The full reference is

Carnall, M.A (2012) Walking with Dragons: CGIs in Wildlife Documentaries. In Bentowska-Kafel, A., Denard, H. and Baker, D (eds) Paradata and Transparency in Virtual Heritage, Pages 81-95 ISBN 9780754675839

Getting back to why I think my job is the best job it is because researching and writing this book chapter was a lot of fun. I got to (re)watch a lot of CGI ‘documentaries’ with dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in and was fortunate enough to get the paper published in a volume with many fine colleagues all musing about transparency in using visualisations in heritage. By transparency we mean how do you let other people assess what is based on fact and what has been manipulated, stitched over or artistically created.

The abstract begins:
Following the success of Jurassic Park and the Walking With Dinosaurs series, computer generated imagery and other forms of animation (CGI) are increasingly used in wildlife ‘documentaries’ and nature programmes to illustrate extinct animals and to educate. However, these techniques are part science, part illusion and they are used for edutainment, rather than pure education. Unlike academic courses and peer-reviewed journal articles, these documentaries are not accountable to scientists before they air and as such are not subject to close scrutiny. Audiences are very rarely informed about how reliable reconstructions are or if some parts of the reconstructions are based on only one of a series of equally viable hypotheses.

I won’t spoil the rest of the chapter (it was not the butler this time) but if you are interested in virtual dinosaurs, truth and beauty then you can read the rest of the abstract of the chapter here and you can purchase the volume from here.

* If any of my bosses are reading this I mean ALL OF THE TIME but I’m playing it down for dramatic purposes.

**!!!The Japanese Pancake Devil Fish!!!**

1) The menacingly named Japanese pancake devil fish is actually not a fish. Making it both menacing and a con artist, and thus clearly the villain of any marine action thriller. It is in fact, a type of octopus that has the tendency to flatten itself… like a pancake.

2) The males and females can be differentiated based on the number of suckers on each of the arms. The males have far fewer than the females which can have over 50.

3) In another conspiracy to confuse, the Japanese pancake devil fish is not solely found in Japan. They also inhabit the waters off the coastline of California. Which, I grant you, is not far from Japan (if you’re an octopus), but an inappropriate name nevertheless I would suggest.

4) The origin of the word pancake does not come from the pancake devil fish, no no. It in fact originates from a cake-like dish made of eggs, milk, and flour, that is cooked in a pan.

5) Japanese pancake devil fish live waaaaaaaaaaaaay deep down in the sea, normally between 130 – 1100 m with the other weird and scary creatures like the one on Finding Nemo.

This pancake day, either before or after your own delicious golden syrup filled feast, come and see a real pancake in the flesh!

This week Nature blogged about the QRator project for Social Media Week. It begins…

The Museum and the iPad: how the Grant Museum is using social media to make us all curators

…Hello Jack, welcome to the Nature London blog. Can you tell us about the QRator project you’ve introduced to the Grant Museum?

QRator is a project that allows our visitors to get involved in conversations about the way that museums like ours operate and the role of science in society today. In the Museum are ten iPads which each pose a broad question linked to a changing display of specimens. We are really interested in what our visitors think about some of the challenges that managing a natural history collection brings up, and other issues in the life sciences. They change periodically, but at the moment our current questions include “Is it ever acceptable for museums to lie?”, “Is domestication ethical?”, “Should human and animal remains be treated differently in museums like this?” and “What makes an animal British?”

You can read the whole article here: http://blogs.nature.com/london/2012/02/15/the-museum-and-the-ipad-how-the-grant-museum-is-using-social-media-to-make-us-all-curators

“The First Kiss of Love” from La Nouvelle Héloïse

By Cathrine Alice Liberg

Discover the sentimental side of Rousseau (and yourself!) at UCL Art Museum.

Come Valentine’s Day, we wish to highlight Rousseau’s epistolary novels, most notably his sentimental work La Nouvelle Héloïse which became a predecessor to modern Romantic novels, and was a bestseller back in its days. As for Rousseau himself, he never married, but did manage to father a significant number of children. His writings however, have been interpreted even in the realm of love as a guide to finding happiness. The long running dating show for farmers, “Boer zoekt vrouw”, is based on Rousseau’s philosophies on “the natural state” in which he praises the simple life as the source of joy and satisfaction. In this Dutch television programme, the love-hungry farmers all work side by side in nature, away from the morally corrupt city of selfishness and greed while trying to win each other’s hearts. Can this be the key to eternal bliss?

Whether or not you wish to use Rousseau as a guide to your own dating life, we wish to spread the love by encouraging visitors to share their own love declarations on our pin board for the coming two weeks! Whether to a person or a passion – let us know what makes your heart tick!

Starting off with the more affective side in these days of romance, every two weeks we will be highlighting new aspects of Rousseau in order to showcase the multiple talents of his fascinating character. While Rousseau is well-known for his political and social theories which inspired the leaders of the French Revolution, very few people realise just what a multifaceted person he was. Many of our visitors are not aware that not only did Rousseau have strong opinions on education and inequality, but he also found time to write gripping operas and novels such as La Nouvelle Héloïse!

Our hope is to encourage visitor interaction and to allow you to share your thoughts on the man – what aspects of him are still relevant today, and is there even a point in marking his tercentenary?

Look out for new displays and activities on Rousseau in the following weeks to come!

Peacocks fan their tail feathers,
Spreading blue and green.
The Asian tortoise follows his girl
With persistance to show he’s keen.

Semaphore, believe it or not,
Attracts girl wolf spider to boy.
A fruit fly has his work cut out,
These girls like acting coy.

Imagination goes to bower birds,
Who pimp their pads with colours.
A ram will ram to get his girl,
And see off other fellas.

Cave salamanders like it simple,
Just exchanging the required bits.
A kakapo on the other hand,
Will boom from self-made pits.

The colossal males of the humpback whales
Will sing for days on end.
A female swift finds a life-long mate,
On whom she can depend.

The Mangaia kingfisher can breed in pairs,
But threesomes also work.
Giant pandas emit a scent from glands,
Then to spread it, they frolic in dirt.

Female Anatolian newts,
Get fanned by their loved one’s tails.
But female bonobos have the best time of all,
Surrounded by their choice of males.

Things that rattle my curatorial cage

1. Intrusive sampling of an object, with absolutely no documentation to tell us a) why it was done, b) when it was done, c) who the irresponsible bastards responsible for having it done were, or d) what they learned from the experience. The result? Beautiful objects with ugly scars slicing through their bodies, now of absolutely no use for display and an embarrassment to teach with, except when trying to train future researchers about what not to do.

Destructive sampling at its least sensitive

2. People who cut off part of the identifying markings on objects when they sample them. You know who you are.

3. Accession numbers written on objects that are either a) too small to read without a microscope – crazy, I know, but I don’t keep one in my office – b) written in black ink on a black object, c) written so they don’t look anything like the number they represent, or d) written beautifully, then covered up with a bubbly layer of varnish that completely obscures the number and makes it impossible to read.

4. Incomplete or obscure accession book entries – because obviously, everyone knows the donor, so you don’t need to give their full name. Particularly helpful when the donor is an unmarried woman, and all we are told is her surname – as there’s a good chance she went on to change her name and therefore become untraceable on the information given.

5. Conservators who work on objects, make wonderfully extensive records about the treatments given, and neglect to record the object’s provenance or any identifying numbers. Except their own lab number, of course.

6. People who take an object out for drawing or photography and use blue-tac to keep it nice and steady while they record it. With a nice, steady, greasy mark left on the object afterwards. Sometimes they even leave the blue-tac in place, just to make sure we notice.

7. Lecturers who turn up without warning and want to have objects out for a class, right away. What do you mean you can’t do it? You’re so unhelpful!

8. Staff who think the artefact store is a good place to dump all their research material. It’s essential research material, and it will only be for a short time.  Yeah, right. They never come back to look at it, and then they retire without taking it away. Hugely important material, obviously.

9. Going through the offices of former staff, who leave piles of rubbish for someone else to deal with. And who turn out to have several of your missing artefacts stashed in their filing cabinets. Actually, let me widen that a little. Going into the offices of existing staff, and seeing your missing objects tottering on the top of a filing cabinet. Next to a half-eaten sandwich and a pile of unmarked essays.

I could go on, but I might lose the will to live.

Has a curator ever snapped and gone on a collections rampage? Or are inappropriate sampling, dodgy object markings and impenetrable accession book entries really a form of passive resistance to the pressures of the job? One can only wonder at the feelings that led a museum guard to smash the beautiful Francois vase into hundreds of pieces, or a drunken British Museum visitor to use a sculpture to violently disassemble the Portland vase. So far as I know, none of the UCL Museums & Collections curatorial staff have yet reached this peak of inventiveness; we just get together and grumble from time to time.

Perhaps some of you have your own items to add?  Or a rival list from the research or teaching staff point of view? Either way, just remember that what doesn’t break us (or our artefacts) makes us strong.

**!!!The common starfish!!!**… mid-regeneration!

1) The common starfish can have between four and six arms (the majority stick to tradition and have five). Each arm sports a row of spines along the top for protection and several rows of ‘tube-feet’ along the bottom for locomotion. The tube feet (see image right) work by hydraulics controlled by the water-vascular system, and are adorned with suckers for grip.

2) The suckers are also used to prise open the shell of their prey. Then, in a tribute to the most grotesque Hammer Horror, they insert lobes of their stomach into the prey and digest it whilst it is still alive. Sounds messy. Not a guest to invite to formal occasions methinks.

3) Although the Grant Museum of Zoology has a number of specimens of the common starfish, the specific specimen highlighted this week is very special. It is an arm. Not very impressive? Ok- it is an arm… that has started to grow its own body. There is no need to re-read it, you read it correctly the first time. If a starfish’s arm finds itself without a body, it can regenerate an entire animal, so long as it has been careful to retain at least a 5th of the central disc. The process takes up to a year to complete. Some species use this as a method of asexual reproduction. They will cast off one of their arms which will, over time, grow itself a new body. The ‘offspring’ is genetically identical.

4) Common starfish are compact killing machines. They hunt down brittlestars, molluscs, sea urchins and worms. They even ‘keep it in the family’ by partaking in a little pseudo-cannibalism and eating other species of starfish.

5) Hear the one about the dog with no nose? How does he smell? Awful. The same is true for the common starfish. Whilst they have a good sense of smell themselves (despite no obvious hooter), many of their prey species can smell the starfish coming and having done so, bolt in the other direction. Quite right too given their stomach projecting, eat-me-while-I’m-still-alive, table manners.

Our starfish arm, with body attached, is available for your viewing pleasure at the Grant Museum near you. See if you can spot it through our shiny new glass fronted display cases, complete with twinkly spot lights. I’m not sure which is more beautiful.

Piling the tables with limbs from koalas, badgers, frogs, turtles, platypuses, rabbits and more we worked through the story of where arms come from, and what we can learn from the strange lumps and bumps that different species have on their limbs. For example, rabbits have a massive projection out of the the back of their ulnas (the olecranon process) – we asked people to work out what it’s for. As with most things sticking out of bones, it’s a very big muscle attachment site for the rabbit tricep – they need strong muscles for bounding. Another leporine (rabbity) characteristic is that the two bones of the lower arm (radius and ulna) are nearly completely fused together. We asked why…
It means that rabbits can’t twist their wrists like we can (pronation and supination) – again because they need strong solid arms for bouncing – they don’t want their hands to face anyway but downwards and forwards.

The ever-wonderful UCL Events Blog did an impartial review of the event. It begins…

The UCL Grant Museum of Zoology is currently running its ‘Humanimals’ series, where it explores the relationships between ourselves and other animals.

The Grant Museum was founded as a teaching collection, and it seems that the current crop of curators are keen to continue this legacy. This is the second night like this that they have run, and for a modern museum it seems to a pretty radical idea; not only can enthusiasts visit and explore the museum after hours, but we are actually given the chance to interact with some of the exhibits.

Read the whole thing here.

Please let us know if you have suggestions for other “Hands on History” event topics.

**!!!THE MOUNTAIN GORILLA!!!**

A greatly informative gathering of facts on our gorgeous friend the gorilla:

1) There are two species of gorilla, the Eastern and the Western. In a clear effort to make a biogeographical map of Africa balance out, gorillas divided each species into two subspecies. Mountain gorillas are a subspecies of Eastern gorilla and, as the name somewhat suggests, live in the misty mountain forests of central Africa. They have longer and thicker fur than their lower altitude dwelling relatives to cope with the colder climate.

2) Adult males grow to approximately twice the size of the females and the fur on their back turns ‘silver’ around the age of 13. Although in some circumstances more than one silverback may live within the family unit, only one will be dominant.

3) Three of the four subspecies of gorilla are critically endangered. For mountain gorillas the main threat is no longer a demand for their meat, or the collection of infants for the pet trade, but from the destruction of their forest home. Poor, and war-torn, local communities rely on the forest for many of their basic human needs. Meaning unfortunately that there is no easy solution.

4) The male mountain gorilla skeleton has been in the Grant Museum’s collection for over a hundred years and is shown here (see image left) in the museum in the 1880s. Rumour has it (on good authority) that our gorilla skeleton was once hugged by H.G. Wells himself.

5) I heard that the permit to see gorillas in the wild was about to double to $1000. So before I was priced out of my lifelong dream, and with my birthday as an excuse, I maxed out my credit card and hopped on a flight to Bwindi Impenetrable  Forest in Uganda, home to almost 50% of all mountain gorillas, and spent the fastest hour known to time in their company. I bonded (in my head) with Kabukojo who is a black-back, or ‘vice-president to the silver-back’ if you like. I spent most of my time with him and when finally I left him to catch up to my group, he got up and followed me, passing within inches (see flattering image right). The guide tore us away after our hour, saying that we didn’t want to outstay our welcome and cause them stress. Quite right too. Only when we got back to camp, they had followed us. So we sat eating our sandwiches, in the middle of our camp, surrounded by wild gorillas. A pretty good day really.

We have fully articulated male and female skeletons plus male and female skulls to show the anatomical differences. All good reasons to get your skates on and come and see us!

"Digit Master" 2011, Bakhari the chimp, Saint Louis Zoo

When our co-curators Michael Tuck, a graduate from the UCL Slade School of Fine Art, and artist Will Tuck, first approached me about a year ago I have to admit to being shocked at the elephant painting of a flower pot – it truly displays the incredible dexterity of the elephant’s trunk, but is it art?

Here’s a video about it.

That’s the big question we are asking, and personally the artworks have actually got me thinking more about human art as well as the intentions of the ape artists. We are exploring the links between human and animal behaviours this term in our Humanimals Season. I’m not a fan of anthropomorphising animal behaviour – I think that what animals do in the wild is far more interesting than anything we could lay a claim to being human-like behaviour. There are plenty of examples of animals expressing themselves creatively in nature. Play is a big part of the development of many animals and I’ve certainly seen a lot of wild animals seemingly only doing something for fun. Aesthetics is the key to a bowerbird’s display bower (otherwise why would they be so picky about only decorating them with objects of single colour – it can’t all be about displaying their foraging skills).

As well as a bowerbird, this exhibition displays overtly human behaviour (painting) but I hope that it will suggest a level of natural creativity in the animal world. If that’s the case, where does creativity end and art begin?

All the artworks can be seen here.

"Flowerpot", 2011, Boon Mee the elephant, Samutprakarn Zoo

Talking to Mike and Will Tuck, what really fascinated me is that the apes decide when their paintings are finished – given a load of paper and some paint, they will choose to finish one painting and start another – doesn’t that say something about their artistic intentions? There is an old joke about abstract paintings being hung upside-down, but when we were hanging the ape paintings they really do only “work” one way up. Whether it’s the same way as the apes intended, or whether it speaks only to human artistic sensibilities we’ll probably never know, but it certainly got me thinking.

The exhibition runs from today until 10th March. The Grant Museum is open from 1-5pm Monday to Friday, with a special Saturday opening 11am-4pm on 10th March. Admission is free.