"It was eye-catching to me that this little critter was not enjoying having people walking over his head," he said. "He didn't move very much and I don't know what a happy crayfish really looks like, but I suspect not in a small tank and having small feet jumping on your head."
The former chief of London's National Maritime Museum, which had no live animals "on the payroll", did not know whether the SPCA had raised any welfare concerns.
SPCA officials were unavailable for comment yesterday.
Mr Clare said the main reason for retiring the menagerie was that it was not the core activity of a museum and best left to zoos.
"We work very closely with our good friends at the [Auckland] zoo who do fabulous stuff with live animals, so between us we have the bases covered," he said.
A giant weta was among some of the creatures to go. Photo / Chris Gorman
Asked how he would continue to engage young minds, he said the museum still had plenty of stuffed animals, and specimens in jars.
Last year's interactive display about the sea, which did not involve live animals, had proved his institution's strongest drawcard in two decades "demonstrating the point that museums engage people in many ways".
But museum supporter Peter Buchanan, who has been writing to Mr Clare to oppose his decision, told the Herald it was "an unfortunate backward step that removes a significant educational resource".
He pointed to a number of leading overseas museums with live animals, and said he believed those in Auckland's collections had been very well looked after.
And, in the case of the crayfish and eel particularly, they had been spared from cooking pots.
Mr Buchanan's 11-year-old son Fraser, who has geckos, fish, frogs a pet snail and slug at home, said the museum would be less enticing for him.
"I go there to see all the animals, and if they are going, it's kind of pointless going," said Fraser, who wants to work for the SPCA when he grows up.
A juvenile crayfish, or spiny rock lobster. Photo / Brett Phibbs
"All my friends go there because of all the animals, because all the other stuff is really old."
Mt Royal Early Childhood Centre owner Kavita Swarup said she would think twice about taking her young charges to a museum without live animals on display.
"The children like to interact with live things so it's a wonderful thing to have them there," she said.
"Things like skeletons, they just see and walk away from, but when they see something live it's more interactive, so it gives them a good combination of life and things that have been kept over the years."
A & Q
How long has the museum exhibited live creatures?
The collection started small, at the Children's Discovery Centre (now the Weird and Wonderful zone), 20 years ago with a handful of locusts and cockroaches. Freshwater and marine aquariums and a beehive were added soon afterwards, as were the likes of frogs and geckos. Later additions included crickets, Avondale spiders, stick insects, skinks, rats, eels, giant starfish, shrimp and a magnified ant nest.
What is the museum doing with the collections?
An elderly crayfish, giant eel and the beehive have been moved to the home of the museum's live creatures curator, who will supervise a phased removal of all other collections by mid-2015.
What about Auckland Museum's contention that live creatures are not a core activity, and should be left to zoos?
Overseas museums promoting live exhibits include the Australian Museum, Museum Victoria, Manchester Museum, Boston's Museum of Science, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.
