‘Reptiles Alive!' is now open at the Field Museum, changing the way you look at snakes, lizards and even birds
Do they lay eggs? Most, but not all. Are they cold-blooded — meaning they don't generate their own body heat? Again: most, but not all.
'Reptiles Alive!,' a new exhibition at the Field Museum, argues even birds are technically a type of reptile. (You can dive deeper into the evolutionary link between them upstairs, where a different display analyzes the Chicago Archaeopteryx, one of the most well-preserved specimens of the first known flying dinosaur.)
Breaking down assumptions about reptiles has been the life's work of Sara Ruane, the Field's associate curator of herpetology, who grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania. Inspired by the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art in Scranton, Ruane established her own 'museum' with doodads from her grandparents' house, charging a $5 admission fee. The highlight of her childhood was scrounging the nearby woods for scuttling surprises, mostly salamanders and centipedes.
'But every now and then, there'd be a snake,' she said, 'and getting a snake is such a thrill.'
Ruane loves snakes. A tattoo of a scarlet kingsnake winds up her leg, a tribute to her Ph.D. research. Her personal website, emblazoned with hot pink, is called Sara's Snakepit. She has two pet snakes: a 33-year-old ball python named Coolio (hey, she got it the '90s) and a vine snake named Mean Green, a reference to a nasty ex of her dad's. In a video about Ruane in 'The Changing Face of Science,' a new Field exhibit about women scientists, Mean Green lunges, fangs first, at Ruane's face on camera. She giggles.
Ruane isn't just a herpetologist and snake lover, she's also an evolutionary biologist. So when it came time to design 'Reptiles Alive!,' she wanted to hit home some of the eccentricities of reptiles' evolution.
Some species, like the emerald tree boa and green tree python, might look nearly identical, but they evolved oceans apart, with the emerald tree boa in South America, and the green tree python in New Guinea and Australia.
Similarly, legless lizards appear on every continent except Antarctica. Those, by the way, are not snakes — with the distinguishing factor being not legs, but the presence of earholes and eyelids, both of which snakes lack.
'These things are all examples of convergent evolution,' Ruane said. 'An animal may not be closely related to another animal, but they do the same job in their environment, and so they evolved to look very similar.'
Don't just take Ruane's word for it. You can see them for yourself courtesy of Clyde Peeling's Reptiland, an accredited zoo in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, which provided 20 live reptiles for the exhibit. Among them is the emerald tree boa, which can be seen contentedly snoozing on a tree, coiled like a cinnamon bun.
'Reptiles Alive!' reminds us that we're learning new things every day about this vast swath of the animal kingdom. A display early in the exhibit summarizes recent research on an iron coating on the Komodo dragon's teeth. Later, a section discusses the ways Ruane and her team are keeping tabs on the local ecosystem, including using cat food to coax wild turtles into a net for observation. And yes, Chance the Snapper — the juvenile alligator that was found in Humboldt Park's lagoon and became a viral sensation in 2019 — gets a shoutout.
So do the foundational Field scientists who, decades ago, paved the way for this exhibition. You can see a snapping turtle model by Carl Cotton, a pioneering Black taxidermist who worked at the Field from 1947 to 1971.
And the entirety of 'Reptiles Alive!' is dedicated to former Field curator of herpetology Karl Schmidt, who made the ultimate sacrifice for his research. In 1957, the recently retired scientist was back at the Field's labs when he was bitten by a boomslang snake sent to the museum for identification. Lacking the proper antivenom, Schmidt documented his symptoms over the next 24 hours, before dying the following morning.
'I just cited Schmidt in a paper I'm writing,' Ruane said, 'so his science is still extremely relevant.'
By the way: the Field has antivenom on hand for every venomous live reptile in the exhibition. 'Reptiles Alive!' may pay tribute to the Field's history, but it doesn't intend to repeat it — not on Ruane's watch.
'Reptiles Alive!' runs through April 5, 2026, at the Field Museum, 1400 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive, open daily 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; requires all-access pass, $43 adults, fieldmuseum.org
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