Museums are chock full of animal specimens in exhibits in collections even hanging from the CEILING, but how do they keep these formerly living things from rotting away? Why don’t they decay? I traveled all over the country learning about #taxidermy, #museums, and the difficulties of keeping these collections safe from destruction. This is the first episode in a new segment I’m calling ‘Hello Science!’ — where I actually go outside (😱) and meet scientists, researchers, engineers, technologists, physicists and futurists to learn about the science in their work and daily lives. If you have ideas for who I should talk to send them to me directly here:
There will be more of these #helloscience videos coming, hopefully about once a month, in the meantime you’ll still get the regular #UnoDosofTrace videos too!
Quick note: My goal in every video is to make you *feel* something, *think* something, or *talk to a friend* about what you learned. If any of those apply to you, please consider subscribing to the channel, or sharing the video with your friends on social media! A few seconds of effort on your end really goes a long way, and thanks for even reading this paragraph, it means a lot. 💕
~~~ 🐱 LYNX 🐱 ~~~
Write up by the Audubon Society that explores the feathers of bird specimens to determine air quality over time:
And… here’s a link to the paper itself (SO COOL, and recognized as an especially novel way of using specimens)
— Fascinating bit that I didn’t get to add: birds molt, so the feathers they have when they died aren’t more than a year old. Meaning the air quality was so bad that the birds would turn those dark grey colors in a very short time. How horrifying!
~~~ 👾 SOCIALS 👾 ~~~
Links to the tweet-machine & instagrammy:
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👻:: snapchat/trace501
🎮:: twitch.tv/mrtraced
=== 😘 SPECIAL THANKS 😘 ===
To these amazing nerds for letting me take their time to ask all sorts of questions and video all their toys and specimens.
⭐️ Divya Anantharaman, Taxidermist, Gotham Taxidermy
--- Find her here:
⭐️ Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
---- Allison Shultz, Assistant Curator of Ornithology
---- Kimball Garrett, Ornithology Collections Manager
---- Tim Bovard, In-House Taxidermist
---- Marina Gibbons, Assistant Conservator
⭐️California Academy of Sciences
---- Moe Flannery, Collections Manager for Birds and Mammals
For helping me hide in the shadows to shoot the introduction on the sunniest day we’ve had in a while, thanks to Dave Goldberg, and for early advice on this piece thanks to Emily Graslie o' the Brain Scoop.
… And of course to all the nerdfam patrons who helped make this happen, and *you* for actually watching it!
Hello Science opening music by Twin Musicom
~~~~~ 🐣 EASTER EGGS FOR READERS 🐣 ~~~~~
P.S — Interestingly, museums themselves didn’t really exist in the West (in the way we think of them now) until reletively recent history. For example, there was Renaissance Art featuring wildlife and such, but there weren’t museums people could visit to SEE the wildlife. And some of the Renaissance art featured animals that were fake! LOL.
Love you, #nerdfam! Stay #curious!
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