UCL Museums & Collections Blog

Remember that horrifically dark period of your life when the Grant Museum was closed and you were inconsolable for eight long and agonising months? It was a year ago this week that the Museum reopened its doors in University Street to crowds cheering, clapping and weeping tears of joy.

The new location has many exciting elements including walls that allow for specimen cramming (one of our favourite activities), a balcony which means four great ape skeletons can stare down on you from above, and most of all- you can now find the Museum without enlisting military personal armed with the latest GPS equipment and satellite communication devices.

To celebrate the completion of our first year in this snazzy new site, we are holding a week long extravaganza in which you are all most warmly invited. We have devised an animal-tastic trail for all ages to follow around the museum, solving clues to locate specimens and form an anagram. Oh the genius of it all. Solve the anagram for a chance to win the prize of a specimen adoption. Oh yes my friend- life could be THAT good.

Come and sign our birthday card and test your knowledge on our trail for the chance to become a specimen foster parent. Running all this week, 1pm-5pm, for all ages and for freeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

There was evidently a lot of love in the Grant Museum over the half-term period as specimen adoptions went through the roof. The number of new adoptive parents numbered well into double figures. It was a particularly superb week for one particular primate, with three of our five specimens of the species now no longer orphans. To celebrate, they asked me to make them animal of the week. When I informed them that the blog was called Specimen of the week, they elected a representative. Such excellent teamwork skills for such a mini-mammal. So, by popular tiny primate demand, this week’s specimen of the week is: (more…)

WELCOME TO 2012! Happy New Year to one and all from everyone here at the Grant Museum. We are going to kick the year off with a request from one of our readers. This week’s specimen of the week, the first for the new year, is a mammal but it has large scales. This week’s specimen of the week is… (more…)

Welcome to the final specimen of the week of the year 2011! I hope you that you had a fantastically wonderful weekend, whether it was full of Christmassy activities or alternate entertainment. I for one ate too much Christmas pudding (as I do every year) and spent the afternoon playing with my hamster’s new toys. It was his first Christmas and he was very excited to open his own presents. Whether Christmas is celebrated in your household or not, this time of year is certainly one thing for everybody (at least in this country) and that- is COLD! So this week’s specimen of the week is a creature from a cold climate and one that is as at home on land as it is in the sea. This week’s specimen of the week is: (more…)

Freshly back from abroad (got in last night), and not just a little jet-lagged, I bring to you on this quite frankly-freezing-compared-to-Mexico morning a mammalian specimen of the week that was inspired by the beautiful jungles through which I have been trotting for the last two weeks. I hope you are already trying to guess what it is based upon the two surreptitious pieces of information I have just given you; geographical location and habitat. This week’s specimen of the week is… (more…)

Well now my dedicated and trusted readers (I choose to believe that you exist in this format), I am currently in sunny Mexico trampling across Maya and Aztec ruins, filling my brain with more knowledge than its natural capacity, and hopefully chasing a spider monkey troop or two.

I do not want you to feel as though I have abandoned you in a capricious bout of neglect and so I have found a most genius way to make you feel as though you are still with me. Our specimen of the week is a Mexican species and I promise that if I should be lucky enough to see one, I will take a snapshot for you and post it here upon my return for your much sought approval. This week’s specimen of the week is: (more…)

I am pretty excited about this week’s specimen as it is our first specimen suggestion that has come from a reader (who I don’t know personally.) (That is unless it’s someone I know acting under a pseudonym?) (But that’s probably improbable.)

It is an animal of Hollywood acclaim, is famed for its crazy antics, is thought by many to be the second most venomous vertebrate in the world, and two individuals of unknown species once saved the life of our museum assistant. The specimen of the week is… (more…)

This week’s specimen is beautiful but deadly, squishy but complex, and not entirely what it seems. This week’s specimen of the week is… (more…)

As winter attempts quite convincingly to chill our doors, I thought I’d turn our attention down south and feature a mammal from the Antarctic. The first mammal to be featured in Specimen of the Week (pretty exciting stuff I know you’ll agree) this week’s specimen of the week is… (more…)

Welcome to the 100th UCL Museums and Collections blog post!!! What an honour! I shall definitely be sharing a wine with scary monkey (see left) later on and he says he gives you all permission to leave work early for the momentous occasion. When you first start writing a weekly blog you suddenly become very aware of time and more to the point, how quickly it whips by! Already it is week four of the new specimen of the week blog. Someone pointed out yesterday it was only seven weeks until the new year. Frightening!

Anywho, this week I have decided to choose one of my most favourite animals to tell you about. It is one of the largest species of the group to which it belongs and famous for its weird appearance. This week’s specimen of the week is… (more…)