Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL

At UCL, Term 1 is now fully underway – ID cards have been issued, classrooms have been located and routines have been established. Object-based teaching has also begun at the Grant Museum where students from UCL and throughout the London area will have the opportunity to use museum specimens in their practicals.

During a typical academic year, around 2500 university students use the Grant Museum collection as part of their formal coursework on a wide range of courses including zoology, palaeontology, the history of art, geography, museum studies, communication and even dance. The Museum and its collection is also used by students for project work and postgraduate research or as a testing ground for museum engagement, new technologies and visitor research.

The Grant Museum invites use of its collection for teaching to any faculty at UCL. We’re pretty good at what we do (if we do say so ourselves), because we’ve had 190 years of practice… (more…)

Like all professional zoologists, I own several sets of novelty animal-based playing cards. One such set is “Dangerous Australian Animals”. This is a particularly good set as in addition to the usual playing card graphics (hearts, diamonds, etc), not only do you get a lovely picture of a Dangerous Australian Animal on each card, but you get a star rating, out of five, of exactly how Dangerous it is.

The manufacturers would have had to work pretty hard to narrow it down to just 52 Dangerous Australian Animals, given that most lifeforms in Australia are Dangerous.

Alongside the snakes, crocodiles, spiders, jellyfish, scorpions and paralysis ticks, there is a single bird Dangerous enough to get its own card. With a Dangerous rating of 0.5 stars out of five, this week’s Specimen of the Week is… (more…)

This is the 500th post on the Museums and Collections blog! That is a lot of information we have researched, written and sent out into the ether for your pleasure. I hope you appreciate our efforts? Cropping up in many of the blogs by the Grant Museum is the jar of moles, who’s celebrity status is undeniable. It sits in full view of the adoring public as they rush through the door, having queued up outside the Museum waiting for us to open, in order to catch a glimpse of the sacred specimen. Hordes of people can be heard talking about it on a daily basis, and an internet search for ‘jar of moles’ brings up several pages referencing the Museum and our specimen. However last week, a lady came to speak to me at the Museum and said with an uneasy smile “That jar of moles is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen, it makes me feel sick”. At first I thought Clearly you haven’t seen the Surinam toad but then I thought Hah! How rare it is to have someone disapprove of this really quite bizarre spectacle of a specimen. How lovely! It got me thinking what else might be perceived as disgusting and as such, I arrived at this week’s Specimen of the Week is… (more…)

Oh you bizarre gharial you, how I love your features

With the thinnest (relative) snout, of the Animal Kingdom’s creatures

One of the largest species, of all the world’s croc-kind

You’re really quite unique, when all your features are combined

Your legs so weak and measly, can’t get your body off the ground

And your only real defence, is a puny hissss-ing sound (more…)

Last week I was rewarded for my services to mankind* with a free trip to Edinburgh. You may or may not remember a huge hoo-haa about the zoo acquiring (on loan) a pair of giant pandas from China, at GREAT expense. The hoo-haa was primarily amongst the zoological community but raised many an eyebrow, and “tut”s were prevalent amongst colleagues and friends whenever the subject arose. Well, I decided it was time to find out what was what, and visit these controversial immigrants, worth more than their weight in gold, for myself. Well, the first thing I need to say is “AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW”. I am now completely in love with giant pandas. The second thing is, despite their £600,000 a year loan fee, visitor numbers have apparently risen to such an extent as a result that the pandas not only pay for themselves but have funded two other new animal enclosures in the two years they have been there. Eyebrows raise for different reasons now eh. We don’t have a giant panda (though I informed my Manager of the lucrative result of securing one), but we do have something similar. This week’s Specimen of the Week is… (more…)