When he was a child, Robert Ruch would visit the Field Museum every weekend with his father and sister.
Ruch, now 68, brings his granddaughter to a camp program at the museum. Friday, the last day of the camp, was the opening day of the museum’s Reptiles Alive! exhibit.
“When we signed up for it, we didn’t even know that this exhibit was going to be open,” said Ruch, who lives in Berwyn. “It’s like an extra bonus.”
Ruch said he dropped his granddaughter, who’s in seventh grade, off at the museum’s camp Friday morning and explored the exhibit. His granddaughter wants to become a herpetologist, an expert in reptiles and amphibians.
Reptiles Alive! runs through April 2026. It features 20 live reptiles, including a 14-foot reticulated python and a Cuban rock iguana on loan from Clyde Peeling’s Reptiland, a zoo in Allenwood, Pennsylvania. Tickets for the reptile exhibit are $10 for adults and $8 for children, and admission is separate from museum admission. An all access pass, which includes admission to the reptile exhibit as well as an Africa Fashion exhibit, is $43.
Michael Lovely, 46, commuted two hours from Rensselaer, Indiana, with his nephew to visit the museum. He found out about the reptile exhibit’s opening the night before.
“I had already planned to be here today with my nephew,” Lovely told the Sun-Times. “It was just a nice surprise. He loves reptiles, so it worked out really great.”
The pair were able to pet a baby American alligator named Thanos, one of the many animals in the exhibit. Life-like models of dozens of species and specimens of reptiles are also on exhibit, including the spider-tailed horned viper, the only one of its kind on display in the United States. The exhibit also explores reptile conservation and the impact of humans on reptile habitats.
Diana Morales Mijares, a 22-year-old doctoral student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said she was on a field trip to the museum with her pre-doctoral fellowship program at the university.
Mijares, a Brighton Park native, said she was excited by the nostalgia of being back at the Field Museum, but also inspired to explore the new exhibits she hadn’t seen before.
“I thought, why not look at the reptiles since I like animals?” Mijares said. “Reptiles are a little creepy, but the more you know, the more understanding you have of them.”
Sara Ruane, associate curator of herpetology and director of core laboratories at the Field Museum, who developed the content for the exhibit, said she hopes people can appreciate the interactive aspects and models of the exhibit.
Ruane said the exhibit is dedicated to Karl Patterson Schmidt, a former Field Museum curator who was bitten by a snake he was examining and died in 1957.
“I really hope that when people leave, whether or not they are in love with reptiles, they have a little bit more appreciation for just how amazing and cool they are and how successful they are as a group all around the world,” Ruane said.