Idaho Museum of Natural History offers Pizza Day to students the third Wednesday of the month; next one set Nov. 18

Just in case you haven’t been attacked by the huge inflatable T-Rex, here is some information you may have missed about the Idaho Museum of Natural History Pizza Day for students.

Pizza Day is held the third Wednesday of every month the Idaho Museum of Natural History located near the Student Union Building, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. For $3, guests can have two slices of pizza with a drink and admission into the museum.

The next Pizza Day is Nov. 18.

To help promote pizza day the museum has been letting their Tyrannosaurus Rex, Logan, out to bring Idaho State University students to the museum. The theme for the museum changes every six months, but this month is “Evolving Idaho” and “Gone Fishing.”

As part of pizza day and the admission, guests also get a free tour. The museum provides a virtual tour that changes depending on what group a visitor accompanies.

The tour guides are willing to customize tours for students who come to pizza day with limited time or between classes. Curt Schmitz, the museum’s registrar, gave a full tour in 10 minutes for a small group of ISU students.

“The museum tour was not only fascinating in terms of all the bizarre displays, but the information provided by the guide was fairly entertaining,” said Shelbie Harris, an ISU student. “Though I didn’t have any pizza, three bucks for a tour and a soda was awesome. They had me in and out in less than 15 minutes.”

Amber Tews, the museum’s anthropology collections manager, calls her tour “The Female Empowering Tour,” because the tour starts off teaching guests about burying beetles and their unique mating habits.

“If human females behaved like animal females, we would definitely be the dominant sex,” Tews said.

Schmitz poses the question, “If you crossed the path of a Bengal tiger and grizzly bear which would you rather be killed by?” Without giving too many spoilers, one of these animals provides a less gruesome death. Find out which does at pizza day in November.

The Idaho Museum of Natural History has the largest collection of Helicoprion, or “whorl-toothed sharks,” specimens in the United States. Along with this collection, the museum has 700,000 artifacts.

Recently, the museum has been working with the Augment App, which can be downloaded from the Apple Store and Google Play Store. This app allows museum guests to scan an object and view exhibits with their smartphones. For example, the artifacts the Idaho Museum of Natural History has for the Helicoprion do not contain a full body display, but guests can scan the Helicoprion poster to have the massive fish pop up on their phone screen. The app allows guests to take a picture with the object or display.

For more information visit imnh.isu.edu/home/ or call 208-282-3168.