The Grant Museum is currently closed for refurbishment works until the new year, but we still have plenty of exciting stories to tell from the collection.

Today’s blog is by visiting researchers Dr Andrew McCarthy and Dr Jennie C. Litten-Brown from Canterbury College, UK, who have been looking into some of the parasites in our collection. This week we meet the Giant Thorny-Headed Worm of Swine, Macracanthorhynchus hirudinaceus (Acanthocephala: Oligacanthorhynchidae), a parasite that causes disease in both pigs and humans, that you will be able to see on display when we re-open.

The Giant Thorny-Headed Worm of Swine

Parasitism is probably the most common life strategy on Earth. Parasites are known to be important factors in maintaining ecosystem health, and the relatively new discipline of Parasite Conservation is devoted to preventing the extinction of endangered parasite species. However, several parasites cause serious disease in both humans and livestock. With increasing trends in more ethical farming methods such as Wild Farming, (often associated with rare breeds conservation), where livestock come into close contact with the natural environment, an awareness of potential pathogenic parasites is important. Specimens of one such parasite, an acanthocephalan, may be found in the Grant Museum of Zoology.

Acanthocephalans, commonly known as the “Thorny-Headed Worms” are a group of parasites typically under-represented in museum collections. Members of the group are known to cause a disease, acanthocephaliasis, in their vertebrate hosts, and some are of both veterinary and medical importance. The Grant Museum of Zoology has in its collection both fluid preserved adult worms (specimens LDUCZ-F21, F22 & F23), and Rudolf Weisker wax teaching model specimens c.1884 (LDCUZ-F26 & F84), of one of the largest acanthocephalans known to science. It goes by the rather dramatic common name of the “Giant Thorny-Headed Worm of Swine”, Macracanthorhynchus hirudinaceus. It may be described as a neglected parasite upon which relatively little research has been carried out. Its scientific name refers to the large, thorned proboscis (see Fig. 1), and the leech-like (“hirudo”) nature of its body (see Fig.2 ).

Fig. 1. The Parasite: Macracanthorhynchus hirudinaceus.
Scanning Electron Micrograph of the proboscis bearing thorns.
(© Migliore et al. (2021) )

Fig. 2. The Parasite: Macracanthorhynchus hirudinaceus. Entire worm from intestine of pig.
(CDC, Public Domain via Wiki Commons)

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The Grant Museum is currently closed this summer for some refurbishment works but we still have plenty of exciting stories to tell from the collection.

Today’s blog is by visiting researcher Dr Andrew McCarthy from Canterbury College, UK.

Initially this short piece was planned to be solely about the identification of specimens of an intestinal parasite of an endangered species of deep-water shark Echinorhinus brucus, the Bramble Shark, from the collections of the museum.

Echinorhinus brucus, the Bramble Shark.
(Goode & Bean (1896) Oceanic Ichthyology. Public Domain via Wiki Commons)

However, by strange coincidence as will be explained, it is being written on the day that the United Nations in New York announced in its new global marine biodiversity conservation initiative “The High Seas Treaty”. Embracing almost two thirds of the World’s oceans that lie outside national boundaries the treaty provides a legal framework for the establishment of vast Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s) to protect against loss of marine biodiversity. The coincidence is that the specimens under discussion here are thought, ultimately, to have their origin associated with the work of a British pioneer of marine conservation of well over one hundred years ago. He was namely Professor Sir Edwin Ray Lankester FRS, a past Director of the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy (1874-1890), Jodrell Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at University College London, and Linacre Professor of Comparative Anatomy at the University of Oxford. A larger-than-life figure, some believe him to be one of the inspirations for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger of “The Lost World”.

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Even though the Grant Museum is closed this summer, we still have plenty of exciting stories to tell from the collection!

Today’s blog is by visiting researcher Dr Andrew McCarthy from Canterbury College, UK.

The Micrarium at the Grant Museum of Zoology is a beautiful and unique display of illuminated glass microscope slides of specimens from a bewildering range of groups within the Animal Kingdom. Each slide has its own story and potentially its own contribution to make to the study of zoology. The specimen on one such slide is probably at present better known than the rest due to its appearance in Jack Ashby’s excellent book “Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects” based on specimens from the Grant Museum. The specimen of a trematode parasite in the genus Isoparorchis appears in the book as a photogenic example of a parasitic flatworm in a concise overview of the group.

The Parasite: Isoparorchis specimen from the Micrarium
© UCL Grant Museum of Zoology & Oliver Siddons

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Happy almost springtime! Longer days and brighter skies herald the coming of the change of season. This year the official start of Spring will be marked by a total solar eclipse on March 20 (get your eclipse glasses ready). When the sun re-emerges from behind the moon, both man and beast can rejoice in the return of the light and the promise of rejuvenation.

Here at the Museum, it is also time to clean the shelves, tidy the office, refresh the displays and present a brand-new exhibition. From 16 March to 27 June join us for Stange Creatures: The art of unknown animals and explore the world of animal representation.

While springtime has many different meanings and associations, including representative animals, one animal is perhaps most symbolic of this time of year. In honour of this most springy of selections, this week’s Specimen of the Week is… (more…)

Earlier this year a book chapter I co-authored with UCL colleagues, deep breath, Claire Ross (Centre for Digital Humanities), Andrew Hudson-Smith (Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis), Claire Warwick (Department of Information Studies), Melissa Terras (Centre for Digital Humanities) and Steven Gray (Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis)  was published in the volume The Mobile Story, Narrative Perspectives with Locative Technologies.

The book covers all aspects of when stories meet locative technologies from apps to maps and from dancing with Twitter to haunting public spaces through mobile devices. Our chapter, Enhancing Museum Narratives Tales of Things and UCL’s Grant Museum, examines using mobile media for enhanced meaning making and narrative engagement in museum spaces. (more…)

One of our team of post-graduate researcher/engagers (see what that’s all about on last week’s post) has been talking about the connection between species in the Grant Museum and a nineteenth century mechanical replica, which was designed as a clinical tool.

It’s on the new Researchers in Museums blog, but to pique your interest here is how Sarah Chaney starts the post off…

“Leeches! Leeches! Leeches!”
So ran one particularly enthusiastic nineteenth century advertisement for the animal that has had the most enduring association with medical history. So much so, that one inspired individual decided to make a mechanical version of the creature. During my public engagement sessions in the Grant Museum, I’ve tried asking various visitors to guess what animal the fist-sized metal box was designed to emulate: no one has yet hit on the right answer, even though I usually stand right in front of the leech cabinet. Shiny, clean and angular, where the leech is squat, wet and slug-like, there would appear to be little comparison between the two.

Indeed, that was the claim of certain nineteenth century leech advocates, who deemed the miraculous little creature itself far gentler than lancet, fleam or scarifier (also called a scarificator: the “mechanical leech” in the illustration, left). The leech secretes a substance called hirudin, which stops the blood from clotting, meaning that one small bite will continue to bleed for around 12 hours after the leech has been removed. I know this well, for, in the pursuit of medical history, I have been leeched not once, but twice, and still have the (tiny) scars to prove it!

You can read the rest of Sarah’s post on their blog here: http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in-museums/2012/07/09/leeches-leeches-leeches/

When we go to museums we normally know the kind of information we’re going to be engaging with. In natural history museums it’s usually facts about species, minerals and environments; in social history museums it’s cultures and people; in archaeology it’s much like social history but older. At UCL Museums we’ve started an experiment that doesn’t fit this model.

We have employed a team of UCL post-graduate students to come to each of our spaces a couple of days a week to engage our visitors with their research. They have each found connections between our collections and their disciplines, but they aren’t necessarily what you’d expect. Their PhD’s range from epidemiology and the history of psychology to rhetoric – none of which spark an immediate link to zoology, for example, in most people. (more…)