WEBVTT - Secrets of the Museum 0:00:07.080 --> 0:00:10.920 Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host 0:00:10.960 --> 0:00:15.680 of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:19.280 and today on the show, we are talking about the weirdest, 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:24.759 most interesting stories that happen behind the scenes at museums. 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:28.760 Natural history museums are an incredible resource to be able 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:32.199 to go and visit and see some of the most 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:37.440 amazing aspects of evolutionary biology, often brought right to your city. 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:40.839 But there's so much that goes on that you may 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:43.800 not even know about. So today I am being joined 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:47.000 by the assistant director of the Museum of Zoology at 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:50.559 Cambridge University and the author of the new book Nature's Memory, 0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:55.080 Behind the Scenes of the world's natural history Museum, Jack Ashby. 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:57.400 Welcome, Hi, Kenchin, Thanks for having me. 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:01.720 I'm so excited because I remember when I was a student, 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:05.560 I had an opportunity to visit There's the Harvard Museum 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:09.240 of Natural History, and it was really an amazing museum 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:13.000 to go to, Like you could go see there's this seal, 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:15.880 a camp that was suspended in this murky fluid. It 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:18.640 was it was all very old and kind of creepy, 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:22.280 but really cool. And then I had the opportunity to 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:25.560 actually see in the archives, so stuff that was not 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:28.960 available to the public, and there was so much more stuff. 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:32.080 I had no idea that the museum was not just 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:36.080 this kind of front facing thing for visitors to see 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:40.400 and look at the interesting taxidermy and bones and specimens, 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:43.680 but that there's like an incredible collection. Usually that the 0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:47.880 museum is has behind the scenes that they can't display everything, 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:52.680 but they have so many weird, weird things exactly. 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:55.600 I've be in that museum in Harvard is amazing. Ar 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:57.440 could be the best plant display in the world. 0:01:57.640 --> 0:02:00.720 Yeah, yeah, the glass wow, is amazing. 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:03.760 It is amazing. But yeah, like behind the behind the 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:06.440 scenes that natiste. But honestly, I don't think there are 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:10.040 more interesting places than whether you're in a room with 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:12.440 literally millions of incredible. 0:02:12.120 --> 0:02:15.120 Yeah, the weirdest collection of parts of animals, Like I 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:19.720 remember there was a an entire collection of I believe 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:23.880 it was moth and butterfly Genitalia, which was started by 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:26.959 Nabokov because you know, he was a weird guy. He 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.800 was also a lepidopterist and the author of Flowlitas, so 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:34.200 interesting man. But like, yeah, just there they would have 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:37.000 all these things that they couldn't display all of them, 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:39.400 and then also it was a collection that would be 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:43.160 uh was continuing. I remember seeing someone who was in 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:47.200 the process of stuffing this little bird, so a collected 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:50.080 specimen of this type of bird, and it's like, oh, 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:52.080 here they are, you know, just stuff in the bird 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:55.080 full of sawdust. Like it was kind of to see 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:57.320 that this museum it's not just sort of a dusty 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:01.480 old building full of stuff that just sits there and 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:05.480 nothing happens, like there's so much activity. So can you 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:09.480 tell everyone kind of about your role at the museum 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:13.359 of the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge. 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:19.080 Sure, So I'm really lucky. My job is essentially working 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:22.120 with the people who look after two million in speciments 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:25.600 here and also the people look after what about visitors, 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:30.079 So I've got a really diverse role across our museum. 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.680 It's incredible. We have to say about two million specimens here, 0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:36.520 so they cover the whole of the animal kingdom, all 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:39.480 of biological time over the last half a billion years 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:42.960 or so, from all across the world. So it's yeah, 0:03:42.960 --> 0:03:44.839 it's pretty exciting place to be. And also as part 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:48.200 of the University of Cambridge. There's really interesting research going 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.120 on behind the scenes in the museum, and like you say, 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:57.040 it's really important that the museums tell the story then 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:01.120 that it's not just the galleries, it's also research communities, 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:04.880 but also genuinely enormous store rooms of just loads of 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:08.280 stuff that has changed the world and how we understand it, 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:11.880 and it's used every day in groundbreaking research. 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:15.240 I remember when I went to the back rooms of 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.359 the Harvard Natural History Museum, there would be like a 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:22.080 room that looked sort of maybe like a normal archive, 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:24.320 just a bunch of drawers, a bunch of cabinets, and 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.040 then open a drawer and then there'd just be a 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:32.800 bunch of sort of either stuffed birds or taxi dermaine 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:35.440 animal samples, or even just parts of an animal, like 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:39.280 maybe maybe a pelt, like a bunch. They might open 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:41.520 a drawer and just you see a bunch of little 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:45.279 mice pelts, as if it's like for these are the 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:48.120 rugs for some kind of like leprechaun or something. Just 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:50.520 this the but it was for, you know, and then 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:52.839 they would explain that it'd be for some research on 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:56.320 the change and color of these these mouse pelts. Over 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:00.320 seasonal changes for these field mice or something. There'd be 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:04.719 all this amazing research. So take us sort of behind 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:09.080 the scenes at the Museum of Zoology at Cambridge University. 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.760 What does it look like in what is what is 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:14.200 kind of happening there a lot? 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:18.120 It's like the first thing to say is and it's 0:05:18.120 --> 0:05:20.040 probably obvious as soon as we start thinking about it, 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:22.359 but it doesn't seem to surprise people. Is that, you know, 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:24.560 a tiny, tiny fraction of what we have in our 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:27.400 collections is on display. So we have too many in 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:29.720 speciments here in Cambridge. You wouldn't want to see too 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:31.960 many specimens at once, so there's only a few thousand 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:34.680 specimens in our gallery. So I think it's it's about 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:37.080 a quarter of a percent of how collections are on display. 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:40.359 You know, go to the Natural History Museum and in 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.680 London they have eighty million specimens, so I think it's 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:46.520 about three one thousands of a percent of their collection 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:50.520 is on display. Wow, statistically almost nothing. You know. Smithsonian 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.839 Museum in the US is the biggest museum in the 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:56.640 world in the natural history collections, one hundred and forty 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:59.960 eight million specimens. So just being here about the scale 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:04.520 of what we hold like globally the distributed collections over 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:07.600 a billion specimen. It is, you know, it's extraordinary to 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:09.719 think of that, and so basically quite a lot of 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:13.159 what goes into looking after those specimens. Think about natural 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:18.560 history collections, particularly zoology and plants, is that they're all organic, 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:21.960 so we have to stop them from rotting, stop them 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:24.960 from being eaten by paths or being damaged by a mold, 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:29.000 and so that's a pretty active role. But most people 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:32.600 in the museums are here to share them like they 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:35.760 are public spaces, both behind the scenes and kind of 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:39.359 the public galleries public galleries where most people visit. But 0:06:39.400 --> 0:06:42.839 we have a really active set of things going on 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:45.919 behind the scenes where either people are working to create program, 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:50.320 exhibitions or events to share the collections, but also just 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:53.440 to welcome researchers visiting from all over the world or 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:56.479 having you know, we have about twenty five PhD students 0:06:56.520 --> 0:06:59.160 here in the museum's order in Cambridgry of six curators 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:03.400 who are researching the collection, so we're doing research both 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:08.120 in house. Also hundreds of thiss come to use the 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:09.239 collections in their research. 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:11.600 Yeah, and so like, what's an example of how a 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:16.720 researcher might use something a collection from a museum because 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:20.720 I think you know, often when you think of say biology, 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:23.000 research is something like maybe you go out and do 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:25.520 an observational study in the wild and you watch an 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:29.640 animal's behavior, or maybe you do some kind of research 0:07:29.760 --> 0:07:32.320 on a live animal, Like you you do some sort 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:34.960 of mouse study, right like in medicine, where you have 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:37.880 you have mice in a lab. So I think often 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:40.400 the idea of research is like you either do something 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:43.160 in a lab with sort of like live things that 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:46.280 you've cut, or you go out into the wild and 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:48.400 you sit for a really long time and hope you 0:07:48.440 --> 0:07:53.120 see something. But what in what way does museums can 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:57.160 museum specimens be used in research? 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:00.680 It's a lot of ways, you know, and their use 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:02.840 has only ever grown over time. So since the very 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:05.560 earliest days of that for history museums, the main kind 0:08:05.560 --> 0:08:08.560 of science that was done in them is still done 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:11.080 in them is taxonomy, so describing the diversity of life 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:13.880 on Earth. If you describe a new species, you have 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:17.320 to base it on a single specimen or small set 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:21.800 of specimens called type specimens, and those type specimens have 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:24.600 to be deposited in the public Museum, so that forever, 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:27.600 you know, hundreds of years in the future and hundreds 0:08:27.600 --> 0:08:30.760 of years in the past. People are saying, okay, if 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:32.720 you're describing a new species, you have to compare it 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:34.719 to all of the other known species. To say why 0:08:34.760 --> 0:08:37.120 your new one is different, you have to compared to 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:41.160 the type specimens, and so without you know, without knowing 0:08:41.400 --> 0:08:46.080 what species exist, not much of biology makes sense as 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:48.439 well as all as your bosom. It makes sense even 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:51.920 today thinking conservation biology. We can't conserve what we don't 0:08:51.960 --> 0:08:57.600 know exist. So just describing diversity is fundamental to music inqulotions. 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:02.120 But since that so much more is happening here in Cambridge. 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:06.000 Our insect Ecology group are taking the data off of 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:09.840 insect specimens that are collected in the eighteen twenties around 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:14.559 Cambridge in the East of England and working with the 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:19.000 local wildlife trusts for the local conservation bodies to share 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:21.360 with them what was here two hundred years ago before 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:25.959 our part of the country was drained. So Cambridgeshire is 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:30.440 massive wetland. Naturally, the fens in the East of England 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:35.240 is this big flat wetland and habitat which was drained 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:37.679 during the industrial revolution. So the Wildlife Trust are now 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:40.719 working to restore and those habitats, but they need to 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:42.959 know what was there two hundred years ago. So the 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:46.880 data and our specimens are absolutely valuable for that. So 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:49.760 the kind of the very fundamentally, what have we got? 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:51.880 What is the diversity of life? And then each of 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:55.040 those data points, each of those specimens tell us where 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:57.960 something lived when it was collected. So it's evidence for 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:03.760 how biodiversity has changed over time, so particularly through human interactions, 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:07.360 but also through climate change. So our collections in museums 0:10:07.400 --> 0:10:11.360 are the world's best data set for how the world 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:13.760 has changed over the last two hundred years, particularly on 0:10:14.200 --> 0:10:17.000 those two issues that affect literally everyone on the planet, 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:20.560 where biodiversity loss and time changed. We could we could 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:24.160 not understand this that museum collections. But pretty much every 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:26.520 week someone is coming up with a new way of 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:29.160 using a collection in a way that the people that 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:32.600 collected the specimens would have absolutely no idea what they 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:40.480 were doing. Specimens collected in eighteen hundreds. People who work 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:43.760 on genetics now are using those collections in ways that 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:46.080 can't be imagined. But there's so many more kind of 0:10:46.200 --> 0:10:50.120 imaginative ways of using it. There's this really famous study 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:54.680 where it turned out that the soot the pollution on 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:58.400 the feathers of birds in museum collections ended up being 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.679 the best evidence for the use of black coal in 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:04.280 the US over the last one hundred plus years. So 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:08.200 people can track and say, okay, look at the dirt 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:11.040 on a bird feather and work out how much pollution 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:13.680 was in the atmosphere, and then match that to the 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:17.000 climate data from the date that the bird was collected, 0:11:17.840 --> 0:11:21.480 and track that over thousands of specimens over one hundred years, 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.240 and you've got the best environmental record for air pollution 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:26.679 in the US. And obviously I didn't even match that 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:28.400 the specimen was a bird for that it was they 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:30.679 weren't looking at the birdyliness of the specimen, they were 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:33.240 just looking at the dirt on the bed. And there 0:11:33.280 --> 0:11:36.720 are loads of examples like that, or you know, there's 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.040 there's a great one the Naturalist Museum did in London 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:42.880 and a few years ago where the first thing you 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:45.240 see when you walk into the museum is this blue 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:48.320 whale that died in the eighteen nineties off the west 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:52.800 coast of Ireland, and they took one of the sheets 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:55.640 of Baileen from the whales mats, So this is you know, 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:58.559 it's the big filter like civil like. 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:01.320 Structure, the push room that they have in their mouths 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:03.880 that they used to filter out krill exactly. 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:07.439 So they'll take this massive gulp of water around krill 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:10.040 or squirered of fish and then push that water back 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:13.600 through these these brushes and hang out of their guns 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:15.920 and the same and them they just live around the 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:18.520 inside and how the biggest animals in the world eats 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:20.679 and the smalllest animals in the world. But what they 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:24.280 did was because by lean grows constantly throughout the animal's 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:29.680 life like you know, fingernails or head does, it provides 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:31.960 a record for the last they think six or seven 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:35.720 years of that animal because it was growing incrementally. So 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:38.960 they took a sample like let's say, every centimeter down 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:42.800 the bailey and that proved that provided evidence for where 0:12:42.840 --> 0:12:46.559 exactly the whale was and the bailing group, because of 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:50.240 course we are what we eat. Yes, the chemistry of 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:53.040 the sea changes depending where on Earth it was, and 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:55.160 whales are really hard to study despite the fact that 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:58.880 they're massive, like they're super rare live underwater. 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:02.000 We just cat we can't be like you know, when 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:05.000 we think about studies and you're sitting there trying to 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:07.160 observe what the animals are doing. We can't do that 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:09.520 with whales, despite how big they are. It seems like 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:13.000 they'd be very obvious to study. But we can't live, 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:15.680 at least not yet, like in a bubble lab in 0:13:15.720 --> 0:13:19.560 the middle of the ocean, waiting around for a blue 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:21.520 whale to do something interesting. 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.240 Exactly exactly so they could show. In the last six 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:26.400 or seven years of her life she kind of the 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:30.160 chemistry of her baileying, so the chemical isotopes of her 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:34.240 bailey matched that for about a year she was around 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:38.480 the subtropics or maybe around Cape Third in the Atlantic, 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:42.240 and then she spent each year migrating back and forwards 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:47.280 to the North Atlantic and the subtropics every year, and 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:49.440 then they could find the hormones in her bailiing to 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:52.240 so that she became pregnant and gave birth again in 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:56.760 the in the subtropics before migrating north again and eventually 0:13:57.480 --> 0:13:59.240 dying and washing up on the on the west coast 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:01.560 of the Island're thinking eighteen ninety one and not studying 0:14:01.559 --> 0:14:07.120 This wouldn't be possible without without takings from the Museum. 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:10.120 That's amazing, I mean, and it ties into so much research, 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:14.000 Like there's more modern research now on how whale urine 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:17.800 is like one of the biggest contributors to nitrogen in 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:20.640 the in more tropical waters, right. And then there's this 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:24.400 sort of funnel, this like p funnel from the from 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:27.760 the Arctic colder waters that actually have a lot more 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:31.680 nutritional density in them, and then they take the whales 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:35.480 feed there, then they migrate to these more tropical, warmer 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:39.560 waters and then they'll they'll mate, they'll give birth, and 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:43.680 so all the the leavings from them being there, like urine, 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:47.400 even the placenta contributes to this nitrogen in these area. 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:50.240 And then having this history of like, well we know 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:54.040 that whales we're doing these migratory paths for a long time. 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:57.200 It really contributes to our understanding of how they have 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:02.120 historically been behaving and how how you know, before kind 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:04.960 of humans started to do a bunch of whaling, how 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:09.680 much more of this whale fertilizer essentially must have been 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:11.320 in the ocean. So it gives us like a better 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:14.040 idea of like how much more nutrient and some of 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:18.480 these tropical regions probably were before we started our massive 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:23.120 whaling campaign in the in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds. 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:27.120 Yeah, it's such such a cool story that, Yes, Joe 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:29.120 Roman has just written this book. I just read an 0:15:29.440 --> 0:15:32.800 Eat Poop Guy exactly about what you're talking about about 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:36.480 this kind of contributions that different animals make. Particularly is 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:38.320 a big section on whales to the kind of the 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:43.240 chemistry of their environment and the nutrition of their environments. Yeah, 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:44.920 really really interesting stuff. 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:49.240 There's an interesting also when you were mentioning the whale bailing. 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:52.720 I remember reading about how there were various museums who 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:57.480 would hold on to whale ear plugs. So like ear wax, 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:00.680 which in whales isn't softer flake how it can be 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:04.320 in humans, but it actually forms these really hard, almost 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:10.200 like rock like chunks, and through its lifetime it forms 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:13.560 these bands like kind of like tree rings, but this 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:18.960 these sort of more horizontal bands as it is changing 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:21.760 its seasonal nutrition and it builds up over a lifetime, 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:27.360 and museums would get these from dead whales and they 0:16:27.440 --> 0:16:30.280 didn't know what to do with them. They didn't certainly 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:32.360 like maybe they would put one or two on display, 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.200 but they had so many of them, but they held 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:37.280 onto it right, Like, this is one thing I love 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:40.080 about what museums do is they'll just hold on to 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:44.360 stuff and you know, without any guarantee that this is 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:47.520 going to be really important. But it's like, hey, this 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.640 is this seems very cool, very interesting, we don't know 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:52.480 what to do with it. And then in you know, 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:57.280 more recently, researchers are like, hey, actually we now know 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:01.960 how to study the chemical composition of the earwax, and 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:04.719 so we can track because like with the different bands 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:07.760 of earwax, we know that this whale is this many 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:11.000 years old, We know that it changes colors with the season, 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:14.320 with the nutritional cycle, and now we can actually, like 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:17.600 with the bay leen, we can look at hormone levels. 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.159 We can know if this whale was like stressed in 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:24.439 this certain season. And so all of this information like 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:29.159 basically the whale's life story stored in its giant chunk 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:33.439 of earwax that museums have been carefully taking care of 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:37.280 tending to with no you know, like with no glory, right, 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:39.879 Like it's not like you get an award for hanging 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:43.640 on to old whale earwax. But then finally it becomes 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:47.399 really important for research, Like are they do you have 0:17:47.440 --> 0:17:52.240 any other examples of like very like seemingly either unimportant 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:57.719 or really strange or gross museum holdings that could actually 0:17:57.800 --> 0:17:59.560 be really interesting for research. 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.560 Something were called the extended specimen concept, which is a 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:08.560 not very inserting way of how exctually get about what 0:18:08.720 --> 0:18:12.240 is on our specimens. So, like I said, fundamentally, it's 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:14.600 what is it, where is it from, and when did 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:17.240 it die? Is that's the basic data of any specimen. 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:20.000 But beyond that, we can you know, we can take 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:22.280 the pollen off of the bee and work out what 0:18:22.320 --> 0:18:25.879 flowers it is visiting. We can take the stomach contents 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:27.679 of any animal worked out what it was eating. We 0:18:27.760 --> 0:18:31.479 can take hormones, as you said, or chemical data and 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:33.720 work out what was it, you know, what what how 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:35.840 is it? How is it experiencing its life, and what 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:38.239 what environments is it exposed to, which can tell us 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:40.959 exactly where it's came from came from by matching the 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:44.879 soil chemistry or water chemistry. And we can take its parasites. 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:47.520 We can take a measure of how symmetrical an animal 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:49.600 it is, which tells us how stress it was one 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:54.040 of the growing They're so just infinite data on any 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:57.920 of these specimens literally infinite data and if you take 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:02.280 that across a billion specimens in the world, Yeah, it 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:06.560 is genuinely endless. There's another story, a bit like the 0:19:06.640 --> 0:19:09.560 weal one, but perhaps less gross, and that's the longest 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:16.880 living animal ever discovered, with a tiny species of Arctic 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:22.320 clam and people realize that by sectioning, they're taking a 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:26.800 slice across this clamshell. It too had growth rings from winter, 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:31.720 summer and change. It's like a like a like a 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:37.000 treatment and you can take the you could analyze the 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:39.840 chemistry of each of those hundreds of bands. This this 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:42.600 clam lift I think five hundred and seventeen years or 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:45.480 something like that, and each of those bands providing an 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:48.520 environmental record for the sea where it lived, so they 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:51.800 can for the last night under years create a climate 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:56.160 record of that of that little patch of sea, which 0:19:56.200 --> 0:19:58.960 is just present from one specimen. And yeah, well bailey 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:01.920 whal ear whap is even cooler and bail because it's 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:05.480 the whole the whole of the animal's like pretty long too. Yeah. 0:20:05.520 --> 0:20:08.679 They don't they don't like lose. That's it's so strange 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:12.080 because they don't like drop. Like as humans, we kind 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.760 of lose our ear wax right, like it naturally sort 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:17.320 of like our the cycle of the ear, like it 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:20.200 gets pushed out with like the skin renewal inside the 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:22.120 ear and then slowly and it comes out. And that's 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:24.760 why you have gross earwax that comes out of your ears. 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:27.399 It's normal and it's healthy. But for whales, it just 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:31.240 sits in there and kind of gets and collects over 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:33.959 time and it forms these hard plugs and they actually 0:20:34.000 --> 0:20:37.800 like use them to enhance their their hearing because like 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:40.520 sound can travel through the ear plug into their skull 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:44.679 and it's it's wild to me. That's something that it's like, uh, 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:47.000 this thing that in human beings were just like, well, 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:48.960 this is a gross waste product, and then it just 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:52.880 becomes this fundamental part of a whale's anatomy throughout its life. 0:20:53.240 --> 0:20:56.520 But that's amazing about the I had no idea that 0:20:56.520 --> 0:21:00.240 there were clams that uh not only would could live 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:02.760 that long, but then by looking at this, like it's 0:21:03.040 --> 0:21:06.240 such a humble little thing, right, like you don't a 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:09.680 clam is something I feel like we barely register when 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:12.679 when we're going along the beach. They're so common we 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:16.479 eat them. But then too, it's like that just this 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:22.639 humble little animal keeping such a detailed record of not 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:25.280 only its life but the environment around it. Like there's 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:29.080 so much understanding how much information is contained in like 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:33.600 one animal, Like there's the genome, right, the DNA, which 0:21:33.640 --> 0:21:38.600 is vast and kind of an insanely insane amount of data, 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:42.280 but then everything else as well, when you're able to 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:46.520 study the chemical composition of say like it's shell or 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:50.080 any anything else that you can preserve, is it is 0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:53.600 kind of mind blowing. Like you think of a library, 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:56.720 right with like billions of books, and then each book 0:21:56.840 --> 0:22:00.600 is like hundreds of thousands of pages or or even 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:03.680 more like when you're thinking about an animal, right, So 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:07.639 it is it is just a bewildering amount of information 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:10.399 that is collected in museums. 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:15.440 Likely connection hey vers is coming along. It's something coming 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:17.600 on with a really specific question, and we're just kind 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:21.440 of waiting here for question, and we we can't anticipate 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:25.400 what's there with asking me about dental calculus. So plaque 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:31.760 on mammal specimen, mambal teeth in a collection like again, 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:34.680 it's the kind of always prot back to your growth. 0:22:34.920 --> 0:22:36.960 Is that going to provide a record of the diet? 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:42.119 Yeah? Also yeah, it's like, hey, you know what, we 0:22:42.200 --> 0:22:44.199 do have a bunch of plaque in our collection that 0:22:44.240 --> 0:22:49.920 you can come look at. Yeah, it's that's incredible. And 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:52.840 only I think a fraction of these stories sort of 0:22:52.880 --> 0:22:56.440