Death By Natural Causes Explains How Nature Kills Us

The Houston Museum of Natural Science has brought back one of its most popular exhibits ever: Death by Natural Causes. Visitors should go see it as soon as possible because no one knows how long it will be on display before heading back out on tour to other museums.

First opening in 2018, Death by Natural Causes was an instant hit. The exhibit explores all the ways people can get killed by the natural world, from disease to lighting strikes to hippo attacks. It’s all presented in a grimly fun manner that looks like it was planned by The Addams Family.

As always, the HMNS goes above and beyond with video and interactive elements. Fun pieces such as an animatronic fortune teller that calculates your life expectancy return, but there are new wrinkles as well. A large blank tome displays animated death facts projected from above as visitors flip through it.

The vibe of this is Victorian, so we wanted to keep the digital elements as close to that as possible,” says Nicole Temple, Vice President of Education, who showed us around the exhibit as it was being completed.

Another popular activity is a chance to digitally paint with pigments that often contained lethal or poisonous elements. The work of Vincent Van Gogh is prominently displayed. The legendary artist’s distinctive color palettes and infamous mental illness may have had something to do with the toxic natural elements in his tools.

“Van Gogh’s paintings had a lot of lead,” says Temple. “Exposure to lead causes you to see haloes, which is what may explain ‘Starry Night.’ He was also on digitalis, which yellows your vision, and you see that in the colors of ‘Bedroom at Arles.’”

There are no dramatic changes to Death by Natural Causes, but some fun little ones. A funeral carriage on loan from the National Museum of Funeral History is parked outside the entrance. The layout has been reconfigured so that it’s slightly less claustrophobic and flows better. A few more stuffed animal statues can be spotted around the exhibit if you look closely, including a small possum.

“They figured out possums had a particular peptide that made them shake off copperhead bites, but then World War II happened,” says Temple. “They eventually came back to the research and are now working to turn it into a cheap and easy antivenom. They may be able to finally cure snake envenomation as a cause of death.”

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Hello, you (expletive deleted)

Photo by Jef Rouner

One major change worth noting is an update to the audio tours. The current system uses a website to access, which this reporter has never gotten to work properly. Temple says the museum is rolling out a new dedicated audio tour app in the next few weeks.

Which is good because apparently the audio tour has jokes. In the section on animal attacks, Temple says there is an entire story about how Johnny Cash almost died because of a grieving ostrich.

“He had some on his ranch and went to check on them after a bad freeze,” she says. “He found one who had died of the cold and got between the corpse and her mate. The mate was like, ‘You aren’t touching my girlfriend,’ and kicked him. The only reason he wasn’t disemboweled was that the claw caught on his belt buckle.”

And yes, COVID is making an appearance alongside several other bacteria and viruses that have killed large numbers of people. The exhibit notes that the United States has one-seventh of the death toll from COVID despite having only 4.23 percent of the world’s population. It’s a sober and frustrating note to end the exhibit on, and a potent reminder of why we need to talk about death openly and honestly. Maybe if more people did, they wouldn’t have called a plague a hoax and taken horse dewormer.

Recent events aside, Death By Natural Causes still maintains its darksome whimsy and penchant for explaining away the misinformation of misfortune. Check it out while you can. Like death itself, no one is sure when it will end, but Temple says it will at least be open to the public through the end of summer.

Death by Natural Causes is open daily at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, 5555 Hermann Park. Tickets available at HMNS.org. $20-35.