Darwin Museum
Natural history collection tracing evolution through taxidermy, art and hidden genetics research from Soviet times.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Darwin Museum in Moscow follows Nadezhda Kohts, who in 1913 raised a baby chimpanzee named Joni and spent years comparing his behavior to a child's, searching for where animal ends and human begins. It traces how she and her husband, taxidermist Alexander Kohts, built the museum around that question starting in 1907, and how Soviet politics under a favored state scientist made their real research too dangerous to display openly. Listen for where Joni's case sits among the halls today.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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