Animal Inside Out at Life Science Centre

Visiting the exhibitions at the Life Science Centre is one of my favourite things to do in Newcastle. So far we've enjoyed getting our geek on at Game On and embracing our inner child at Robot.

The latest exhibition at Life is Animal Inside Out, featuring the amazing work of Dr Gunther von Hagens who has brought us an amazing way to learn more about animals that truly takes your breath away and makes you realise how incredible life is.

Animal Inside Out features real animal preserved through Plastination, a very clever process of halting decomposition of a dead body to preserve its inner organs and systems for medical and scientific purposes.

Each animal at the exhibition has been preserved offering you the rare chance to see exactly what lies beneath the skin.

Now if you're a little squeamish like me you may be thinking that you don't really like the sound of any of this. But I think it's important to know that no animals were killed or harmed for the exhibition. The exhibition is so well done and interesting that I wasn't even remotely distressed by any of it. I actually found myself itching to get closer and really took my time to carefully study each animal.

If you have children and are at all worried about taking them to the exhibition then make sure you read North East Family Fun's advice on taking children to Animal Inside Out.

The exhibition aims to explain the inner workings of animals and give us a greater appreciation for the animal world by comparing our own bodies to theirs.

Each animal offers an amazing look at how their body works from amazing muscles to complicated nerves, and clever digestive and reproductive systems. Wandering around the exhibition really made me realise how special life is.

Simon and I are both huge animal lovers and it's a passion that we really enjoy sharing. We can spend hours wandering around animal parks and looking through binoculars but Animal Inside Out was like nothing we'd ever experienced before. We were so enthralled we wandered the exhibition in silence (and it's not very often we're quiet!)

I don't want to give too much away as I think it's an exhibition that everyone really needs to see for themselves but I hope you've enjoyed the photos I've shared and can get a little taste of what you can expect. There is plenty to learn from the exhibition with loads of videos and display boards to accompany the animals.

Our visit ended with a trip to the Life Cafe for a lunch.  I will admit I wasn't expecting much as quite often cafes in places like this can be over priced and not very nice but we were seriously impressed with the quality of our lunch. We both ordered pastrami sandwiches and they were freshly made and packed with flavour.

We were also very happy to discover that Canny Milkshake is stocked at Life. Canny produce the most amazing milkshakes using real ingredients and no nasty surprises from right here in the North East. I've tried them all and the banana is definitely my favourite.

Animal Inside Out runs until 3 January and admission to the exhibition is included in your Science centre ticket.

We were given complimentary tickets to Animal Inside Out but were not obliged to write this review. All opinions are our own.