interactive kiosk which familiarises visitors with the environment from the point of view of different groups such as children, students, farmers, biologists, etc. The museum also has a water body attached to the canal, which contains many different species of fish. It also houses around 68 medicinal plants with a kiosk explaining the characteristics of various plants. A 3D movie of 30 minutes is also played for visitors. The main attraction of the museum is the Science on a Sphere (SOS) system, which allows one to see real-time information collected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).