The May Natural History Museum of the Tropics, located southwest of Colorado Springs, is a unique  museum - there is not another like it on the continent.

Beginning in 1929, John M. May and his late father, James F. W. May, started exhibiting their Tropical display at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, Canada, and at Flower Shows and Sports Shows in many large American cities. These showings were so popular and won the Mays so much attention that they have continued them right up to the present. Over the past sixty-five years they have put on their exhibitions in almost every U.S. state and every province of Canada.

It is extremely hard to describe this exhibition to anyone who has not seen it. The average person has no idea that there are such giant insects and related creatures in the tropics of the world. If you think tropical flowers have vivid colors, then you should see these invertebrates which display every known color. Some of the huge Brazilian butterflies have iridescent shades that reflect the sunlight and make them visible for half a mile.

Over the years there have been hundreds of school and college classes that have come to see this Museum and the students are impressed with the many really astonishing forms of camouflage these creatures employ for their own protection. Imagine a stick insect from New Guinea which measures 17 inches long and looks so much like a bundle of sticks that it is invisible unless it moves - the 10 inch wide Actius Moths of India that imitate the Cobra Snake to scare off their enemies - the leaf Insects of Borneo and the leaf Butterfly of Madagascar that are exactly like the leaves of the trees they rest on.

Almost everyone is curious about the invertebrates that can harm them and there are many of the most poisonous on display. One of these is the 9 inch scorpion of the Congo in Africa. There are many other kinds capable of poisoning and even killing some people. The very large purple Tarantula spiders of Peru are on display. They are the world's largest spiders and can actually catch and kill mice and small birds.

There are Colombian Beetles so large that they can break street lights and knock a man down if they hit him while flying. Among the hundreds of unusual creatures, one is the locust with colors that rival the rainbow; another, the moths that rob beehives and creatures that build log houses around themselves.

James F. W. May was born in England in 1884, but his family lived in Brazil, South America where he was raised. Mr. May's father was an adventurous man and for some years collected for the British Museum on the Upper Amazon River which in those days was virtually unexplored. He died of Yellow Fever which he contacted on one of his expeditions when James was only 8 years old; however, it must have been his father's influence that stimulated James to do his work in this field of Natural History. James' brother, Ted May, was the curator of the Government Museum in Rio de Janeiro for many years and independently built up one of the largest collections of Brazilian Arthropods.

For reservations mail us the information below or call us at (719)-576-0450 or (800)-666-3841.

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