If I were a woodlouse, I would stick to wood,

And I would only go, where I know a woodlouse should,

I wouldn’t stick my head, into a bird’s leg-bone,

I wouldn’t use just anything, in which to make a home,

‘Cause the problem you might find, once you’ve wriggled in,

Is that over time you grew larger, and the bone becomes too thin,

So even if you turn around, and head back whence you came,

You may find that,

You’ve grown too fat,

And have to die of shame.

Emma-Louise Nicholls is the Curatorial Assistant at the Grant Museum of Zoology

Conjure up in your mind, if you will, a natural history museum and you’ll probably be picturing skeletons, taxidermied animals and maybe specimens preserved in fluid. Recently, I spent some time with Rosina Down, the curator before the curator before me, having a look at some of the more unusual specimens we have here that were prepared on site at UCL in the 1980s.

Freeze dried mouse

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Do you having any burning desires to have something explained by someone on the inside? This new blog is a How To Guide for the museological musings of a Museum Assistant. The first along this (hopefully) long and happy blogging path is…

How to: Be a Good Museum Pest

There are two types of creepy crawlies that you get in museums; ones that don’t eat specimens (i.e. creepy crawlies that fair poorly at being museum pests) and ones that do eat specimens (these typically do well at being pests).  First, you need to decide which you are. If the thought of eating dried cartilage, wooden drawers, paper labels, certain glues, feathers, or fur turns you off… go away, you’re a rubbish pest. However if the opportunity to chow down on the internal remnants of an animal skull makes you salivate, then continue reading my friend, this how to guide is for you. (more…)