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Leeches! Leeches!! Leeches!!!
by Sarah Chaney 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...
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Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones … Excavating Memory, Digging up the Past
by Katie Donington Above all, he must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the ‘matter...
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Constantly Changing, Ever Evolving. HIV: Adapting to Change
by Alicia Thornton As someone whose background is in biological sciences, working in the Grant Museum of Zoology feels a little like coming home. Robert Edmond Grant collated the collection...
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From Delphi to the Dodo: Finding Links Between Archaeology and Natural History
by Felicity Winkley Initially, my response to the challenge of finding a link between my research and the zoological specimens in the Grant Museum was one of dread and panic. Such a thing...
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Japanese Performing Monkeys: Apes in Art & Culture
by Suzanne Harvey Apes in Art For anyone interested in images of primates in the visual arts, Solly Zuckerman’s seminal book The Ape in Myth and Art is a must-read. Hidden in the back pages...
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Justice for Magdalens
by Lisa Plotkin Many visitors to the Grant Museum of Zoology reacted very strongly to the recent exhibit Buried on Campus, which ran from April 23rd until July 13th. In fact, almost every...
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How Did Man Lose His Penis Bone?
by Suzanne Harvey The walrus penis bone, also known as an os penis or baculum, is one of the most popular objects at the Grant Museum. The human penis is haemodynamic, meaning an erection is...
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Painted Skins & Butterfly Wings
by Gemma Angel When I first began my doctoral research into tattoo preservation three and a half years ago, I assumed that tattoo collections such as those held by the Science Museum in...
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Viruses of Mice and Men
by Sarah Savage Recently in the Grant Museum, I had the most exciting 35 minute engagement with a mother and son visiting London from Jersey in the Channel Islands. Since her son was very...
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The Alligator: Man-Eater or Misunderstood?
by Sarah Savage While browsing the cases during an afternoon’s engagement session in the Grant Museum, I spotted a very familiar face from my life in New Orleans: the American alligator. As...
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Mythical Hybrids and Fantastic Beasts
by Gemma Angel I’m going to describe a creature, and you have to try and guess what it is, based on the following three clues: 1) it lays eggs; 2) it has venomous claws; and 3) it uses...
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Sexual Conflict in Nature and Museums: Specimen Ratios and Duck Genitalia
by Suzanne Harvey The Duck Penis Controversy of 2013 is well known amongst science bloggers, evolutionary anthropologists and Fox News viewers alike [1]. Now, the time has come for the...
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Call me Jeremy Bentham: “Moby-Dick”, the Pig-Fish, and UCL Museums
By Niall Sreenan “The Whiteness of the Whale”, Benton Spruance, c1967.Image Courtesy of NGA, Washington DC In its oceanic bibliographic depth and its densely allusive prose, Herman...
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Question of the Week: What is an animal?
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...
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Taxonomies of Bones and Pots – The Petrie Pops up at the Grant Museum
TAXONOMIES OF BONES AND POTS: THE PETRIE POPS UP AT THE GRANT MUSEUM On the 13th of February, objects and ideas from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology “popped-up” in the neo-Victorian...
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Question of the week: Do other animals have belly buttons?
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...
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Question of the Week: Do boys and girls enjoy different museum exhibits/items?
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...
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Question of the Week: How do sharks hear?
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...
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Question of the Week: Why is brain coral shaped like a brain?
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)....
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Question of the Week: What is Pelvimetry?
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...
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