This blog was written by UCL Culture volunteer Melissa Wooding.

Today’s specimen of the week highlights one of the world’s longest animal migrations at 6,000 miles¹– completed by an insect!

This beautiful insect has an internal biology including a sundial ² compass ³, and a gene enabling it to suppress its own ageing and increase its own lifespan 8 times⁴… all inside a brain the size of a single sesame seed⁵.

It’s time to give this mind-boggling butterfly its due moment in the spotlight:

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Specimen of the week this week is a rare visitor to our shores, with a slightly misleading name. Today we venture south of the river in search of…

Nymphalis antiopa (The Camberwell Beauty, the Mourning Cloak or the Grand Surprize) LDUCZ-L3333

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The common cockchafer. LDUCZ-L239.

Behold. What divine wings of clumsy bumbletude are brought in on the wind? Mitchamador
Hark. Who buzzes and squeaks betwixt the trees? An Oak-wib
Prod? It is I who takes rest beneath this loamy soil. The Snartlegog

This week’s specimen is…

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Zombies aren’t real… or are they? In the world of nature, pretty much anything you come up with already exists: What’s that, a lizard that shoots blood out of its eyes? Yup, that’s been done. What about a toad with babies that burst out its back? Nah, you have to be more creative than that!

But zombies? Practically anything along the subject makes me prance around like a toddler, combine them with one of my other most favourite things in the world – insects –  and I’m a giddy puddle.

Boy, this is a treat for you guys! It’s our first non-zoological specimen of the week. That is, if you don’t count the fact that there’s a dirty great big caterpillar stuck to it, and no, this isn’t a case of the mysterious battery-stuffing opossum maniac up to their usual museum antics again with the Pritt-Stick; the two are fused in a macabre display of harmony, mutual love and zombification.

This specimen of the week is…

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