By Felicity Winkley

Last week I had an interesting discussion with a visitor to the Petrie museum about grave goods.

The shelves of the museum’s cases are lined with an impressive quantity of grave goods, representing a date range that covers most phases of Egyptian history. And this is hardly surprising. Of the 52 excavation locations detailed in a breakdown of Petrie’s field seasons between 1880 and 1938, over half (26) are cemeteries [1].

The finds brought back to UCL by Flinders Petrie after these excavations comprise a diverse assemblage of items. Like those observed in contemporary cultures elsewhere, the grave goods in the early stages of Ancient Egypt consisted of a mixture of every day objects, food items and those more unique or personal accessories, including combs, jewellery and trinkets.

By the Middle Kingdom, however, small figures starting appearing in tombs – early versions of what came to be known as Shabti – meaning ‘answerer’ – figures. By the end of the Middle Kingdom, shabtis were an established funerary tradition and thereafter became prevalent amongst groups of grave goods in one form or another for the remainder of Ancient Egypt’s history. Petrie’s collection contains (at least, according to the electronic catalogue) 1,841 shabtis.

Most commonly shown mummified, the shabti figures act as servants for the deceased in the afterlife – bringing them food or undertaking labour on their behalf, often as instructed in the inscription from the Book of the Dead with which they are decorated [2]. Because of this, they are regularly depicted holding hoes and with baskets on their back for collecting the farmed food for the deceased: see UC39708, a black steatite shabti from the 18th dynasty (c. 1500-1298 BC) and UC39765, a pottery shabti from the 19th (c. 1298 – 1187 BC).

The popularity of shabtis continued on throughout the New Kingdom, when they were increasingly being manufactured in faience: something explored by artist and archaeologist Zahed Taj-Eddin in the current exhibition ‘Nu’ Shabtis Liberation, in which 80 modern shabtis have escaped their enslavement to pursue their own hobbies amongst the Petrie’s cases [2].

So the visitor and I had plenty to talk about.

Then she asked me ‘When did grave goods stop?’

Her husband promptly answered ‘When Christianity was introduced’, but in fact this answer is not quite so straightforward. Firstly, there is no neat way of prescribing a date to the introduction of Christianity, and secondly, contemporary studies would shy away from using burial practice, especially solely grave goods, as a direct reflection of culture.

In Egypt, Christianity first appeared during the Roman rule – which was established after Mark Antony and Queen Cleopatra VII were defeated by the future emperor Augustus in 30 BC (leaving Egypt annexed to Rome as the wealthiest province in its empire) – but it was not adopted seamlessly.

The conquering Romans had left Egyptian religion well alone, indeed had many even incorporated its traditions into their own belief systems, with several Roman emperors completing Egyptian temples during their tenure. Consequently when St Mark the Evangelist purportedly chose to establish the Church of Alexandria – one of the original three main episcopal sees of Christianity – around 33-43 AD, it was not to a people who welcomed it with open arms. Christians were persecuted for their faith until 313 when Constantine I issued the Edict of Milan to prevent their mistreatment within the Roman empire – but hereafter, worship of Egyptian deities still continued: archaeological evidence in the form of graffiti at the Temple of Isis at Philae shows that worship continued there into the 6th century.

In England, recent work from Prof. Christopher Scull points towards a cessation of grave goods in the Anglo-Saxon culture shortly before the end of the 7th century, but again – this is not necessarily a hard-and-fast indication that thereafter these burials were all Christian, instead this might have been a response to broader cultural or economic influences [4]. Current approaches warn strongly that there is in fact no evidence to support prescriptive definitions of either Christian or pagan burials during the Early Medieval period. Indeed by the 11th century, grave goods were commonly included in Christian internments as a way of marking out members of the religious community [5].

And so the ‘Question of the Week’ goes almost unanswered – but does give some good food for thought on our approaches to burial practice and material culture.

Lastly, the subject of grave goods is an interesting one in the context of my own research. Until the change in legislation in 1997, grave goods were not classified as Treasure as they did not display animus revertendi, the phrase used to describe an ‘intent to return’ on the part of whoever had buried the treasure in the first place. Unlike a hoard which is buried with the intention of retrieving, grave goods are donated to the dead and intended to be left intact in the grave – so consequently were not protected as Treasure Trove before the law was updated.

As such the incredible grave goods from Sutton Hoo, that nationally recognisable Anglo Saxon ship burial, were only saved for the public benefit through the benevolence of the landowner Mrs Pretty, who would have been quite within her legal rights to see the artefacts piece by piece should she have wished to. (For more on the Treasure definition, see my previous blog here [6])

 ‘Nu’ Shabtis Liberation is on at the Petrie Museum until 18 October.

[1] http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/petriedigsindex.html

[2] http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/articles/e/egyptian_shabti_figures.aspx

[3] http://events.ucl.ac.uk/event/event:k36-i0gmqt30-fs2rn/nushabtis-liberation

[4] A. Bayliss, J. Hines, K Høilund Nielsen, G. McCormac and C. Scull (2013) Anglo-Saxon graves and grave goods of the sixth and seventh centuries AD: a chronological framework. Leeds, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33

[5] Gilchrist, R. (2005) Requiem for a Lost Age British Archaeology 84 http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba84/feat2.shtml

[6] https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/researchers-in-museums/2013/01/14/the-staffordshire-hoard-defining-treasure/

Last Saturday I was engaging at the Grant Museum of Zoology where I started talking with two visitors about the history of science. As a Victorian historian, my doctoral research specifically looks at the historyof Victorian medicine and its relationship to women and the articulation of the healthy female body. There couldn’t be a better setting to discuss those themes than the Grant Museum- the only remaining zoological university collection in London, which houses a dizzying array of zoological specimens dating back to the early nineteenth-century. The museum’s founder, Robert Edmond Grant, is particularly known for his influence on the young Charles Darwin, when the latter studied under him at Edinburgh University.

As I was discussing Darwinian science with the museum visitors, one of them brought up phrenology- a not totally unexpected turn as visitors often bring up the history of eugenics when I am discussing my work. First developed in the late eighteenth century, but reaching the pinnacle of its popularity in the mid-19^th century, phrenology is the pseudo-science of skull measurement in order to determine a person’s character, intelligence, and overall mental capacity. Distinct, but not unrelated to craniometry (which is the measurement of cranial features to classify people according to race and temperament) phrenology had a big impact on the concept and understanding of “race” in the Victorian period.

A pelvimeter. © Dittrick Medical History Center

This is when I introduced the word “pelvimetry” into the conversation only to receive puzzled looks. What is pelvimetry? Well, from its root word “pelv” and the fact that I am a woman’s historian you might be able to hazard a guess. In obstetrics today, pelvimetry is the measurement of the female pelvis in relation to the birth of a baby. However, in the Victorian period pelvimetry was also used to measure the female pelvis to determine racial characteristics, and to provide a medical explanation as to why a woman’s worth was inextricably linked to her reproductive system, as opposed to her brain.

Or, as the obstetrician Francourt Barnes remarked in 1884, “If woman excels by the pelvis, man excels by the head.” In keeping with this line of reasoning, the eugenics advocate Havelock Ellis ranked the races according to pelvic type and size: the oval (European), the round (American), the Square (Mongol), and the Oblong (African), emphasizing the underlying claim that the oval or European pelvic size was conducive to the healthiest brain development in babies. In this way, the female pelvic type corresponded racially to the male brain size. Craniometry and pelvimetry in easy complement, both asserting the superiority of Europeans, while at the same time stressing sexual difference to cast women as sexual and men as cerebral.

To learn more about pelvimetry see: The Female Body in Medicine and Literature (ed) Andrew Mangham and Greta Depledge or come and find me in one of UCL’s three museums- lisa.plotkin.10@ucl.ac.uk.

By Kevin Guyan

In the first of two blog posts exploring Student Engagers’ experiences of using images when sharing research in museums, Kevin Guyan discusses the enthusiasm he has experienced and the two-way conversations created from photographs of homes in the 1940s and 1950s.

I was conscious of the importance of visual material in the sharing of my research since commencing the PhD process, with photographs possessing the power to transform dense moments of a presentation into something more accessible and engaging. However, a recent change in direction in my approach to engaging across UCL Museums has illustrated the power of the image even more than I had first imagined.

I am a PhD student in History and my research explores the ideas of experts planning the design of social housing in London in the decades following the Second World War.  I specifically question how planners understood men’s actions and behaviours within the home and attempted to reconfigure these performances through design and planning.  To summarise these ideas in a visual form I brought with me to the museum eight photographs: architects, planners and Royal attendees at the 1943 County of London Plan exhibit (below); images from the Live Architecture exhibition at the 1951 Festival of Britain; designs from the 1940s for how living spaces should be arranged and photographs of ‘model homes’ from the 1950s.

King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and an assortment of postwar planners at the 1943 County of London Plan exhibit. University of Liverpool archive [D113/3/3/40].

Upon display of the images, the heightened level of response from museum visitors surprised me.  Without the need for me to even look particularly inviting – visitors assembled at my table and questioned, ‘Well, what do we have here?’  This expression of interest enabled me to explain the Researchers in Museums project, give a brief outline of my research and explain why I am based in the museum for the afternoon.

The images offered a starting-point for conversation, with several of the visitors quick to draw links between the photographs and experiences from their own lives.  One visitor asked questions on racial differences in postwar domestic practices, citing a BBC documentary on the historical significance of the Front Room for black families in the latter half of the 20^th century.  Another visitor examined the current arrangement of their own home – questioning where Dad relaxes after a day at work, in which room children do their homework and the location of where meals are eaten.  Memories of previous homes also featured in our conversations, with one visitor proudly sharing the forward-looking mindset of her Father who would always assist with the household chores or assist the children with their homework in the living room.  People were thinking about their own homes, both past and present, in a new way, while also educating me on their experiences and opinions towards my research.

This deeper engagement is exactly what I was hoping to achieve with my afternoon and made clear the value of public engagement when it operates as a two-way discussion, in which both the museum visitor and myself left feeling better informed about the subject.  This approach to museum engaging also enabled me to avoid disturbing visitors keen to explore the collections on their own, with no wish to engage in conversation.  This approach therefore circumnavigated this problem, with my assortment of images acting as a magnet for those in the museum that wish to engage in a personal conversation and learn more from their visit.

The use of images has made me think further about how those working in museums could expand upon this approach.  How can researchers discuss their work in ways that go beyond talking?  I am aware of other Student Engagers that have used sounds to spark conversations – I feel encouraged to explore ways to bring the smells of early 20^th century housing into the museums, or evoke conversation through the tasting of certain foods and drinks.  History is a sensory journey into the past and there is a need for myself and others sharing their research with the public to look across the senses to make their research as accessible and engaging as possible.

By Kevin Guyan and Ruth Blackburn

On the evening of Friday 23 May we presented ‘Blockages in the system: health research in postwar Britain’  to an audience of around 30 people in UCL’s Bloomsbury Studio. Positioned between two presentation screens, showing in bright Technicolor a journey through the streets of London in the 1950s, the audience sat in two long rows as if they were journeying on a classic Routemaster bus.

Photograph by Christie Lau

Our presentation explored links between good physical health and exercise, discussing the bus men study conducted by Jerry Morris (1910-2009), Emeritus Professor of Public Health at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and commonly referred to as the father of exercise epidemiology.  Morris was the first to establish proof that the frequency and severity of heart disease was reduced among workers who did more active jobs, having reached this conclusion in the late 1940s by conducting an innovative and efficient ‘experiment’ that studied the behaviour and indicators of physical health in several thousand London Transport employees; particularly focusing on health differences between bus drivers and conductors.  Our study of Morris also sought to position his work within the wider context of postwar London, showing that his research on the health of London transport workers was a product of its time and is an interesting example of broader changes in how ‘experts’ were understanding and explaining human action and behaviour.

In this blog post we will discuss the process of developing our presentation for Movement, focusing particularly on our experiences of working with a PhD researcher from another discipline.  Ruth Blackburn is based in the Department of Primary Care and Population Health and her research explores the prevention of heart disease and stroke in people with serious mental illness.  Kevin Guyan is based in the Department of History and is currently exploring the role of ‘expert knowledge’ in how ideas of gender and domestic space were understood in London during the 1940s and 1950s.

It is hoped that by looking back on the process of developing our presentation, we will be able to share the benefits of this approach with other researchers who are also considering developing a project that crosses different backgrounds and knowledge-sets.  However, we will also identify difficulties encountered in our project and limitations that we feel can hamper this inter-disciplinary style of event development.

Developing the Idea

‘Blockages in the system’ grew organically from discussions over possible links in our PhD research.  The paradigm with which each of us viewed Jerry Morris and his work was very much a product of our training and academic disciplines.  Numerous pages of ideas were exchanged in an attempt to fathom cross-over points between Jerry Morris’s epidemiological study of London Transport Workers and notions of expert knowledge in postwar London.  Throughout this process, we both had a sense that similarities were present, yet also did not wish to elevate themes that were overly tenuous. A series of meetings with staff working across the university were instrumental in helping us to streamline our ideas and bring in more material from UCL Collections.  Each of these meetings highlighted both the expertise and enthusiasm of the Museums and Collections staff and the epic proportions of UCL Collections.  Our first meeting was with Krisztina Lackoi, Research Co-ordinator for Museums and Collections, who introduced us to a breadth of ideas, people, objects and spaces that we would otherwise not have considered – we left feeling enthused by the project but overwhelmed by the wealth of material available. Ruth’s notes record an eclectic list: circuit boards, walking sticks, space science laboratories, model boats, nuns, bicycles and ice skates; each representing a few tentative steps down a primrose path.

After some deliberation we decided to add a ‘Lost Property’ strand to our presentation, and felt that RJ Berry’s mice (Grant Museum) and the Counting Gloves of Francis Galton (Galton Collection) were fitting objects to focus on. At present, Berry’s mice are not on public display so Mark Carnall, Curator at the Grant Museum, kindly arranged for Ruth to visit the Grant Museum’s storage facilities and explain what is known about the specimens.  Ruth was struck by the incredible number of specimens (around 8000) collected by Berry and the difficulties in storing, researching and using this kind of collection: another possible avenue for exploration emerged, but as yet remain untapped.  Our final meeting with Subhadra Das, Curator UCL Teaching and Research Collections, confirmed that Galton’s Counting Gloves were also well suited to our event and was able to provide additional information on their use and history.  She also volunteered to accompany the Gloves to Movement so that our audience were able to see them first hand (no pun intended).

Challenges

Bringing our viewpoints and expertise together was an enriching and enjoyable experience, although the struggle to find mutually acceptable terms did often prove challenging!  It became clear, in the process of drafting our script, of the need to simplify our respective terminologies when sharing work with people beyond your own field.  An early draft from Ruth was peppered with references to ‘epidemiology’; after his first reading Kevin explained that it should not be assumed that this term (common to those working in Ruth’s field) would be understood by the audience.  This resulted in the addition of a brief ‘introduction to epidemiology’ that ensured everyone was fully aware of the terms being discussed in the talk.  Similarly, an attempt by Kevin to frame Jerry Morris as an example of a postwar expert increasingly interested in the actions and behaviours of the individual perhaps failed to accurately reflect his life’s work, as he was, above all, a scientist rather than a political thinker.  With a limited knowledge of Morris’s work and even less knowledge of the development of epidemiology in Britain in the 20^th century, Kevin’s judgement of Morris was refined by the presence of a second pair of eyes that were better educated in the history of science, and thus this description of Morris was suitably diluted.

Working as a Postgraduate Student Engager routinely involves identifying across three distinct interstices: firstly, confidence in your own research and an awareness of its wider links to other fields; secondly, identifying links between your own research and the work of other engagers; thirdly, finding connections between these shared research interests and material from UCL Collections.

It is admittedly a challenge to satisfy all three components and you do often question why you are making life more difficult for yourself, surely it would be simpler to speak about your own research in isolation. However, this is not the nature of the Postgraduate Student Engagement Project and having this push factor, forcing you to question the wider relations of your work, is undoubtedly beneficial.  As with a previous Postgraduate Student Engagement event, Landscape, one approach followed is to identify a broad arc under which the public can enjoy samples from across the engagers’ disciplines.

Looking Beyond this Project

The process and merits of developing an interdisciplinary event are broadly analogous to those arising from public engagement.  At the most basic level, both serve as a delivery tool for feeding back research ideas and results to stakeholders including the public.  But the benefits reach further than dissemination alone; they allow researchers to identify new and unexpected connections by entering into a dialogue with people with different experience and perspectives.  Furthermore, this process of sharing ideas with people who are unfamiliar with our own field (and the associated “assumed knowledge” and terminology) forces us to change the way that we present information, which ultimately results in a deeper understanding for both parties.

Looking beyond ‘Blockages in the system’, what will we take from this experience and apply to how we develop projects, both within and beyond our respective disciplines, in the future?  As PhD researchers, it is common to find ourselves only presenting our work to those working in the same field.  However, with the impact demands of the Research Excellence Framework the ability to share what we do with those not academically involved in the field is a key requirement of future researchers.  An interdisciplinary approach is certainly not the path to follow by those looking for quick and easy results.  However, with the right type of support and the provision of ample time (planning projects always take longer than expected) exciting research projects can undoubtedly be developed.

Photograph by Christie Lau

by Stacy Hackner

“Sharks have eyes and mouths, and we hear all about their ability to smell blood. How do they hear?” Once again, a visitor had me stumped. Despite their having only tiny holes for external ears, sharks actually have very acute hearing, I later learned. Like in humans and other mammals, the shark’s inner ear has tiny hairs called stereocilia that vibrate, which is interpreted by the brain as sound. The stereocilia are arranged in three fluid-filled tubes, allowing the shark to hear in multiple directions. (These tubes are also responsible for the shark’s sense of balance.)

Sharks can hear low frequencies much better than humans, ranging from 10-800 Hertz (for reference, humans can hear between 25-16,000 Hertz), and can hear prey up to 800 feet away. In combination with their formidable sense of smell and speed, this makes them fearsome predators. (The big ones, at least.)

The angel shark, with ears visible just behind the eyes.
Courtesy Grant Museum.

Sources:

Shark Trust

Sharks Interactive 

By Felicity Winkley

UC6636: Limestone relief
from Lahun with a god holding
an ankh (12th dynasty)

Two American tourists who visited the Petrie last week spotted a pattern amongst the architectural sculpture and stelae gallery – a recurrence of a cross shaped symbol with a looped top, popping up in rows of hieroglyphs or in the hands of a god or pharaoh. They asked what it was, and what it meant? The first question is easy to answer, the second far less so.

The symbol is known as an ankh, and can be used as a stand-alone symbol or as a hieroglyphic character for the same syllable, for example in the name Tut-ankh-amun. It is widely thought to symbolise life. Therefore, in the case of Tutankhamun, the name can be translated as the Living Image of Amun, and when written you see the ankh symbol towards the end of the name, as follows:

Tutankhamun Hekaiunushema. Living Image of Amun,
ruler of Upper Heliopolis

The Ankh appears on the Rosetta Stone, the hieroglyphic content of which was translated in 1822 by a French scholar called Jean-François Champollion. In reference to Ptolemy V, it is shown in a group of three symbols that recurs frequently in or after the names of pharaohs or their households – ankh, wedjeh, seneb  – meaning life, prosperity, health.

But why was this the symbol chosen to represent life?  When Thomas Inman published Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism in 1869, he interpreted the loop of the handle as female, and the three prongs of the cross as male – together forming a union that suggested fertility and the origins of life. Since then, many scholars have relinquished the female element from the sign altogether, and solely linked it with the male sexual organ and therefore the source of life. These interpretations are strengthened by links between the ankh and similarly penis sheaths, although there are arguments about which came first, and whether indeed the effect was deliberate or just coincidental! Even Petrie himself, however, noted similarities between the ankh and a fisherman’s girdle! [1]

For Gordon and Schwabe, writing in 2004, the ankh, djed, and was symbols are derived from the importance of cattle in ancient Egyptian society, and are taken as representations of this. Accordingly, the shape of the ankh is interpreted as the cross-section of the thoracic vertebra of a bull [2]. But can this really be the case? What do you think? Why not look out for the ankh on your next visit to the Petrie Museum.

UC055: Column fragment from Amarna, showing ankh and wedjeh,
life and prosperity (18th dynasty)

[1] Petrie, William Flinders (1892) Medum

[2] Gordon, Andrew Hunt and Schwabe, Calvin W (2004). The Quick and the Dead: Biomedical Theory in Ancient Egypt 

By Stacy Hackner

This is actually a more complicated question than one would think, especially considering the recent controversies regarding “pink is for girls, blue is for boys” toys, the Independent’s refusal to review children’s books aimed at a particular gender, and Waterstones‘ refusal to sell such books. It’s also an interesting question to ask as most of us would consider museums fairly gender-neutral spaces. According to research, museum visitors are more likely to be female, educated, older, and white — but that’s a fairly narrow demographic. Clearly there are many visitors who are male or other genders, not in (or after) higher education, young, and of varying ethnicities. There are also two competing (but false) ideologies: that girls would prefer museums because they like quiet learning and being indoors, and that boys will prefer museums because they can interact with objects and tend to like “the gross stuff”. Studies from the 1990s showed that while boys and girls both visited all exhibits at a science museum, they interacted with the exhibits in different ways and for different amounts of time – i.e. boys preferred the water jets and girls preferred face paint. (What these activities have to do with science is unclear.) The researchers showed that children display “typical gender roles” when playing and advise museums to design displays accordingly. Another article encourages girls to visit science museums because they’re an informal and thus less intimidating environment than the classroom. However, it’s important to consider these articles in the context of the views of gender held at the time – I’d hope we’re less stereotypical these days.

In my experience in the Petrie and the Grant, I’ve found both of these stereotypes completely untrue. All kids who come to the Grant like “the gross stuff”, or as they’re properly termed, the wet specimens. I’ve had both boys and girls come up to ask me questions about dinosaurs and bones and worms and mummies and jewelry and the jar of moles. Both boys and girls want to dress up in the Petrie’s reproduction Egyptian clothing, especially the loincloth. Teenage boys, including a Scouts troop I engaged with, are particularly fascinated by the baculum — but then, so were a duo of thirty-year-old women. Above all, kids of all genders are natural scientists: curious, inquisitive, and unafraid to ask crazy questions. Children who visit museums are happier and, in a country where most museums are free, it’s always worthwhile for them to come and explore.

Sources

Falk, JH. 2009. Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

Kremer, KB and GW Mullins. 1992. Children’s Gender Behavior at Science Museum Exhibits. Curator: The Museum Journal Volume 35, Issue 1, pages 39–48.

Ramey-Gassert, L, HJ Walberg III, and HJ Walberg. 1994. Reexamining connections: Museums as science learning environments. Science Education, Volume 78, Issue 4, pages 345–363.

by Stacy Hackner

This question was thrown at me at the end of a conversation about juvenile bone growth, and I was completely blindsided. I know my cat definitely has a bump in the place his navel should be, and I assumed all placental mammals have them.

Further research shows that indeed, all placental mammals start with a belly button (or navel, or umbilicus if you’re scientific). The navel is the remnant of the umbilical cord, which attaches a fetus to the mother’s placenta to deliver nutrients in utero. Thus animals that hatch from eggs don’t have them – this includes marsupials like kangaroos and wombats, which have not evolved a placental structure and instead incubate their young in a pouch. However, in most other mammals (and certain humans) they’re obscured by fur, and in some species they are a thin scar rather than a small bump, and fade over the course of the animal’s lifetime.

Umbilicus evident on a Grant Museum specimen of a fetal beluga whale.

By Ruth Blackburn

The aptly named brain coral is a dome-shaped member of the family Faviidae which has distinct sinuous valleys (that’s the wibbly ridgey bits that look like the surface of a brain).

So why the dome shape?  This is largely driven by the position of the coral within the reef: brain coral is found in shallow parts of reef at a depth of about 1-15 metres. At this depth there is substantial wave action, which corals with a compact spheroid shape are much more resilient to than those with thin antler-like projections.

Brain coral from the
Grant Museum collection.

The sinuous valleys on the surface of the brain coral can also be explained.  These mark the areas in which polyps – soft bodied marine creatures – are most densely found.  Polyps are able to secrete calcium carbonate (just like the scale that builds up in your kettle) to form a hard and protective exoskeleton that it can live in: this exoskeleton is what you actually see when you visit the Grant Museum.

By Felicity Winkley

I have been engaging with visitors to the Grant Museum of Zoology for almost two years and thought I had heard most of the unanswerable questions I was likely to be posed on a shift there by now. However, I must confess to being totally stumped when a visitor a few weeks ago approached me towards the end of the day and asked “Why is a sponge an animal?” and, after a pause…“What is an animal?”

Surrounded by skeletons, stuffed and wet specimens representing almost every family within the animal kingdom, unfortunately what the actual definition might be had never crossed my mind before! Deciding it would be best not to try and come up with my own version, I consulted Dean, the museum’s Learning and Access Officer who kindly rescued me. His response was that, in short, the criterion for defining an animal as far as a sponge is concerned is that sponges (unlike plants) are unable to make their own food, or as the Oxford Dictionary puts it: ‘synthesize organic molecules from inorganic ones’.

The full definition adds some further factors, suggesting that an animal is ‘a living organism which feeds on organic matter, typically having specialized sense organs and nervous system and able to respond rapidly to stimuli’. Sponges, however, whilst they do qualify as animals, fall short of this definition as they lack true organs. Instead they filter water through a central cavity in order to remove bacteria and other food particles to feed upon. Whilst not capable of photosynthesis themselves, some sponge species nevertheless can play host to photosynthesising microorganisms to produce food instead.

It was Grant whose work finally established that sponges were indeed animals, and he who named the phylum Porifera, from the Latin porifer meaning bearing pores. There are approximately 5 – 10,000 known species of sponge, including the species named in tribute of Grant by his contemporary John Fleming in 1828, the Grantia.

To find out more, see: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/zoology/about/history