Playing dead

Stuffed squirrel from Evolution

Relax, mom: Kids who are fascinated by roadkill and taxidermied wildlife are totally normal. Rather than squelching your tot’s icky attraction to rotisserie-chicken carcasses and Grandma’s fox stole, encourage his curiosity with an educational tour of local ex-beasts.

The American Museum of Natural History has built an international reputation on the backs of dead animals. The institution holds so many fossils, bones and preserved remains that its curators haven’t gotten around to cataloging them all. They estimate that their dinosaur fossils alone number 2,000; 600 specimens are currently on display in the six fossil halls (85 percent are real; the rest are cast reproductions). The 39-foot-long T. rex is the No. 1 draw.

Just north of the museum, Maxilla and Mandible (451 Columbus Ave between 81st and 82nd Sts; 212-724-6173, maxillaandmandible.com) welcomes browsers. “If your kids want to look at dead animals, we have dead animals,” says salesman Mike Duggan. “It’s like a mini museum.” Owned by paleontologists who are currently on a dinosaur dig, the store stocks fossilized teeth, skulls and bones (ask to see the woolly mammoth tusk), several stuffed animals (among them, a reef shark, a bobcat and a rattlesnake) and a vast insect collection, including bug jewelry and Lucite-covered-cockroach trinkets. Evolution (120 Spring St between Mercer and Greene Sts; 212-343-1114, theevolutionstore.com), a similar shop in Soho, just acquired an eight-foot-long stuffed alligator.

To gain access to the Explorers Club (46 E 70th St between Madison and Park Aves; 212-628-8383, explorers.org), sign up for one of its Monday lectures on topics such as the Milky Way or the Galápagos Islands. You’ll be rewarded with a glimpse of its mascot, an eight-foot-tall stuffed polar bear. (The bear roars when you flick a nearby light switch.)

“Kids are born with a scientific disposition,” says Duggan, a former science teacher, “even if they don’t show it in school.”