Life at the Limits

May 19, 2025 — January 4, 2026

Now Open

Additional ticket required. Free for Members.
Floor 3, Gallery 3

An adult and three children look at a large elephant seal model in the Life at the Limits special exhibition.
This life-size model (20 feet) is of the southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina), which spends two months a year living on land in Antarctica and the rest of the year hunting for fish and squid in the frigid Southern Ocean. While hunting, the elephant seal can dive down nearly a mile and may not resurface to breathe for up to two hours.
Alvaro Keding & Daniel Kim/ © AMNH
Meet the amazing species that survive and thrive on planet Earth.

Over billions of years, living things have evolved from simple cells into an awe-inspiring array of life forms—a spectacle of colors, textures, behaviors, specialized parts, and exacting skills. 

Some species are familiar. Others are so amazing that they test the limits of our imaginations. Their unusual features are often for the most ordinary of tasks: to reproduce, breathe, move around, sense the world, or find food and safety. 

Discover these organisms and their incredible adaptations in Life at the Limits: Nature's Superheroes.

Members See it Free!

Members can see Life at the Limits free on every visit! 

Learn more »
Close-up on a tardigrade, a microscopic eight-legged segmented animal with folds on its body and a round mouth. © AMNH

Reserve Museum Tickets »

Select the number of tickets and the date for Museum entry, you will then be able to add Life at the Limits or other ticketed exhibitions during checkout.

What You’ll See in Life at the Limits

Three children and an adult sit and play on a giant model of a Hercules beetle.
This climbable Hercules beetle (Dynastes hercules) model is 18 times the length and 6,000 times the volume of the actual size of this insect, which is the largest of the rhinoceros beetles.
Alvaro Keding & Daniel Kim/© AMNH
Two young visitors stand in front of a model of a section of the colorful Great Barrier Reef in Australia.
Corals (model of a section of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia) are animals that begin life floating in the water but settle and live anchored to the sea floor. Adult corals can’t move in search of mates and instead spawn in unison, releasing billions of eggs and sperm. Corals can also produce clones of itself.  
Roderick Mickens/© AMNH 
Two children stand on marked circles on the floor and play with digital, motion-sensing interactives about animals in the exhibit.
Visitors can test the "super powers" of several species that they encountered in the exhibition through an interactive based on whole-body, motion-sensing technology. 
Alvaro Keding & Daniel Kim/© AMNH
An adult holding a child stands in front of models of tube worms.
Red, feathery tips of giant tube worms (Riftia pachyptila) poke out of long, white tubes,as seen in this model. These worms have no mouths and cannot eat. Instead, they absorbchemicals from the surrounding water that microbes living inside their bodies convert to nutrients.
Alvaro Keding & Daniel Kim/© AMNH

Creative Courtship and Reproduction 

Find about extraordinary courtship and reproduction strategies—including the synchronous spawning of corals, timed to the light of the full moon, re-created with an intricate model of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Remarkable Adaptations for Breathing

Oxygen is what enables an organism’s cells to make energy. Many animals, from high-flying birds to deep divers, have evolved amazing ways to get the oxygen they need. See a 20-foot life-size model of the southern elephant seal, which can dive down nearly a mile and stay underwater for up to two hours while hunting.

Efficient Ways to Move Around

Evolution has produced some amazing ways of getting around efficiently. Find out which tiny insect can launch itself into a jump that may be more than 200 times its body length, and why fourwing flying fish aren’t actually flying. 

Super Sensing Abilities 

Learn about the world’s top eyes, noses, ears, and more—and step inside a gallery devoted to life inside caves, where various species have adapted to low-light conditions in amazing ways. 

Extreme Hunting and Eating

Explore species with “superpowers” for hunting and eating, including the black swallower—which lives thousands of feet below the ocean surface and can gulp down prey 10 times its own weight!

Extraordinary Endurance

Some organisms, known as “extremophiles,” specialize in extreme conditions. Don’t miss a diorama of a hydrothermal vent deep in the ocean, featuring tube worms that live in superheated seawater with high concentrations of acids, metals, and sulfur.

Dramatic Defense Systems

And some species even appear to defy death. See 10-foot models of microscopic animals called tardigrades, which can survive dehydration, extreme temperatures, and the vacuum and cosmic radiation space.