1 00:00:00,360 --> 00:00:06,960 Hello. My name is Elaine Charvet. I'm a doctoral researcher at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. 2 00:00:07,800 --> 00:00:15,750 On my first day at the museum, I was given an enormous bunch of keys and told I could open every cupboard and door. 3 00:00:16,290 --> 00:00:19,200 That was one of the best days in my life. 4 00:00:19,920 --> 00:00:26,490 And these podcasts I want to share with you some of the treasures I've encountered on my many forays into attics and sellers, 5 00:00:26,760 --> 00:00:33,600 cupboards and storerooms. I've also been very privileged to meet many experts who do research, 6 00:00:33,750 --> 00:00:38,880 look after collections and the visitors, and turn the museum into a living organism. 7 00:00:39,090 --> 00:00:44,700 We can all be part of it. But looking at the crowds, visiting the museum every day, 8 00:00:45,210 --> 00:00:53,160 here's a chance to create a microcosm of nature and science, to celebrate you and biodiversity, 9 00:00:54,120 --> 00:01:03,030 but also to talk about hugely important topics such as the loss of biodiversity, the climate emergency and manmade extinctions. 10 00:01:04,110 --> 00:01:13,350 This series of podcasts takes a close look at some fascinating and surprising objects in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. 11 00:01:14,280 --> 00:01:21,720 Is a kind of fringe event to go hand in hand with a major display happening at the museum in 2022. 12 00:01:22,800 --> 00:01:27,870 Each podcast is a journey of discovery through the nooks and crannies of the museum. 13 00:01:28,080 --> 00:01:30,530 Talking to researchers and experts on the way, 14 00:01:31,280 --> 00:01:41,100 we will seek out the rarely seen or heard about any attic objects in the museum and their stories scientific, historical and personal. 15 00:01:41,880 --> 00:01:51,540 These objects can be specimens, natural objects, artefacts, tools, or even museum in turn, such as conservation fluids. 16 00:01:52,470 --> 00:01:58,020 What they all have in common is that they speak to us about ecology and biodiversity. 17 00:01:58,560 --> 00:02:03,480 Both terms are linked with our constantly evolving ecological relationships. 18 00:02:03,720 --> 00:02:10,950 There is no biodiversity. Is there even such a thing as biodiverse objects? 19 00:02:11,790 --> 00:02:16,390 Well, let's find out. Hello. 20 00:02:16,410 --> 00:02:25,140 Welcome back. This is our second podcast in the series and it's called Extinction and the Museum. 21 00:02:25,350 --> 00:02:28,860 Skeletons and Other Remains in Our Cupboards. 22 00:02:29,610 --> 00:02:35,310 In this podcast, we look at extinction and the role of collections and museums. 23 00:02:35,820 --> 00:02:43,530 This ranges from good researching causes for extinction and preserving evidence to the bad, 24 00:02:43,830 --> 00:02:51,360 contributing to extinction or damaging populations and environments through overcorrecting to the 25 00:02:51,360 --> 00:03:00,480 ugly legacy of regarding and displaying extinction as deserved in the survival of the fittest. 26 00:03:01,200 --> 00:03:13,319 We will also explore the spirit of conservation methods of preserving animal remains one of the very few cupboards that no magic key did not open on. 27 00:03:13,320 --> 00:03:21,090 My first days at the museum was the one containing precious objects from the Ashmolean collections, 28 00:03:21,090 --> 00:03:27,270 the oldest core of the collections of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. 29 00:03:27,950 --> 00:03:35,430 But I have that special key today to have a look inside this particular covered with here. 30 00:03:36,540 --> 00:03:40,130 Right. What can we see? Ooh. 31 00:03:40,380 --> 00:03:45,600 An inflated pufferfish with spines, a little spiky ball. 32 00:03:45,990 --> 00:03:48,600 Although the spikes look a bit worn. 33 00:03:48,600 --> 00:03:59,730 Now, some species of pufferfish have some of the deadliest poison in the animal kingdom, so I will resist taking it out of the cupboard. 34 00:04:00,600 --> 00:04:04,860 This dry fish still be poisonous just to make sure. 35 00:04:05,070 --> 00:04:07,890 I asked like collections manager Mark Connell. 36 00:04:08,820 --> 00:04:14,219 So it's a really good question and there are parts of the collections that we have to really take care when 37 00:04:14,220 --> 00:04:22,440 we're accessing and handling because of the preservation methods and much rarer biological qualities. 38 00:04:22,950 --> 00:04:33,570 With Pufferfish, which is a huge group, the tetrodotoxin that they contain synthesised from bacteria, from their environment. 39 00:04:33,990 --> 00:04:41,850 And so the pufferfish, which can be toxic and all of them are if you raise them in aquarium, 40 00:04:41,850 --> 00:04:46,890 they aren't toxic because they don't have exposure to these bacteria that you find in the marine environment. 41 00:04:47,490 --> 00:04:53,730 And most the toxin is stored in tissues and sometimes in their skin. 42 00:04:54,180 --> 00:04:59,040 So you're mostly at risk from poisoning by basically eating them. 43 00:04:59,520 --> 00:05:09,839 In this example, this particular fish is 400 years old, so you'd have to get more intimate than we normally allow visitors to get with and be really, 44 00:05:09,840 --> 00:05:17,129 really unlucky, I think, to suffer any effects from from remnants of toxins that might be lingering in this case. 45 00:05:17,130 --> 00:05:20,250 I think it's a fairly low risk for museum specimens generally. 46 00:05:20,460 --> 00:05:23,640 Phew. That's reassuring. Thank you, Mark. 47 00:05:24,540 --> 00:05:29,580 What else is in the cupboard? Oh, a tiny armadillo. 48 00:05:30,150 --> 00:05:36,120 I love armadillos with a long snout, pig ears and banded arm. 49 00:05:36,870 --> 00:05:43,620 Armadillos were very popular and the cabinets of curiosities of the 17th and 18th centuries. 50 00:05:43,980 --> 00:05:47,700 Even Rembrandt had a taxidermy armadillo. 51 00:05:48,240 --> 00:05:51,840 It was also used as a symbol of the American continent. 52 00:05:51,840 --> 00:05:59,100 And in the late 16th century, artist Adrian Collett personified America as a muscular, 53 00:05:59,100 --> 00:06:05,070 half naked armoured lady riding on an equally armoured armadillo. 54 00:06:05,760 --> 00:06:09,540 This armadillo definitely is not meant to look cute. 55 00:06:09,870 --> 00:06:19,410 It is not only considerably bigger than this tiny specimen here in the cupboard, but also has a dragon like face with quite a rakish grin. 56 00:06:20,160 --> 00:06:31,380 Armadillos are also very interesting to science, as the four young they usually have are genetically identical as they come from one single egg. 57 00:06:31,830 --> 00:06:38,820 This is called poly embryonic, and in mammals it is probably unique to the armadillo. 58 00:06:39,300 --> 00:06:53,120 But this this skull here, that that is really the showstopper quite beak heftier even than crocodile skull, which is also in this cupboard. 59 00:06:54,210 --> 00:06:58,920 And it looks like it has two pairs of tusks. 60 00:06:59,520 --> 00:07:04,080 It looks a bit like a strange wild boar, but it's a warthog. 61 00:07:04,650 --> 00:07:10,350 The tusks are, in fact, the upper and lower incisors, typical for the warthog. 62 00:07:10,680 --> 00:07:14,280 And this is a very special one indeed. 63 00:07:14,550 --> 00:07:24,170 This very. Skull has only relatively recently been identified as the oldest known scientific water specimen in the world. 64 00:07:24,680 --> 00:07:35,000 It was assumed the earliest water specimen had reached Europe in the 1760s and got its scientific last name in the following decades. 65 00:07:35,390 --> 00:07:42,590 This one here, however, was listed in the catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum in 1685. 66 00:07:42,590 --> 00:07:44,450 So much, much earlier. 67 00:07:47,120 --> 00:07:58,010 So if the quite random assortment of specimens inside this cupboard seems strange, it only does so from our modern point of view. 68 00:07:58,190 --> 00:08:06,050 So we used to need a geographical and taxonomic order that museum and natural history collections. 69 00:08:06,710 --> 00:08:07,280 However, 70 00:08:07,490 --> 00:08:20,090 time travelling educated visitors from the 17th or the 18th century in Europe would have no problem recognising and appreciating these specimens here. 71 00:08:20,690 --> 00:08:28,960 They were, in fact, the standard fare found in one come on or cabinets of curiosities across Europe. 72 00:08:29,730 --> 00:08:39,840 And these cabinets had their own logic and order focussing on the wondrous, the exotic, the amazing. 73 00:08:40,200 --> 00:08:42,269 While still collecting evidence, 74 00:08:42,270 --> 00:08:51,840 observations and data that would become the basis for the modern scientific collections and natural history museums of the 19th century. 75 00:08:52,470 --> 00:08:56,100 And this is exactly what this cupboard is about. 76 00:08:56,550 --> 00:09:01,120 These are zoological specimens from the Ashmolean collections. 77 00:09:01,140 --> 00:09:04,070 The oldest core of the museum's collections. 78 00:09:04,080 --> 00:09:14,219 As I said, these collections have also been referred to as the desk and Arc, which I think is a very good name, first of all, 79 00:09:14,220 --> 00:09:25,600 because the curious objects and specimens were mainly collected by two john traditions, father and son, as well as the younger wife, Hester. 80 00:09:25,620 --> 00:09:30,090 From the 1630s to the 1670s. 81 00:09:30,780 --> 00:09:42,150 Elias Ashmole helped to catalogue and order them and eventually came into their possession and gifted them to the University of Oxford. 82 00:09:42,270 --> 00:09:55,460 The whole coming into possession business was quite a murky one and does not shed a very favourable light on animals character at all, 83 00:09:55,590 --> 00:09:57,480 in my humble opinion at least. 84 00:09:57,840 --> 00:10:08,190 But I guess we should be grateful that this absolutely unique and precious collection of the treasure skins came to the University and to Oxford, 85 00:10:08,490 --> 00:10:15,870 and all the way across the centuries. To us, a true ark, preserving priceless specimens. 86 00:10:15,870 --> 00:10:22,200 Even if some of them fell by the wayside over the centuries, or very nearly did. 87 00:10:22,680 --> 00:10:28,230 This is even true for the most iconic specimen from the desk in collections. 88 00:10:28,560 --> 00:10:37,500 The Oxford dodo remains the only dodo specimen in the world to still have some of its soft tissue. 89 00:10:38,440 --> 00:10:42,790 Sadly, the dodo did not make it in one piece to us. 90 00:10:43,180 --> 00:10:50,770 The methods of conserving organic materials were still very limited in the 17th and 18th centuries, 91 00:10:51,100 --> 00:10:58,240 and taxidermy animals would decay very badly within just a century or so. 92 00:10:59,050 --> 00:11:03,970 This is probably why we only have one leg and the head left. 93 00:11:05,000 --> 00:11:10,940 And here it is, even within this cupboard of wonders. 94 00:11:11,270 --> 00:11:18,920 This is special. It has its own made to measure state of the art conservation box. 95 00:11:19,400 --> 00:11:34,190 And if we take the lid off very carefully, this looks almost like a mediaeval shrine to a holy martyr buried on soft white material. 96 00:11:34,730 --> 00:11:39,800 Precious remains like reliquaries bone and skin. 97 00:11:41,360 --> 00:11:46,670 It is a bit of a mystery why the dodo has become such an extinction celebrity. 98 00:11:47,390 --> 00:12:00,170 Is it the evocative name, the Alice in Wonderland Connexion, its charisma as a tragic comic character that's big, flightless bird from her ashes. 99 00:12:00,470 --> 00:12:08,090 It was not used to efficient predators and apparently approached people when they first arrived on the island. 100 00:12:08,600 --> 00:12:16,850 The dodo was first mentioned by Dutch sailors in the 1590s and became extinct through hunting, habitat, 101 00:12:16,850 --> 00:12:24,410 destruction and invasive species within less than a century, probably in the late 17th century. 102 00:12:25,490 --> 00:12:35,470 So perhaps it was also the first animal going extinct because of our actions that science and the more general public became aware of. 103 00:12:35,480 --> 00:12:46,700 And that's why it's so famous. Even before its extinction, its rarity and strangeness caused some interest remains. 104 00:12:46,700 --> 00:12:56,150 And even a few live dodos were transported to Europe, where they joined the cabinets of curiosities of Kings and noblemen. 105 00:12:57,050 --> 00:13:03,530 Even a few live dodos joined the less exclusive enterprises. 106 00:13:03,920 --> 00:13:14,629 There is an account of the wonderfully named historian Sir Hammond Strange, who saw a live dodo in London in 1638, 107 00:13:14,630 --> 00:13:26,210 exhibited by a showman in a similar way that many creatures and people who were in any way different from the perceived norm became part of the shows. 108 00:13:26,990 --> 00:13:30,920 Strange writes about 1638. 109 00:13:30,920 --> 00:13:35,569 As I walked along streets, I sold a picture of a strange looking fowl, 110 00:13:35,570 --> 00:13:43,160 hung out upon a cloth and myself with one or two more in company went in to see it. 111 00:13:43,670 --> 00:13:52,820 The keeper called it a dodo, and in the end of a chimney in the chamber, there lay a heap of large pebbled stones. 112 00:13:53,150 --> 00:13:58,400 Where off? He gave it, many in our sight, some as big as nutmegs. 113 00:13:58,820 --> 00:14:03,320 And the keeper told us that she eats them conducing to digestion. 114 00:14:04,740 --> 00:14:17,490 There has been some speculation that this this very dodo could be our Oxford dodo when it died, perhaps from being fed all these huge pebbles. 115 00:14:17,970 --> 00:14:23,910 It seems logical that it would have been sold to the Traditions world famous collection, 116 00:14:23,910 --> 00:14:28,410 which at the time was still located in south Lambeth in London. 117 00:14:29,070 --> 00:14:34,890 And that counts of the tradition in collections predating the mentioning by Strange. 118 00:14:35,220 --> 00:14:42,360 No dodo or any likely candidate as listed in catalogues or any accounts. 119 00:14:42,360 --> 00:14:47,460 Really, the bird that could not fly quickly became iconic, 120 00:14:47,820 --> 00:14:53,760 and we are incredibly lucky that this precious specimen was preserved first in 121 00:14:53,760 --> 00:15:00,180 the Ark and then in the Ark of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. 122 00:15:00,840 --> 00:15:07,050 Who knows how many new insights and data we will get from these remains in the future? 123 00:15:09,090 --> 00:15:23,700 DNA has already been extracted and revealed the taxonomic tree of the dodo that the date I was in fact a close relative to the also extinct solitaire, 124 00:15:23,910 --> 00:15:28,140 and that they both belong to the family of pigeons. 125 00:15:28,590 --> 00:15:40,350 Its closest living relative has been established as the Nicobar pigeon, despite or perhaps even because of all the latest technology we throw at it. 126 00:15:40,680 --> 00:15:50,820 These remains will remain a source of wonder, but also of urgency, urging us to do better than this. 127 00:15:51,660 --> 00:16:00,690 I am looking at the skull with some of its face still intact, looking naked. 128 00:16:02,130 --> 00:16:07,080 I feel somehow I need to say something to it. 129 00:16:07,590 --> 00:16:14,430 To the dodo. To mark this extraordinary moment of meeting it in the flesh. 130 00:16:14,790 --> 00:16:19,079 Although there isn't much of it left, I don't know. 131 00:16:19,080 --> 00:16:22,320 What can you say something like? 132 00:16:23,010 --> 00:16:29,190 Dear Master of Extinction in your conservation grade cardboard shrine. 133 00:16:29,370 --> 00:16:32,370 Please forgive us. Is this silly? 134 00:16:32,370 --> 00:16:42,630 Sentimental? Perhaps. But our imagination, our emotions, our stories and connexions, I think, 135 00:16:42,810 --> 00:16:52,380 are very powerful spaces and may perhaps yet trigger some sort of change that we learn. 136 00:16:53,190 --> 00:16:59,940 I'd like to think that this is where the dodo now lives in a different kind of arc. 137 00:17:00,240 --> 00:17:13,530 That is our conscience. Despite some claims to the contrary, no dodo eggs or remains of dodo eggs are currently known to have survived. 138 00:17:14,370 --> 00:17:25,590 It seems fitting, therefore, that in this very same cupboard as the Oxford dodo is an egg of a more recently extinct bird. 139 00:17:26,040 --> 00:17:33,870 Although this egg was not part of the Ashmolean collections and came to the museum only in the mid-19th century, 140 00:17:34,650 --> 00:17:40,290 this extinct bird was also flightless, but much closer to home. 141 00:17:43,580 --> 00:17:55,250 The EC sits in its own historical wooden frame glass case, complete with an almost theatrical black velvet cover. 142 00:17:56,160 --> 00:18:01,410 Right. I am lifting the bell very carefully. 143 00:18:02,190 --> 00:18:05,280 This feels like a magician's trick. 144 00:18:05,610 --> 00:18:16,200 And here it is. Not a white bunny, but quite a big egg, perhaps the size of a goose egg. 145 00:18:16,680 --> 00:18:25,710 But what it immediately reminds me of is a two big guillemot egg with its sort of triangular shape. 146 00:18:27,600 --> 00:18:31,720 This is a great oak ache. 147 00:18:32,490 --> 00:18:42,090 So the resemblance is no surprise really, because the great auk was a close relative to the guillemot. 148 00:18:42,450 --> 00:18:50,310 And like the guillemot, it has a distinctive set of squiggles and splotches. 149 00:18:50,700 --> 00:18:59,549 In this case, black and in shades of grey, on white and light on guillemot eggs. 150 00:18:59,550 --> 00:19:06,330 These patterns are like fingerprints unique to the one bird laying the eggs. 151 00:19:07,020 --> 00:19:15,720 It is now thought that this helps communal cliff breeders like Guillemot to recognise their own eggs in the packed colonies. 152 00:19:15,930 --> 00:19:23,700 So what we have here really is like the fingerprint of an extinct bird. 153 00:19:24,090 --> 00:19:31,979 This very useful and also beautiful variation in pattern and colour, however, 154 00:19:31,980 --> 00:19:39,210 also had the effect of making the eggs very attractive to egg collectors. 155 00:19:39,690 --> 00:19:45,870 Whereas naturalists mission is to describe the rule as well as the exception. 156 00:19:46,200 --> 00:19:53,850 Collectors are often fixated on the rare and wonderful the variety of eggs. 157 00:19:53,880 --> 00:20:04,410 The beauty made them highly desirable collectors objects, especially in the latter half of the 19th and in the early 20th century. 158 00:20:05,310 --> 00:20:15,600 As the popularity of egg collecting sold, it became a huge money spinner and began to have serious consequences. 159 00:20:16,080 --> 00:20:26,310 George Lupton is a good example. He was one of the most prolific and obsessive egg collectors in the 1920s and 1930s. 160 00:20:26,790 --> 00:20:35,790 His particular passion were Guillemot Eggs and an unlucky female guillemot on Pentland Cliffs in Yorkshire, 161 00:20:35,790 --> 00:20:40,350 who produced a particularly rare and desirable colouring. 162 00:20:40,710 --> 00:20:52,290 Reddish Brown was never able to hatch a single egg or rare chick in her entire 20 year breeding cycle. 163 00:20:53,250 --> 00:21:01,080 The acts were all taken by climbers, paid by Lipton and other collectors in pursuit of the perfect set. 164 00:21:01,890 --> 00:21:07,770 The difficulty in obtaining the guillemot eggs only added to their desirability. 165 00:21:08,670 --> 00:21:13,140 Thankfully, it is now illegal to collect eggs from wild birds. 166 00:21:13,410 --> 00:21:17,670 Still, collectors collections were often donated to museums. 167 00:21:17,790 --> 00:21:22,290 So in fact, museums often inherited something deeply problematic. 168 00:21:22,890 --> 00:21:30,690 The guillemot survived the onslaught. It existed in big enough numbers and was rarely hunted for meat as it could fly. 169 00:21:31,500 --> 00:21:35,160 The great auk, however, did not survive. 170 00:21:36,190 --> 00:21:44,920 The last pair of great orcs were probably killed in 1844 off the Icelandic island of Elodie. 171 00:21:45,880 --> 00:21:50,380 So this great oak egg is a rare treasure. 172 00:21:50,710 --> 00:21:56,770 It is one of only about 75 known to still exist. 173 00:21:57,610 --> 00:22:02,680 Very little is, in fact known about our egg here at the museum. 174 00:22:03,010 --> 00:22:17,350 We know that the egg was given by a Lady Watson of Chop House Blackheath, London, to her relative, Sir Walter C travelling to day prior to 1839. 175 00:22:17,950 --> 00:22:24,280 Sir Walter died in 1879 and bequeathed his egg to the University Museum at Oxford. 176 00:22:24,940 --> 00:22:28,690 That is all. So I decided to do a bit of digging. 177 00:22:28,870 --> 00:22:32,260 Thomas Marion Wilson, the seventh baronet. 178 00:22:32,500 --> 00:22:38,320 He left from 1773 around that to 1821. 179 00:22:38,950 --> 00:22:43,450 He lived at Chiltern House and apparently had a menagerie there. 180 00:22:43,900 --> 00:22:52,900 It is recorded that he was the owner of a private menagerie of wild animals, some of which were allowed to run loose about his house at Cheltenham. 181 00:22:53,650 --> 00:22:58,030 It's very tempting to think that there may have been a life great auk running 182 00:22:58,030 --> 00:23:03,160 wild near Greenwich in London at the end of the 18th or early 19th century. 183 00:23:03,880 --> 00:23:10,360 Well, at least the precious Oxford egg was sitting exactly there at some point. 184 00:23:10,780 --> 00:23:17,860 So before the menagerie running loose, a more sessile collection could already be found there. 185 00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:23,110 Made by Thomas Wilson's mother. So the sixth baronet. 186 00:23:23,440 --> 00:23:26,570 The Father of Menagerie. 187 00:23:26,590 --> 00:23:30,399 Thomas Marion Wilson. While Sir Thomas Spencer Wilson. 188 00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:34,180 And he was married to Jane Weller. Lady Wilson. 189 00:23:34,510 --> 00:23:38,650 She was born in 1749 and died in 1818. 190 00:23:39,040 --> 00:23:45,820 And she was a keen naturalist, a fossil hunter and collector extraordinaire. 191 00:23:46,450 --> 00:23:52,930 It was indeed Lady Wilson who amassed the very valuable collection of natural history, 192 00:23:53,380 --> 00:24:03,550 which was recorded as a very valuable and consisting of minerals, fossils, insects and various other subjects. 193 00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:11,320 She sparked a passion for natural history and the natural sciences in her family for generations to come. 194 00:24:11,410 --> 00:24:20,020 Her collections still form the core of the museum at Wallington Hall, Northumberland and a testament to her wide interests. 195 00:24:20,350 --> 00:24:27,820 Intriguingly, in a description for her portrait dating from 1879. 196 00:24:28,150 --> 00:24:31,600 She's referred to as a college tourist, a beetle expert. 197 00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:41,350 But a quick search on the amazing Biodiversity Heritage Library reveals that she might just as well be called archaeologist, 198 00:24:41,590 --> 00:24:46,720 an expert on shelves contributing with her collections to various important works, 199 00:24:46,960 --> 00:24:55,600 including the standard ones by James Selby or a mycologist or indeed an ornithologist. 200 00:24:55,660 --> 00:25:03,220 So in the portrait painting in her portrait, she is also depicted holding the catalogue to her collections. 201 00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:07,050 The Oxford Great Oak Egg is very likely listed there. 202 00:25:07,060 --> 00:25:14,790 John Woolly in 1864 concluded it probably hailed from the water around new found plant. 203 00:25:15,040 --> 00:25:24,519 Jane Wilson's daughter Maria married Sir John Trouble in 1791, and the oldest son is the Oxford University naturalist and geologist, 204 00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:29,080 Sir Walter Seed Travelling, who donated the great oak egg to the university. 205 00:25:29,170 --> 00:25:34,000 Natural history and the great object definitely seemed to have run in the family. 206 00:25:34,270 --> 00:25:40,929 It's a great shame, though, that so little of Jane Wilson's collections and contributions to natural history are known. 207 00:25:40,930 --> 00:25:47,560 Unfortunately, all too often the case of the naturalists, all scientists in question were women. 208 00:25:48,100 --> 00:25:57,009 But back to the great auk its large size, enormous beak, and especially its flight looseness. 209 00:25:57,010 --> 00:26:04,870 Just like with the dodo made the great oak unique amongst the seabirds of the North Atlantic. 210 00:26:05,320 --> 00:26:11,380 They were first hunted for meat, the great ox, but also for their fat and feathers. 211 00:26:11,620 --> 00:26:21,760 They were salted in barrels to take on ships, but also ever increasingly hunted because of their curiosity, value and their rarity. 212 00:26:22,270 --> 00:26:31,780 Like the dodo as well, they were seen as stupid, clumsy and ungainly, the implication being that they were not fit for survival. 213 00:26:31,780 --> 00:26:32,410 Anyway, 214 00:26:32,890 --> 00:26:44,890 an account of 1879 describes how the poor stupid birds were driven into the sailor's boats and salted down to position the ships in great numbers. 215 00:26:45,300 --> 00:26:52,860 The rarer the great auk became, the more valuable and more sought after he became as well. 216 00:26:53,280 --> 00:26:59,849 And there was a veritable race going on with collectors going to extraordinary 217 00:26:59,850 --> 00:27:05,850 lengths or paying someone to go to extraordinary lengths to obtain specimens. 218 00:27:06,390 --> 00:27:16,140 And that meant dead specimens. So this was all about collecting and the status associated with trophy species. 219 00:27:16,290 --> 00:27:20,220 Although partly clad in scientific interest, 220 00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:30,210 this was hunting relentless human persecution and changes to the breeding colonies sealed the great ox fate. 221 00:27:32,060 --> 00:27:41,980 At the Natural History Museum in London is a taxidermy specimen of a very special great oak, the so-called blocks oak. 222 00:27:42,530 --> 00:27:48,200 This one is one of the most celebrated of all great oak specimens. 223 00:27:48,770 --> 00:27:53,300 It was killed in 1813 on the Orkney Isle of Puppy. 224 00:27:53,660 --> 00:27:58,640 And it is one of the earliest of the surviving taxidermy specimens. 225 00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:03,080 The circumstances of its capture well known and recorded. 226 00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:11,840 So the last pair of Great Oaks was known to the islanders as the king and queen of the Oak. 227 00:28:11,840 --> 00:28:17,720 So this specimen in the Natural History Museum in London is the king of oaks. 228 00:28:18,290 --> 00:28:24,830 It originally came from the collection of exhibitor and dealer William Bullock, 229 00:28:25,130 --> 00:28:33,350 and the taxidermy specimen was acquired for the British Museum Natural History in 1819. 230 00:28:33,800 --> 00:28:40,160 An account appeared in the Scots magazine of March 1814, written by Patrick Neal, 231 00:28:40,400 --> 00:28:47,930 and he wrote He Bullock soon learnt that the female great dog had been killed with a 232 00:28:47,930 --> 00:28:54,350 stone while sitting on her egg and that the male was still in the neighbouring body. 233 00:28:55,160 --> 00:29:04,900 He had the satisfaction of getting solid of him and chased him for several hours unsuccessfully with a six aught boat. 234 00:29:05,690 --> 00:29:18,080 He, I'm assuming the Great Hulk dived most dextrously and made great progress on the water so as to effectually elude his pursuers. 235 00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:28,790 Last summer, the bird again returned to his former holds, but he was solitary, having been unsuccessful in procuring another mate. 236 00:29:29,270 --> 00:29:34,520 The zeal of the island is being roused. He was at length killed. 237 00:29:34,970 --> 00:29:39,110 This is the only British specimen known to exist. 238 00:29:39,710 --> 00:29:50,350 So the killing of the queen and king of the ox took place on the cliffs of poppy and the waters around poppy. 239 00:29:50,730 --> 00:29:59,000 So this small island is a very important place for the Great Hall. 240 00:29:59,150 --> 00:30:10,970 And I went all my great old pilgrimage in 2016, and my inspirational guide was Puppy Ranger Jonathan Ford. 241 00:30:11,210 --> 00:30:20,600 I asked him to talk to us again about what the great auk means to him and also to the island Oak Grove. 242 00:30:22,250 --> 00:30:26,690 Good morning, Elaine. Good morning, Jonathan. Thank you very much for joining us. 243 00:30:27,020 --> 00:30:31,850 There is a memorial to the great all up on the cliffs of Poppy. 244 00:30:31,940 --> 00:30:35,390 Do you think it is important to have a memorial like this? 245 00:30:36,530 --> 00:30:43,160 Yes, I think it's very important to have a memorial to the Great Oak Open for Craig. 246 00:30:44,090 --> 00:30:45,319 I think for a number of reasons. 247 00:30:45,320 --> 00:30:54,950 I think particularly at this moment in time, I don't think there's ever been a more important time to have a memorial to the Great Walk. 248 00:30:55,790 --> 00:31:01,760 And even if it is just to remind us of what can happen if we do. 249 00:31:02,920 --> 00:31:08,530 Ignore what's happening around us, particularly to sea bird species. 250 00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:18,490 Pepe has seen a massive decline in CB seabird populations really even over the last 30 or 40 years. 251 00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:26,290 People here will remember there being 15,000 Arctic terns on North Hill last year. 252 00:31:26,290 --> 00:31:32,020 There may have been 300. And the year before that there was no kittiwakes. 253 00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:36,840 There were 8000 known for Craig at one time. 254 00:31:37,410 --> 00:31:41,790 Last year there was no. And so there's been a huge decline in seabirds. 255 00:31:41,790 --> 00:31:43,920 And this is obviously echoed around the world as well. 256 00:31:45,570 --> 00:31:52,620 And I always think, well, I dread the day that not only will we have a memorial to the great all powerful Craig, 257 00:31:52,620 --> 00:31:57,090 but there will be a memorial to all the other birds that we've lost as well. 258 00:31:58,170 --> 00:32:02,160 So I think as a visual reminder of what possibly could happen and what can happen, 259 00:32:02,610 --> 00:32:09,120 I think it's very important because 1813 sounds like a long time ago, but 200 years not that long ago. 260 00:32:10,590 --> 00:32:13,920 And, you know, I think there is a little bit of a. 261 00:32:14,970 --> 00:32:24,000 An attitude that these things can't happen now that we've changed, that, you know, we know more about birds, we know we care for them a lot more. 262 00:32:24,010 --> 00:32:33,690 We have organisations that look after them, but I think that's a very dangerous way to think and I think the memorial hopefully will. 263 00:32:35,210 --> 00:32:41,690 Just raise awareness of that. And, you know, for for an island to lose its population is. 264 00:32:42,110 --> 00:32:48,829 Yeah it's pretty dreadful really. So yeah a great I mean I think it is a very important time to have a moral to talk. 265 00:32:48,830 --> 00:32:55,040 In fact, we are working on a new memorial to the great AUK, really just to re-emphasise that point. 266 00:32:56,480 --> 00:33:04,220 So we're working on a project with the Natural History Museum to get the original specimen from here, 3D scanned, which has been done. 267 00:33:05,150 --> 00:33:14,959 And then we're raising funds to get it 3D printed and then cast in bronze, and then we'll use that to kind of replace the memorial we've got. 268 00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:19,040 I mean, the more we've got is is grand. It looks nothing like a great oak, 269 00:33:19,040 --> 00:33:28,400 but it has many positives as well that it was made by kids for the I think it was the Orkney Field Club U.S. in the 1980s. 270 00:33:29,690 --> 00:33:31,999 So it has a very strong resonance with the island. 271 00:33:32,000 --> 00:33:38,180 So we will take that on out of the out of the wind and Geils and maybe put him inside somewhere and then 272 00:33:38,180 --> 00:33:43,760 replace it with a bronze version of as close as we can get to the real thing being back up on Fall Creek. 273 00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:48,920 You know, it's not a vanity project, is it? For me, it's much, much more than that. 274 00:33:49,310 --> 00:33:58,070 And that whatever any awareness we can raise, whether it's either just doing the project or by the actual thing being so, 275 00:33:58,580 --> 00:34:02,600 oh, good, I can't wait to see the new memorial, 276 00:34:02,900 --> 00:34:13,549 but I'm also really glad that the old memorial is being kept even if indoors, because you've told a little bit of the story of this memorial. 277 00:34:13,550 --> 00:34:21,320 And I think people like me who saw it there first made a very strong emotional connexion with it. 278 00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:25,370 So yeah, I'm glad that one is going to survive as well. 279 00:34:25,730 --> 00:34:36,140 Speaking about emotional connexion, this may be a bit of an esoteric question, but do you think that a landscape like the one him puppy, 280 00:34:36,170 --> 00:34:44,720 these cliffs meeting the Atlantic can hold some sort of memory of an extinct animal, a plant that was once part of it? 281 00:34:44,870 --> 00:34:53,840 And I think that's an interesting question. I think I think I have felt over the time I've been here and I've been here for seven years now and. 282 00:34:54,780 --> 00:34:58,350 It's probably a little bit. I mean, I suppose I'm an exception to the rule. 283 00:34:58,500 --> 00:35:01,800 I mean, I do think about the grey talk a lot, especially if I open for grey. 284 00:35:03,330 --> 00:35:08,430 And you do try and imagine the bird being here, those birds being here. 285 00:35:10,110 --> 00:35:15,939 But in some ways, it feels like to me a very, very distant thing. 286 00:35:15,940 --> 00:35:21,010 No, I guess I'm just more. I think more focussed on now. 287 00:35:21,430 --> 00:35:24,910 I think that's the cliffs tell you about now. 288 00:35:25,240 --> 00:35:28,240 Visually, there's no getting away from now, really. 289 00:35:28,240 --> 00:35:32,260 So I think places can hold memories of things. 290 00:35:32,720 --> 00:35:37,210 Be nice if we could stand there and listen to what once was there. 291 00:35:37,870 --> 00:35:41,060 I mean, even to hear a great talk would be something. 292 00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:48,219 I think it was Marconi that thought that all the sounds of the world never died and that actually they just carried on around and around. 293 00:35:48,220 --> 00:35:55,629 But we just didn't have the technology to hear them now that they going beyond any kind of audible sense. 294 00:35:55,630 --> 00:36:03,550 But they were still. Women around the world. So perhaps we could invent some sort of device to police for Craig that was good 295 00:36:03,550 --> 00:36:06,900 enough to capture sounds that were once there and that were pretty amazing, 296 00:36:06,910 --> 00:36:15,190 I think. It's an interesting question and probably one that we think about a lot more now than probably ever. 297 00:36:15,610 --> 00:36:19,270 I think that probably it actually I think that is the the guiding light in it all. 298 00:36:19,300 --> 00:36:25,430 Actually, there's a hope that. You can in some way feel these things that have come. 299 00:36:26,210 --> 00:36:32,630 How wonderful it would be if the call of the Great all still existed somewhere. 300 00:36:32,630 --> 00:36:36,560 And we just need to find a way to make it audible again. 301 00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:46,280 But I think Jonathan is right. The here and now is what counts and preventing extinction from happening all over again. 302 00:36:46,580 --> 00:36:54,950 So let's hear what the here and now sounds like Up on the Cliffs of Puppy, recorded for us by Jonathan. 303 00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:59,930 It's 1239 on the 1st of May at Fall Creek. 304 00:37:00,380 --> 00:38:21,780 Just a sound recording right by the Great Oak Memorial. Sounds from the Cliffs of Puppy, which used to be the home of the now extinct great oak. 305 00:38:22,140 --> 00:38:34,650 Thank you very much, Jonathan. I'm carefully covering up the precious great oak egg again, and I'm returning it to its caput. 306 00:38:35,820 --> 00:38:43,470 I love collecting myself. Mainly shells, fossils and minerals, so it can understand a little bit what motivated a collectors. 307 00:38:43,890 --> 00:38:50,740 But one specimen collecting becomes entangled in prestige, status and the marketplace. 308 00:38:51,090 --> 00:39:01,290 This can very quickly spiral out of control, and museums, sadly, can play a role in this when rushing to buy or accept rare specimens. 309 00:39:01,860 --> 00:39:08,850 Today we have very strict laws, but illegal collecting, sadly, is still happening. 310 00:39:09,270 --> 00:39:24,629 Looking at the great old egg just reminded me of another egg that not so long ago I was shown by one of the curators and it was very different. 311 00:39:24,630 --> 00:39:30,750 It's quite small and looked like polished alabaster and quite white. 312 00:39:31,500 --> 00:39:34,630 And this was a passenger pigeon egg. 313 00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:40,559 Yet another extinct bird found in North America. 314 00:39:40,560 --> 00:39:50,550 It was so numerous in the 19th century that it flocks, numbered billions and darkened the skies. 315 00:39:50,970 --> 00:39:58,890 It was probably the most numerous bird species that ever existed within less than 100 years. 316 00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:12,030 The passenger pigeon went from billions to none at all, and the last individual named Martha died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. 317 00:40:12,690 --> 00:40:23,820 Relentless hunting on an industrial scale and habitat destruction decimated the passenger pigeon to a population size that was not sustainable. 318 00:40:24,270 --> 00:40:30,960 And once I started chatting about extinct birds in the museum's collections with Ralf, who is currently looking after them, 319 00:40:31,260 --> 00:40:42,030 it became clear that there is quite a number of them in the bird store and I asked him to show me a few of them. 320 00:40:42,540 --> 00:40:50,550 And here was the passenger pigeon itself, not just the egg. 321 00:40:51,240 --> 00:41:04,240 So it's not quite in the flesh, but as near enough, I guess, as the taxidermy can make it, its glass eyes look ever so slightly in the wrong position. 322 00:41:04,260 --> 00:41:07,540 It was quite disconcerting. But. 323 00:41:07,580 --> 00:41:14,370 But its nick has a beautiful patch of pink iridescence and I wasn't prepared for that. 324 00:41:14,370 --> 00:41:25,380 After all the historical illustrations I looked at and the accounts I read and seeing this, really, I felt a lump in my throat. 325 00:41:25,390 --> 00:41:38,610 It was so beautiful. And and somehow this lump in my throat only got worse when Rob got down the box with the ivory billed woodpecker skin. 326 00:41:39,030 --> 00:41:44,609 So skin here, meaning that the bird has not been mounted, unlike the passenger pigeon, 327 00:41:44,610 --> 00:41:52,950 but and it also has no major additions like glass eyes, wires or an artificial torso. 328 00:41:52,950 --> 00:42:02,129 It just looks like a stretched out dead bird. And the ivory billed woodpecker is a particular favourite of mine. 329 00:42:02,130 --> 00:42:10,500 It was one of the largest woodpeckers in the world and it lived in the forests of the southern United States and Cuba. 330 00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:20,670 Its coal apparently sounded like a toy trumpet, which would make it similar to the still exist and black woodpecker, 331 00:42:20,670 --> 00:42:24,150 which I'm quite familiar with from the Woodlands around Berlin. 332 00:42:24,510 --> 00:42:32,880 And here is a recording from Berlin by Stefan Riche from the amazing database See No Country. 333 00:42:58,680 --> 00:43:04,499 It never fails to thrill me when I hear art and the little trill you hear in the 334 00:43:04,500 --> 00:43:10,620 middle between the two trumpet calls is also a call the woodpecker makes in flight. 335 00:43:10,830 --> 00:43:13,860 So, yeah, it's a very musical book. 336 00:43:14,430 --> 00:43:20,610 The last accepted sighting of an ivory billed woodpecker in the U.S. was in 1944. 337 00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:27,150 There have been spurious reports since that it may still be around. 338 00:43:27,180 --> 00:43:35,590 There were sightings, but you cannot help but wonder if this is more wishful thinking. 339 00:43:35,610 --> 00:43:40,710 Hoping to see the bright red flame of its crest dancing again in the woods. 340 00:43:40,740 --> 00:43:45,059 It wasn't hunted quite in the same scale as the passenger pigeon. 341 00:43:45,060 --> 00:43:48,210 It never existed in in such great numbers. 342 00:43:48,570 --> 00:43:54,180 But the deforestation of vast stretches of land sealed its fate. 343 00:43:54,930 --> 00:44:02,280 And also, unfortunately, again, the hunting by collectors as it became rarer. 344 00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:07,560 And collections and museums were scrambling to get their hands on a specimen. 345 00:44:09,740 --> 00:44:19,190 So I feel a big hiss, a strange range of emotions when looking at this specimen. 346 00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:24,920 Feeling the enormous privilege to be able to see it with my own eyes. 347 00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:31,880 That it's still present here in the museum, at least as a kind of bodily ghost. 348 00:44:32,850 --> 00:44:40,020 I also feel a huge tenderness somehow towards that which I can't quite explain 349 00:44:40,770 --> 00:44:49,919 and just plain fury that we but we've managed to destroy it and its world, 350 00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:57,420 its whole ecosystem. And naturalists, scientists and natural history museums were complicit in this. 351 00:44:57,420 --> 00:45:01,050 Instead of protecting, they were collecting. 352 00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:07,020 We are supposed to be the clever guys on this planet and we just can't get it right. 353 00:45:07,230 --> 00:45:17,280 Will we ever grow up to be Homo sapiens? So this is what happened when I met the ivory billed woodpecker, right? 354 00:45:25,370 --> 00:45:29,570 We can see the cotton wool poking up here while. 355 00:45:34,410 --> 00:45:38,340 The regs is pretty good. So striking. 356 00:45:40,380 --> 00:45:45,000 Believe that the feathers are still glossy. 357 00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:49,800 Yeah. Especially that. I mean, the red is pretty impressive. 358 00:45:50,010 --> 00:45:53,670 Really impressive. And they can see the whites. 359 00:45:54,690 --> 00:45:58,290 Yeah. You want to? Yeah, you do. 360 00:45:58,620 --> 00:46:01,700 Yeah. And so you can just conquer. You can hear them in. 361 00:46:02,820 --> 00:46:09,270 Oh, yeah. Oh, oh, oh. 362 00:46:10,710 --> 00:46:18,870 Poor thing. Yeah. They always commit sides, especially when they've can bench sufficient books. 363 00:46:19,830 --> 00:46:31,850 That's just nice to see the whites, the bank as well. Amazing. 364 00:46:33,690 --> 00:46:38,040 I wish I had that hair colour. It's just crazy. 365 00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:41,490 It doesn't look natural. It looks totally bonkers. 366 00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:48,470 Right? Well, I think that's fine. Let's go back in. 367 00:46:55,250 --> 00:47:03,980 Ready to go back. I'm so grateful to Rob for this encounter with the ivory billed woodpecker. 368 00:47:04,550 --> 00:47:15,140 It is a somewhat curious custom to give Christian names to the last individuals of a species, at least, I guess, since the 20th century. 369 00:47:15,170 --> 00:47:23,870 So we have Martha, the last of the passenger pigeons or Lonesome George, the giant Galapagos tortoise. 370 00:47:24,590 --> 00:47:27,920 It's this guilt, I wonder. 371 00:47:28,820 --> 00:47:39,230 And did this also apply to the last thylacine? So the story goes that its name was Benjamin, although this is probably post mortem. 372 00:47:39,350 --> 00:47:45,890 Benjamin died in Hobart, in Tasmania in the zoo in 1936. 373 00:47:45,980 --> 00:47:51,890 He was a so-called ending, say like Martha and Lonesome George. 374 00:47:51,950 --> 00:48:00,940 He was the last of his species. I've always been fascinated by thylacines or Tasmanian tigers, as they are also called. 375 00:48:01,150 --> 00:48:07,390 How can it look so much like a wolf or a tiger and be related to kangaroos? 376 00:48:08,260 --> 00:48:12,350 It looked more like a wolf, but it had stripes. 377 00:48:12,350 --> 00:48:19,780 So it was called a tiger. And in fact, it had nothing in common with either Wolf or Tiger. 378 00:48:20,110 --> 00:48:25,060 It was a marsupial more closely related to the cuddly looking koala. 379 00:48:25,270 --> 00:48:29,650 I will never forget the moment I came face to face with one. 380 00:48:30,430 --> 00:48:39,670 McConnel, the collections manager, had taken me on a tour of the old spirit store in the dark, cavernous basement of the museum. 381 00:48:40,300 --> 00:48:48,400 I must say I felt slightly high from the fumes emanating from all these jars in all sizes. 382 00:48:48,790 --> 00:48:54,000 And to me, this was like a glowing underwater treasure trove. 383 00:48:54,010 --> 00:49:04,389 And the specimens in the jars, although discoloured and often slightly off shape, seemed all life to me somehow. 384 00:49:04,390 --> 00:49:10,780 Then the carefully prepared and curated taxidermy animals on display upstairs. 385 00:49:11,380 --> 00:49:16,570 And Mark stopped at one impossibly large jar that stood on the floor. 386 00:49:16,780 --> 00:49:23,260 It came up to my thali and inside were floating stripes. 387 00:49:23,530 --> 00:49:27,580 I nearly jumped a Tasmanian tiger. 388 00:49:28,600 --> 00:49:38,260 So here at Oxford there are two spirit specimens and these individuals do not have names and we know very little about them. 389 00:49:38,650 --> 00:49:47,770 They were quite thoroughly dissected at some point and look quite mangled, to put it nicely, 390 00:49:48,580 --> 00:49:56,980 but is strange to see a big complete, well, reasonably complete animal like this floating in fluids. 391 00:49:57,490 --> 00:50:10,870 Normally you'd expect them to see them as taxidermy animal, and the conservation of animal remains is its own fascinating craft and science. 392 00:50:10,870 --> 00:50:19,960 And without it, museum specimens would not last very long at all and would be unable to tell their tales. 393 00:50:21,550 --> 00:50:31,690 Jackie Chapman Grey is the museum's conservator, and I felt I'd find her in her lap and ask her about her work. 394 00:50:31,900 --> 00:50:40,480 Preserving the animals and organisms second lives as museum specimens, just as in life. 395 00:50:40,630 --> 00:50:49,120 They are all individuals and every single specimen has its own needs and requirements. 396 00:50:49,810 --> 00:50:57,670 Okay, Jackie, thank you very much for your time and welcoming us to your studio or lab. 397 00:50:58,150 --> 00:51:08,980 This time of scene I found quite fascinating because it's such a huge animal and it is suspended in fluid in a huge jaw, basically. 398 00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:17,889 So it's unusual for such a figure. It's not unusual to have them in a big job, but it is unusual to have an adult thylacine. 399 00:51:17,890 --> 00:51:21,430 So adult vaccines are the rarest wet specimens in the world. 400 00:51:21,670 --> 00:51:30,639 Well, we have a headless female who's being dissected, and I think there's five carcases in the world, 401 00:51:30,640 --> 00:51:34,030 four of which have been disembowelled or eviscerated. 402 00:51:34,030 --> 00:51:41,950 And I think the National Museum of Australia has the only complete by the sea in fluid in the world. 403 00:51:41,950 --> 00:51:45,040 It is quite rare, even organ. 404 00:51:45,040 --> 00:51:54,880 So we have separate organs of it in jars and I think in the world there's 98 jars of fluid preserved organs from the vanishing, 405 00:51:55,270 --> 00:52:01,030 which seems like a high number but is quite a low number for one. 406 00:52:03,180 --> 00:52:09,060 I guess species. And so what kind of fluid is it actually in in? 407 00:52:09,150 --> 00:52:17,490 So it'll be in 75% ethanol. Most things these days are stored in ethanol or formalin 10% formalin. 408 00:52:17,500 --> 00:52:21,600 So for our museum, we put things in 75% ethanol. 409 00:52:21,630 --> 00:52:27,280 Some museums use 70% ethanol. The higher the concentration, the more intact the DNA. 410 00:52:27,300 --> 00:52:33,390 So ethanol at 90% and above, you can extract DNA still from fluid, preserved specimens. 411 00:52:33,660 --> 00:52:37,440 So there are stories in the old days of 200 years ago, 412 00:52:37,620 --> 00:52:44,100 they would use sometimes brandy and things like do we have a grasshopper that's in its original rumble? 413 00:52:44,130 --> 00:52:47,160 And it would have been plopped into the wrong when it was collected. 414 00:52:47,430 --> 00:52:56,009 We still have I think we have some herbarium specimens that are in the little windows they were collected in and that would have been wine. 415 00:52:56,010 --> 00:53:02,549 So I think it was 1662, it was called wine spirits at the time. 416 00:53:02,550 --> 00:53:08,340 Things were put originally in wine spirits and that how that's how preserving fluid specimens started. 417 00:53:10,200 --> 00:53:15,450 So it was interesting. It's evolved over time, but basically whatever was to hand is what they got put in. 418 00:53:15,450 --> 00:53:18,570 So on a ship you would expect lots of rum, brandy. 419 00:53:19,050 --> 00:53:22,260 So collectors just put them in that. Yeah. 420 00:53:22,380 --> 00:53:29,900 Remember stories that sometimes the crew would actually drink the, the fluid of the specimen when they're desperate. 421 00:53:29,910 --> 00:53:34,350 I'm not surprised. But yeah, we still have at least the bottles. 422 00:53:34,350 --> 00:53:42,000 So the bottles then become part of the specimen and then become a museum object just because the history is intertwined. 423 00:53:42,450 --> 00:53:45,029 And so what's your day to day job like? 424 00:53:45,030 --> 00:53:53,429 Erin Mine's quite a mixed bag, so I work on some things across the museum, so environmental monitoring and I have that open generally. 425 00:53:53,430 --> 00:53:58,950 As soon as I get in, I reckon all the graphs and charts check them and then that stays open for the rest of the day. 426 00:53:59,730 --> 00:54:07,170 Answering enquiries. At the moment I'm focussed on our display projects so we have 20 new main upright 427 00:54:07,170 --> 00:54:15,540 cases that are being revamped and I've got close to 700 specimens to work on. 428 00:54:16,320 --> 00:54:20,969 I'm almost done with the first case and I have started the second case at the moment. 429 00:54:20,970 --> 00:54:24,000 That's all my time. Training staff is another one. 430 00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:26,970 Mentoring conservation interns. 431 00:54:27,030 --> 00:54:38,190 Students, volunteers like managing our Mount Maker and our conservation or museum cleaning technician who also does conservation. 432 00:54:38,340 --> 00:54:42,659 Do you feel you've got a really privileged access to the specimens? 433 00:54:42,660 --> 00:54:46,460 I mean, you get closer to them than anybody else. I guess that is that. 434 00:54:46,830 --> 00:54:50,280 Yeah I mean really enjoy it is I love my job. 435 00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:53,760 I love what I do. I do like getting up close and personal. 436 00:54:54,210 --> 00:54:56,160 I've worked in museums for 32 years, 437 00:54:56,160 --> 00:55:04,319 so it's you kind of forget that you have that advantage over other people until someone comes in and goes, Oh, wow, look at that. 438 00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:13,230 And then you realise, Oh yeah, my job's pretty cool. I get to see what other people do and I get to hold things that most people wouldn't even touch. 439 00:55:13,560 --> 00:55:18,060 And a lot of times I've worked on the dodo, I repaired the eye orbit, 440 00:55:18,870 --> 00:55:25,379 so I took it down from its current or it was mounted on and sort of it fell apart. 441 00:55:25,380 --> 00:55:29,880 So then put it back together and I'm kind of a bit blasé about it, 442 00:55:29,880 --> 00:55:34,290 but when I stop and think about it, there's not many people who would get to do that in the world. 443 00:55:34,560 --> 00:55:37,980 So there's quite a special thing to be able to do. 444 00:55:38,130 --> 00:55:41,940 The specimens tell you a lot about the history. 445 00:55:41,940 --> 00:55:48,419 In a way. I had some swordfish rostrum and you can see where they've had a fight. 446 00:55:48,420 --> 00:55:56,190 So if you can sort of determine what's a scratch potentially and what was something that happened during its life, by the way? 447 00:55:56,190 --> 00:56:02,099 It's age, by the way. It marks the bone. That's that's yeah. 448 00:56:02,100 --> 00:56:08,219 It's a little bit harder to determine. But there's some things that after working on natural history specimens for a while, 449 00:56:08,220 --> 00:56:14,820 you just sort of pick up thing you get to see back through the time frame. 450 00:56:15,150 --> 00:56:19,320 One of the most interesting things recently was with our deck of main displays. 451 00:56:19,320 --> 00:56:26,280 We had, I think it was a crocodile, an alligator, and they were literally blown up like balloons but stitched. 452 00:56:26,640 --> 00:56:30,450 So they all the bones, even in the feet, have been removed, which is quite unusual. 453 00:56:31,830 --> 00:56:35,730 And we could see through the skin had been inflated that large, 454 00:56:36,840 --> 00:56:44,220 but they were stitched up so we couldn't quite figure out how it was done and it would be hard to find 455 00:56:44,520 --> 00:56:50,819 like a pig bladder or something like that that you could insert in the time to to keep that shape. 456 00:56:50,820 --> 00:57:01,500 And it's perfectly shaped. It was by a doctor gone to oh, and their only process that is similar is inflating caterpillars they used to. 457 00:57:03,590 --> 00:57:12,860 So I spoke with our entomologists. They they would remove the internal organs from the caterpillar through the vent or the anus, 458 00:57:13,190 --> 00:57:16,640 and then put a little glass straw in and inflate them that way. 459 00:57:17,120 --> 00:57:21,890 And of course, that gives you an amusing vision of how a crocodile might be done. 460 00:57:21,940 --> 00:57:30,469 But we had to treat it slightly differently because everything else was packed with straw or some sort of packing material, 461 00:57:30,470 --> 00:57:36,379 and that was completely void of it. So is it quite hard now if you pricked it, would it just go? 462 00:57:36,380 --> 00:57:42,340 No, is quite to say it would have been a long bladder that kept it in it. 463 00:57:42,560 --> 00:57:48,500 To have an inflated bladder and still stitch through around that bladder would be quite complicated. 464 00:57:49,940 --> 00:57:55,280 So I really hope somewhere there's a record of how it was done. 465 00:57:55,310 --> 00:58:04,790 Yeah, I think just part of it is the social history behind collecting and how taxidermy or fluid specimens are done. 466 00:58:05,330 --> 00:58:17,990 That was fun. Thank you so much, Jacki. But let's return for a moment to the thylacine, the Tasmanian tiger in its big jar of conservation fluid. 467 00:58:18,410 --> 00:58:29,490 So Tasmanian tigers were regarded as a possible threat to human farming by the European colonisers and indeed much like wolves. 468 00:58:29,510 --> 00:58:34,850 They were hunted down mercilessly with bounties being paid for dead ones. 469 00:58:35,360 --> 00:58:41,120 And although rare for many decades, they were only officially protected from 1936, 470 00:58:41,450 --> 00:58:46,130 which ironically was the very year they also officially went extinct. 471 00:58:47,270 --> 00:58:51,860 Sadly, it wasn't just hunting to kill that took place. 472 00:58:51,860 --> 00:59:01,490 They were also hunted in order to supply living thylacines in Australian and European zoos and at once for museum collections. 473 00:59:01,790 --> 00:59:10,610 Passenger pigeons were also regarded as pests and because there were so many of them, no one thought they could ever go extinct. 474 00:59:11,300 --> 00:59:18,260 So think again if you think anything living is a pest and there's too many of it. 475 00:59:19,390 --> 00:59:20,290 Just think again. 476 00:59:22,140 --> 00:59:32,100 Earl Fuller, expert on extinct animals, quotes Steven Slate home regarding 19th and early 20th century scientific verdict on the thylacine. 477 00:59:32,130 --> 00:59:41,130 The scientific community perceived the thylacine as being an evolutionary relic considered slow, dumb, stupid and cowardly. 478 00:59:42,560 --> 00:59:47,270 It's the same story again and again. First, the stupid dodo. 479 00:59:47,810 --> 00:59:53,150 It's all by nominal name. Vida's ineptness means exactly that. 480 00:59:53,870 --> 00:59:56,900 Carl Linnaeus bestowed the name on the dodo, 481 00:59:56,930 --> 01:00:05,570 and his German translator concludes in 1773 that this was fully justified as the dodo could not only not fly, 482 01:00:05,870 --> 01:00:11,450 but was also waddling awkwardly and was too stupid to know to run away from people. 483 01:00:12,520 --> 01:00:18,639 Same with the great auk. The passenger pigeon could fly, but because it was migrating, 484 01:00:18,640 --> 01:00:25,000 roosting and nesting in enormous numbers could just be clipped out of trees or even the air. 485 01:00:25,660 --> 01:00:29,470 Jill Greenberg in his book A Feathered River Across the Sky, 486 01:00:29,710 --> 01:00:36,730 quotes to a contemporary source as recounting how the fat chicks of the passenger pigeons called squawks 487 01:00:37,120 --> 01:00:43,750 could just be shaken out of trees and would hit the floor and often burst open like a dropped pumpkin. 488 01:00:44,810 --> 01:00:56,910 Is ironic that the very specialisation of extinct or endangered animals, the perfect adaptation to very specific environments, was seen as stupidity. 489 01:00:56,930 --> 01:01:02,960 Until very recently, the dodo and the great auk had no need to fly before humans appeared. 490 01:01:03,500 --> 01:01:06,650 Why expend energy on something you do not need? 491 01:01:06,740 --> 01:01:17,000 The passenger pigeon had no need to hide. Its enormous numbers meant the predators would only ever be able to kill a tiny part of the joined flocks. 492 01:01:17,450 --> 01:01:25,610 Until humans came who hunted on an industrial scale, we've seen a little bit of the good, 493 01:01:26,030 --> 01:01:33,890 a little bit of the bad and a little bit of the ugly of natural history collections and museums. 494 01:01:34,990 --> 01:01:42,070 To me, the most important role of natural history museums is preserving date and specimen. 495 01:01:42,400 --> 01:01:47,320 They are still arks, but they are also places for cutting edge. 496 01:01:47,320 --> 01:01:55,840 Research happens. They also celebrate and communicate the oneness of biodiversity and its loss. 497 01:01:56,380 --> 01:02:07,180 Speaking of loss extinction, there is always the hope, probably, that an extinct species will be found again, 498 01:02:08,260 --> 01:02:19,240 even if it's being declared extinct for decades, or that we can somehow clone them or bring them back to life. 499 01:02:19,780 --> 01:02:26,950 And did you know there is such a thing or the term Lazarus species? 500 01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:36,910 So I became quite intrigued by this concept. And you can also find Lazarus species in museums as well as the environment. 501 01:02:37,180 --> 01:02:46,360 So I thought I asked Mark Cano about what this extinction terminology means, what is behind that? 502 01:02:46,960 --> 01:02:55,830 I heard the term Lazarus species so that when an extinct when when something that was thought to be extinct resurfaces or is rediscovered. 503 01:02:55,840 --> 01:03:03,879 Yes, there's lots of really nice, fun terms for species which have disappeared. 504 01:03:03,880 --> 01:03:07,340 So we have things like Elvis, taxa, zombie time, Lazarus. 505 01:03:07,690 --> 01:03:16,240 Wow, somebody is good. Yeah. So. Lazarus Taxa and, uh, organisms which were thought to be extinct or haven't been seen for a long time. 506 01:03:16,600 --> 01:03:19,630 And probably the most well known, one of those is second. 507 01:03:20,120 --> 01:03:25,629 And so the number of living species. Another example is a mask for me. 508 01:03:25,630 --> 01:03:29,580 A Paulina I think is one of the largest yet. 509 01:03:29,600 --> 01:03:33,370 So they know their name from the fossil record 500 million years ago. 510 01:03:33,910 --> 01:03:39,010 And today we kind of consider that a distinct class of molluscs. 511 01:03:39,430 --> 01:03:47,200 And there's like a level of goblin hat to show this this gap of 400 million years. 512 01:03:47,200 --> 01:03:50,530 And they were rediscovered in 1950. Wow, that's great. 513 01:03:50,560 --> 01:03:55,940 Lots of taxa and things like Elvis taxa is when something is thought extinct. 514 01:03:56,050 --> 01:03:59,830 And then it was thought that it wasn't extinct, but it wasn't that something else that looked like it? 515 01:04:01,690 --> 01:04:08,800 Yes. Very nice. Very nice. Some fun terms when it comes to species which may or may not be extinct. 516 01:04:09,520 --> 01:04:19,450 A zombie taxa. A we is a tendency ontology that refers to a organism or fossils of organisms which 517 01:04:19,450 --> 01:04:27,040 have been fossilised and then eroded out and then redeposited into later times. 518 01:04:27,190 --> 01:04:33,150 So it looks like something was around much later than it was and it was takes off. 519 01:04:33,160 --> 01:04:38,590 And that's not to be confused with what's called decade walking, which is modern organisms, 520 01:04:39,490 --> 01:04:45,880 which, although are still around, have a low likelihood of surviving. 521 01:04:46,260 --> 01:04:52,270 And so this is where the ending organisms come in, in our species, 522 01:04:52,270 --> 01:04:59,830 which are reduced to a handful of individuals of either one sex or not, with a five or whatever population size. 523 01:05:00,320 --> 01:05:09,580 And since these are interesting times we used to play to talking about how different species are faring, 524 01:05:10,240 --> 01:05:16,720 but also told me about the rarest, possibly extinct British animal. 525 01:05:16,960 --> 01:05:20,500 Nobody, including me, seems to know about it. 526 01:05:20,740 --> 01:05:30,040 And this may be because it is an anemone really I find very interesting what you said about the charismatic ones that went extinct. 527 01:05:30,040 --> 01:05:34,389 I mean, they gets a lot of publicity now and I call Eat Like the Dodo. 528 01:05:34,390 --> 01:05:40,990 But yeah, you're right. Sponges that went extinct, nobody really cares about or knows about a no, 529 01:05:40,990 --> 01:05:46,330 some example you told me about and I had no idea of an organism that went extinct quite recently, 530 01:05:46,330 --> 01:05:52,000 actually, during, well, some of our lifetimes here, so not somewhere far away. 531 01:05:52,060 --> 01:05:56,500 Yeah. So we have we have them occasionally we get people coming to see them. 532 01:05:56,920 --> 01:06:09,760 So in the, in the museum we have a couple of jars which they only known samples of anemone called Ibis and named after Ivo. 533 01:06:10,150 --> 01:06:17,410 And it's invariably been called Britain's rarest animal, Britain's most endangered animal, 534 01:06:18,580 --> 01:06:23,950 because it's only known from one locality, once from a brackish lagoon. 535 01:06:24,100 --> 01:06:31,089 What's unusual about it and why it sometimes attracts these titans of rarest or most critically endangered, 536 01:06:31,090 --> 01:06:34,420 or whether it's extinct on or has it actually split up into. 537 01:06:35,410 --> 01:06:42,010 It's because very because of the century, because the ice age in Britain was almost completely covered with ice. 538 01:06:42,460 --> 01:06:50,830 And there are very few species which we have which we only find here and because we find them across northern Europe. 539 01:06:52,310 --> 01:06:58,560 But I was in an anemone is one of the handful of species that sort of easily accessible. 540 01:06:58,570 --> 01:06:59,640 So you're absolutely right. 541 01:06:59,650 --> 01:07:07,320 And, you know, my own biases are when you tend to think about animals in extinction, we tend to think in three decolonial ways of, 542 01:07:07,720 --> 01:07:11,740 you know, that's happening somewhere else or that's happening in places which have these exotic. 543 01:07:12,130 --> 01:07:18,590 Of course, it's also happening here. And I was in 10 minutes a really good example. 544 01:07:18,610 --> 01:07:26,590 The environment where it was found still exists. There have supposedly been a couple of efforts to go and refind it, but these have been cessful. 545 01:07:27,880 --> 01:07:34,570 And this is one of the difficulties. And I think why some of our icons of extinction are these insular animals is because it 546 01:07:34,570 --> 01:07:41,110 can be prohibitively difficult to work out with if something doesn't exist anymore. 547 01:07:41,260 --> 01:07:50,270 Which is why I think, you know, the systems that we have for listing and species as vulnerable or endangered, critically endangered. 548 01:07:50,590 --> 01:07:53,320 The emphasis proof is the wrong way around. 549 01:07:53,740 --> 01:08:01,570 And so particularly for marine organisms, it can be almost impossible to demonstrate that something is totally gone about. 550 01:08:01,600 --> 01:08:07,149 So colleagues here at the museum and frequently are rediscovering species, 551 01:08:07,150 --> 01:08:14,470 which we thought we had in the UK for sometimes tens of years, sometimes hundreds of years. 552 01:08:14,760 --> 01:08:20,709 And that's purely down to something nobody has made the effort to go and specifically 553 01:08:20,710 --> 01:08:23,920 look at these things where and when you'd expect to expect to find them. 554 01:08:24,550 --> 01:08:27,850 We think about marine organisms. It's a whole extra level of difficulty. 555 01:08:28,570 --> 01:08:30,820 This is what I love about museums. 556 01:08:30,850 --> 01:08:44,230 People come here to ask questions not only about the obvious, the charismatic and beautiful, but about the tiny, the weirdos, the usually unnoticed. 557 01:08:44,500 --> 01:08:50,530 And there's always more to discover. A bit like in any other ecosystem. 558 01:08:50,560 --> 01:08:55,710 And here as well, there be Lazarus spaces. 559 01:08:55,930 --> 01:09:06,610 The importance of a particular specimen or even just its existence may only surface after decades in a storage box in a museum, 560 01:09:06,910 --> 01:09:13,570 as there are just too many specimens for a handful of collection managers and experts, 561 01:09:14,350 --> 01:09:22,330 things generally perceived as boring and not sexy enough to deserve much funding or attention. 562 01:09:22,600 --> 01:09:35,890 Like record keeping, archives, labels, catalogues, databases, and such like are the very planks that hold the art that is the museum together. 563 01:09:36,520 --> 01:09:44,680 It's no use to have a dog if you don't know what's in it or if you know you should have something and you can't find it. 564 01:09:45,330 --> 01:09:55,300 You need people to keep it in shipshape, including the specimens themselves, so that they will last the journey in good spirits. 565 01:09:55,810 --> 01:10:06,879 Sorry for all the puns. Bad puns, but natural history museums, as we've seen, can also become part of the problem through overcorrecting, 566 01:10:06,880 --> 01:10:14,320 creating a market for rare specimens, destroying habitats through collecting, for instance, dredging. 567 01:10:14,890 --> 01:10:22,360 Or they will acquire and exhibit the collections of hunters and, well, essentially hunting trophies. 568 01:10:22,840 --> 01:10:29,650 In the past, they've also become complicit in simplistic and twisted narratives of extinction 569 01:10:30,130 --> 01:10:35,770 and have enriched their collections through colonialism and exploitation, 570 01:10:36,250 --> 01:10:40,030 not only of the natural world, but also of people. 571 01:10:41,940 --> 01:10:49,469 But I think the more narratives museums allow specimens to acquire the scientific, historical, 572 01:10:49,470 --> 01:10:56,340 cultural, personal, emotional narratives, the more meaningful and precious they become. 573 01:10:57,120 --> 01:11:08,969 And with a bit of luck, we can transfer this feeling of preciousness and connectedness to nature and biodiversity still out there in 574 01:11:08,970 --> 01:11:18,330 the wild to safeguard it as the ark that carries us all nature and culture collections and collectors alike. 575 01:11:18,990 --> 01:11:23,490 To me, this is what natural history museums are all about. 576 01:11:25,530 --> 01:11:30,270 Thank you very much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. 577 01:11:30,540 --> 01:11:40,080 Just in case you haven't come across them. There are two more in the series and please do get in touch and let us know what you think.