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Hello, my name is Elaine Charlotte. And in this podcast, I'll take you on a hunt hunt for parasites, dinosaurs and other model animals.

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The Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

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We'll take a peek behind the scenes of this beautiful 1860 Victorian Cathedral of Science and talk to two experts on the way.

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I hope to share with you some fascinating creatures and objects.

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But in a way, this is also a personal journey of how it ended up opening every door and drawing the museum, searching for models of animals.

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To be honest, I never thought I would find myself back at university doing a p h d.

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After working in libraries and for natural history, society for many is a kind of seven year itch, perhaps.

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And here I am looking at a gigantic itch might in glorious 400 times magnification.

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How did I get here? Well, I climbed some very steep makeshift stairs to one of the attic storerooms of the museum.

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OK. Here you are. I'm locking the door. I'm going in skulls and let's greet us.

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And there are quite a few large animal shapes on the floor.

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Them wrapped in plastic. So not to worry. Switching on the light straight to another door at the far end of the room.

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Remind myself to light step. Here it is, an old wooden cupboard.

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This is the home of some of my research interests. It seems fitting somehow out of the way they kept.

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They each might suck up to Scruby cause escapee's. This is not uncommon and hugely irritating skin condition.

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The mite digs lays its eggs and there is no nice way of putting it.

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defaecates into the human skin. All of which makes it itch.

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This wax model here beautifully captures the mites efficient anatomy.

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It's tunnelled digging legs and claws like a mole digging into the soil.

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Except that the mite cleverly dissolves the top layer of the skin and kind of swims in there.

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Also, its mouthparts also used for digging and feeding on the host's limp.

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Catching these mites from an infected person can be as casual as a handshake, although usually more prolonged skin to skin contact is needed.

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Ageing is so unbearable that frequent scratching can lead to large infected wounds.

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It's quite an experience to see something that is so tiny as to be all but invisible, enlarged to the size of a big fist.

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Well, first of all, you immediately realise how spider or crap like it is and a rat can eat like other unwelcome

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but much bigger guests in our skin takes its anatomy intuitively makes sense of the scale.

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It tells us a lot about its function, how it lives and how it affects its host.

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To be honest, it's Brussels a few centimetres long. Each just by looking at them.

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This enlarged model is a work of art made from wax.

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It was probably first produced in the eighteen seventies by an atomic model called Rudolph Ischia in Leipzig,

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Germany was based on the microscopic observations and laboratory data of the leading parasitologist.

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At the time would look like at. So there are other parasite models that live in this cupboard.

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And this parasite here is called Trickiness for Alice.

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It is a nematode worm. Not quite as exciting to look at as it might.

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You would think, indeed, in real life, it just looks like a tiny worm.

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Only one and a half millimetre long. But appearances can be deceptive.

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This little worm is much more dangerous and unpleasant than each might.

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It is widespread around the world and has a bright need life cycle once you host.

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And this includes humans has consumed, contaminated or undercooked meat.

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The parasite larvae burrow into the intestinal walls, mature and reproduce.

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The new larvae then migrate and eventually encapsulate themselves in the host's muscles, waiting for the next animal to consume the meat.

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They are sitting in and the cycle starts. The parasite often causes trichinosis an illness.

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Its symptoms include diarrhoea, inflammation, swelling and fever in serious cases,

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even inflammation of the heart, muscle or lungs, which can be fatal.

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The life cycle of this parasite was described first in the eighteen fifties again by Likert in Germany.

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The wax models were made by SQA in close collaboration with low cut, probably in the early eighteen seventies.

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They show the fruits of low cuts, research experiments and dissections in glorious 3D.

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So the first two models we have here showcase the adult worms, male or female.

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They reveal the secrets of their anatomy and organs in startling big scale and detail and the different colours.

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Each is roughly the length of a 30 centimetre ruler. But there are five additional models and I'll get one out.

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So five in total. And there is one here in particular about the other five.

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Show us sorry, the other four show.

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That's well, it's the migration of the larvae and the hosts muscle and the formation of the cysts in which the larvae then live.

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The muscles modelled in wax look so convincing. You can almost see them twitch.

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The models brought to life the previously hidden workings of these parasites.

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Understanding the anatomy and life cycles made it possible to avoid them, to get rid of them and treat the damage they were causing to the hosts.

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These models were used to disseminate and publish, like its research alongside his scientific texts to teach students of symbology in medicine,

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but also to educate and frankly amaze the public by exhibiting models in museums, fairs and great exhibitions.

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So although our microscopes and other scientific tools to make tiny organisms visible are much more advanced today,

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these 19th century 3D models are satisfyingly tangible.

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They can be grasped even by a non-specialist. Parasites still have a lot to teach us.

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Human and animal parasites can be important indicator species for underlying dynamics,

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problems, immune deficiencies with regard to the individual host's health.

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Corindi changes in the ecosystem in which both host and parasite live.

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I've asked Professor Peter Molner from the University of Toronto to briefly explain why, from his point of view,

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parasites are still important to research today and how we are using them for slightly updated versions of modelling.

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So the influence of parasites on the functioning of ecosystems really cannot be overstated.

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And perhaps one way to think about this to help you visualise this is to simply think about sheer numbers.

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It's about 50 percent of all species on planet Earth are parasitic.

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On the other half. And yet they are often ignored in many even research studies.

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And if you look at a food web where you see the predators and the prey represented who eats whom,

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you're going to be hard pressed to find a web that also includes all the different parasites that feed on their different hosts at different times.

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There's many reasons for this,

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but perhaps the simplest is that an act of parasitism compared to the act of predation is small and is difficult to observe.

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And this is perhaps also the reasons that the researchers that you're looking into

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started making these models back in the starting back in the eighteen hundreds.

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To help us make better understand the influence of these little critters on, again, the Day-To-Day functioning of ecosystems.

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Now, if you just think about humans, about well,

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hundreds of millions of people are actually affected each year by some parasitic warm infections such as schistosomiasis and so on,

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all from a human health perspective.

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It is critical to understand or if you want to take agriculture and all the losses that come from parasitic worms.

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Again, it's critical to understand it for nothing else,

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for our own benefit and no climate change into the picture where all these parasites react in a very sensitive manner to temperature changes,

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their development, speeding up the reproductive patterns, changing their survival,

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changing all these disease patterns are also going to be changing around the globe.

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So, again, we need to understand how these parents had functions, but also at a broader level, their population dynamics.

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How many or find in nature how that depends on the numbers of hosts.

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How one begets the other. And how do dynamically interact with one another.

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And so now this brings us to, you know, more meat, perhaps a more modern version of models where we often use mathematics,

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demographics and population dynamics to figure out who infects whom and what effect are they having.

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One parasite that you mentioned actually is is treating spiritualist.

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And we looked at a very similar parasite up in the Arctic called Chicken.

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Alan, the TVA causes the same disease as Tricky.

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Noah says it's just a slightly northern version of one that that is commonly known in agriculture.

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And it's been actually a mystery for many years how these parasites end up in such high prevalence as in the top Arctic predators such as polar bears.

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You can actually use mathematical models.

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You basically figure out, given the numbers of parasites that are observing in different species, what is actually plausible?

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Where could they be coming from? To explain the numbers that we're seeing.

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And so the answer is a bit more complex and perhaps we don't have the time to go into this.

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But the bottom line is that the models that people were looking at at the eighteen hundreds were abstractions of reality to try and help

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us understand how these things are functioning and how this is affecting our health and then ultimately the health of ecosystems as well.

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And today we're doing nothing different except for building on about 200 years of research and are now trying to find out the

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population dynamics of parasites of their hosts and under what conditions they may be spilling over and cause diseases in humans.

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Thank you, Peter, for this insight. Right.

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And back in the main court of the museum, my eyes adjusting to the bright natural light from the glass Wraith.

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Some models and replicas you encounter in museums like the Natural History Museum in Oxford can be more obvious than others.

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Take, for instance, this model here of the Archaeopteryx, which is my favourite little dinosaur, bridging the gap between dinosaurs and birds.

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Fossils of the Archaeopteryx were discovered in 1861. Only a few years after Charles Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species,

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they were hailed as key evidence for his theory of evolution through natural selection.

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This eminent role has stood the test of time. Therefore, images,

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reproductions of the original Archaeopteryx fossil and lifelike reconstructions of what it may have looked like based on the

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best data and knowledge we have at the time of producing the model are to be found in almost every natural history museum.

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This model here was made by Richard Hammond in the 1990s using actual bird feathers and appears much like any other colourful stuffed bird specimen.

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If you do not read the label, you might think it was a weird looking stuff bird.

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In fact, research is ongoing to determine the exact nature and colour of the Archaeopteryx feathers.

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So this model shows us a stage in this process.

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And if you're not just interested in what the Archaeopteryx may have looked like, but what it may have sounded like,

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well, the Natural History Museum in London have an audio model of the Archaeopteryx voice on the website.

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And this is what it sounds like. But there are countless other zoological models here in the museum, and I decided to ask an expert about them.

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Mark Carnell is a zoologist and collections manager in the life sciences department of the Museum.

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He's also one of my research supervisors. Mark, what would you say?

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What is the main difference between the animal specimens you look after and models fenceline?

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That's a really good question.

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So I'd say the main difference between the animal specimens that we look after in the museum and models is how they used and and what they represent.

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So, for example, if we had a mortar shell from the modest collections that Shell is such a data

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point that's been deposited in the museum and the use that we bring to today.

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So we might put it on display. We might feature in a blog post. You might use it in teaching something about mosque evolution and anatomy and.

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For as long as that specimen has been in the museum, it might be that some previous curators, Ray Lankester, used it in a lecture or a paper about it.

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So with our typical specimens, the main focus there is is the remuda use that we bring to them.

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That's fundamentally the point of a national story collection when it comes to the animal remains.

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The difference with models, casts and replicas is that's part of their formation.

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And there are some overlaps with partner formation catches something of the attitudes of the people who commissions made or used the model.

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And this is something that specimens themselves don't necessarily record.

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So going back to the Nautilus shell that I mentioned before, it, it's only secondary sources that you have any idea of the use of that specimen.

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Where we're holding it for renewed use as a model tells us something about what was being shown in display or used in teaching.

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What was seen as important so much as a costly and compact.

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So you're not buying models unless you really want to use them. So it can tell us something about what was important in the history of biology.

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What was important content to teach students in the university museum context?

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I also shows us a thought process frozen in time or in the case of a model series, a dynamic process.

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So it gives us much richer information, actually information that is quite poorly recorded.

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Otherwise we don't tend to do a great job in nutrition museums generally of recording our own history of how the collections of music.

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So I say that was that was the main difference. The other difference. On a metal level.

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So when it comes to how I approach curation of these, is that biological specimens by far.

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Have a more ingrained value, if you like, in how we view them and use them.

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And so with many modern collections, because they start off as something that you would purchase.

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Their value has changed over time.

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So now where they exist, where they went kind of stripped from displays when those ideas became outmoded or when teaching changed,

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where they still exist in museums,

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they're really interesting snapshot not just into the history of a similar school group, but also how that group was used.

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So the value prospect is another important one. And of course, I have to ask you this question, which is your favourite model in the museum, huh?

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I knew you're going to ask this question and I should have prepared an answer.

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What is my favourite model? I think this is the same thing.

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And if anybody who works at the collection and your favourite specimen or model changes over time,

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and now that we've got you working, researching on the collections,

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you know, the fantastic discoveries that you've been making are are making it very difficult to pick one particular favourite over another.

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But one area that I'm musicological logically interested in is those objects which we currently have in the museum now,

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which perhaps we consider as props.

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So things that we've bought or commissioned and are currently on display serving a very obvious function in our interpretation.

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And at some point, some of those will transition to become models incorporated into the collection.

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And in 50, 100, 200 years will be of interest like historic models are of interest.

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Now, as to some of those some of these things that we have at the moment include things like 3D, 3D, printed brains.

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We also have a bunch of very high end toys essentially that represent extinct organisms on display to show what these animals look like.

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And at the moment, that's something we could pop down the road and buy from, from a toy shop or online.

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But at some point, they will transition into becoming museum objects in their own right.

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And and so I think that category of objects is is is my favourite, because that's part of our living history.

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And although we have some control over what is deemed important and what gets preserved now,

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there's often a lot of filtering and happenstance that results in the kinds of collections,

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fragmented collections that end up as part of a permanent museum collection.

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So is taking stock of all of those models frocks,

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things that we use in our current interpretation and thinking about how how much record they

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will leave of our current activity if they end up as museum models or accession to objects.

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So that's my broad brush stroke. Cop out answer.

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Great. Thank you, Mark. Material models of animals attempt to make the invisible visible, the hard to grasp tangible.

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They're made from a vast array of materials with often astonishing skill and technologies.

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They represent what we know about a particular organism. At a certain point in time, they also ambassadors.

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And this is something I realised when I first held a 3D printed seahorse in my hand.

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While it becomes ethically problematic to buy specimens of organisms like seahorses.

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Something of it is captured and communicated in a reproduction so I can still trace its exoskeleton and marvel at its strange symmetry.

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The symmetry, incidentally, is being analysed for its potential in robotics.

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Seahorses have unusual tails instead of the much more common cylindrical structure that tails have a square cross-section.

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And this results in a unique combination of toughness and flexibility.

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And interestingly, 3D printed seahorses are used in this research.

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Models on knowledge objects. They have products of knowledge and generate knowledge to trace the complex map of such relationships.

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It's part of the HSC funded page project. Nature Replication.

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I'm undertaking jointly supervised by University College London and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

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It is a journey that has led me from civil suits to dinosaurs to parasites and beyond,

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from wax plaster and papier mâché to 3D printing and optical models.

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Thank you very much for joining me. This podcast was produced by parricide podcast Spill in 2020.

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The Carnival of Animals by South Soul, performed by the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra, was used in the Creative Commons.

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Some additional sounds whereby some Splatt.