This Friday the mystery object is coming to you from Plymouth where I am currently attending the Natural Science Collections Association conference. The natural history gallery here has some great material and I thought it might be nice to have one of the specimens as this week’s object. So do you have any idea what this partially stuffed bird is:
As usual you can put your suggestions in the comments section below – I will endeavour to answer any questions, although I may not have much opportunity whilst the conference is in full flow.
On Friday I gave you this formidable looking object to identify:
Many suggestions related to the saw-like appearance of this object, proposing either a human-made saw or the rostrum (nose) of a saw-fish (which are endangered cartilaginous fish of the genus Pristis). The closest answers all made reference to the articulation at the end of this object, which is the significant clue as to what this object is – the “teeth” are just secondary details.
Jake was the first to come close, followed by Kevin the epic and KateV, who gave a sensible mechanical breakdown of the likely use of this element. I’m not all that surprised to say that this week no-one worked out that the mystery object is a Continue reading →
It’s hard to believe that it’s a year ago today that I started this blog – how time flies! The mystery object didn’t start until four months in and I strongly feel that it provides the backbone of the blog. So here is my forty-first mystery object – I hope you enjoy trying to work out what it is (whatever it might be, it looks pretty vicious):
As usual put your suggestions and questions below and I will do my best to answer (without giving it away). The answer will be posted on Monday.
It looks a bit like a snake, but there are a couple of give-aways that mean it must be something else. First of all, snakes may look like they’re all tail, but actually they have quite short tails in relation to their body length (hint – the tail starts just after the ribs end) and second, a snake’s skull has a very open light structure (as I’ve discussed before). Both of these snaky features can be seen in this image taken by dbking:
Viperid snake skeleton (image by dbking)
So, if it’s not a snake, what is it? There are quite a few animals that have a long slim body with no limbs, from eels to caecilians to a variety of lizards (including, but not restricted to snakes, which are a discrete subgroup within the lizards). However, this is not an eel because their ribs don’t form a cage – they form vertical projections for their muscles to work against, it’s not a caecilian because they have even shorter tails than snakes, which leaves us with the non-snaky legless lizards (as recognised by Gimpy).
Legless lizards crop up in at least three major groups of lizard (not counting snakes) so there is a fair amount of choice out there. The Amphisbaenia are really weird and the mystery object doesn’t have the right skull shape to be one of them. The Pygopodidae are legless members of the same group as the geckos – and the mystery object could probably be one of them, except it’s not. It is in fact a member of the Anguoidea (more particularly the Anguidae) and it was identified correctly by Jim (and seconded by Neil) as being a Continue reading →
Last week’s object was totally unrelated to natural history, but this week I am returning to my area of interest. Any idea what this might be:
(Length across specimen approx 45cm)
It’s a bit of an easy one, but next week I’ll make up for it with something a more difficult.
As usual you can ask questions or make your suggestions in the comments section below – I’ll do my best to answer, but I won’t be in the office for most of the day, so I can’t guarantee a rapid response. Good luck!
Back from Norway after a wonderful holiday (some details may follow), ready to give you a slightly different kind of mystery object: Continue reading →
I identified it as a hedgehog, Erinaceus europaeus Linnaeus, 1758 based on comparison with the skull (particularly the lower jaw) of a specimen that I had as a mystery object last August:
My guess is that the specimen was probably a fairly young adult, since most of the fragmentation of the skull is along suture lines. However, the disarticulation is greater than would be expected simply from a poorly fused specimen, so it looks like damage has also been sustained. Since the delicate nasal turbinates are still intact and in place, I expect the damage probably happened when they were still protected by soft tissue – making me suspect that it happened before the animal was skeletonised. Given the susceptibility of hedgehogs to getting run over, I expect that this individual was killed on the road by a glancing blow to the head that loosened teeth and sutures. I’m pleased to say that Jake agreed with my identification and cause of death for this specimen, so a hearty congratulations to him!
This week I am going to give you a genuine mystery object – something from the collections of the museum that has no identification. I have been dealing with a few of these sorts of things recently whilst organising the osteological (that’s bone) store.
Often specimens have been acquired in a big batch, which invariably means that there will be a box left at the end which contains the jumbled and broken bits and pieces that have lost information or have been separated from the rest of a specimen during the move from their old home, or at sometime in the distant past.
Here’s one such specimen:
(click for larger image)
Do you have any idea what this exploded skull might belong to – and why it might be exploded?
As usual post your suggestions below. I might not be able to answer any questions this week, because I’m off to Norway to visit a good friend I don’t see often enough in Trondheim. Who knows, next week I may have a Norwegian mystery object for you to identify… Good luck!
On Good Friday I provided a series of eggs in a mystery Easter egg hunt. I will list the answers at the end of this post with a reference to the people who made a correct identification, but first I want to discuss the issue of eggs.
I had reservations about putting together last Friday’s post, because eggs are a delicate subject matter – and by that I don’t mean I was concerned about possible damage to the eggs (I’m trained to deal with such things after all), I mean that the issue of eggs is ethically and legally delicate. I checked the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and associated legislation to ensure that both myself and the Museum were on legally firm ground with respect to the eggs and I am now fulfilling the ethical requirement (as I perceive it) by attempting to clarify the position on collecting, keeping and trading bird eggs in England and Wales (slightly different rules apply in Scotland).
It is illegal to possess bird eggs unless you can prove they were obtained legally. This means that you need evidence that the eggs were collected prior to The Protection of Birds Act 1954 – and of course evidence means documentation.
Egg collecting used to be a common hobby, usually associated with young lads. Unfortunately collecting can be quite addictive and when someone of a collecting mindset wants to fill holes in their collection they will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to do it – breaking the Law included. This means that there are still quite a few people out there who collect and deal in eggs – something that has to be taken seriously. It needs to be taken seriously because collectors tend to target those eggs that are rare – precisely the ones that are needed for rare bird populations to survive and recover.
Museums have a bit of a hard time with people offering egg collections. Often when someone passes away their family will find a shoebox of eggs in the loft that was collected when the deceased was a child. Usually, such collections were collected prior to 1954, but they lack any documentation. This means that the family is left holding an illegal egg collection that they are keen to get rid of, but which they don’t want to destroy – so they offer it to museums. Of course, museums are bound by the Law, so they too can be prosecuted for holding egg collections that cannot be proved to pre-date 1954. This means that museums will turn away egg collections that lack proper documentation and associated data – and the best course of action is probably for the families to contact DEFRA for advice (they’re very approachable and they aren’t looking for unwitting innocents to prosecute). The advice I would give is that if the collection has no documentation and associated data (like species names, place collected and all-importantly date of collection) it is probably best to dispose of the eggs. If it does have data and documentation then a museum may be willing to take it as a donation – but bear in mind that most museums are very wary of egg collections and don’t be surprised if they decline your offer.
Since it’s Easter I’ve decided to make the Good Friday mystery object a bit more of an Easter egg hunt, so expect a posts during the day every few hours with new eggs for you to identify. So what about this:
I will try to answer questions requesting clarification about an aspect of the natural history of the animal that produced the various eggs, but I won’t let on if the answers are correct. I hope you enjoy this slight twist on my usual format!
It’s time for the Good Friday mystery object (the Good relating to the name of the Friday, rather than the quality of the object…). Jumping on board the festive bandwagon, here’s an Easter themed object for you to identify:
I know they’re eggs, but can you work out what laid them?
As usual, put your suggestions and questions in the comments section below and I will do my best to answer.
Crumbs – rather inundated with comments about last Friday’s mystery object! Apologies for not answering all of the questions, the sudden leap in comments coincided with a particularly hectic day where I had virtually no computer access. The comments were wide ranging, from cannonballs to turtle eggs, truffles to coprolites (fossil dung), burnt cooking/toys to a bezoar. One of my favourites was the fossilised fist of a wood elf – and I can sort of see the similarity:
However, I am almost sad to say that it is none of the above. There were a few answers that came close, Don C suggested a concretion, Solius suggested mineral crystals, SmallCasserole identified that it was mineralised with a radial pattern, but one person had this hammered – Jeremy was spot on with with an identification of Continue reading →
Spring is in the air and the burgeoning of new life all around us is not restricted to daffodils and baby birds, it also includes some less welcome organisms. Working in a museum means you really need to be aware of pests. A serious infestation can reduce objects to piles of dust in a worryingly short time. Every museum has pests, as does every house – they are impossible to eradicate completely and it’s a waste of time trying since they are mobile and can reappear just a few days (or even hours) after you’ve just finished exterminating their predecessors. Pest populations require constant management rather than blitzkrieg if they are to be kept at levels where they don’t pose a problem. In museums this is called Integrated Pest Management (IPM), at home it’s called housekeeping.
The majority of IPM is making sure that there isn’t enough food lying around to provide pests with the rations they need to explore your museum or home. If the pests can’t find food, they have no reason to hang around. Most of the food that pests find will be in the form of small edible particles (crumbs from your lunch, hair, skin cells, dead flies, pet food, etc.). This means that foodstuffs should be restricted to easily cleaned areas that are separated from areas containing vulnerable objects. Regular cleaning also needs to take place everywhere to remove the accumulation of organic waste that constantly builds up. Sometimes this isn’t easy, especially when buildings have been designed without pest prevention in mind:
Security grill in front of a window, making the sill difficult to clean
Of course, our museums and homes also have a standing supply of food for pests in the form of taxidermy, wool, paper, wood, dried goods, carpets, clothes, etc. This is what we are trying to protect, so we can’t simply remove it all. Instead, we need to keep a lookout for tell-tale signs that pests are busy munching away at these items, so that particular infestations can be dealt with before they spread.
Vigilance is key – everyone working in a museum or living in a house should be aware of what constitutes a pest and they should know where to report any sightings of pests (be it to Collections Management, Facilities Management, Conservation, or mum/dad). Whoever is in charge of dealing with pests should also be making sure that they carry out a bit of extra work, either by using monitoring traps to keep track of pest distributions so hot spots can be detected, and/or by keeping an eye on windowsills – a prime location for spotting pests of the insect kind. It is also useful to keep an eye open for the little signs that pests leave lying around – droppings, frass and characteristic damage.
Although some pests may have had a population in your building for as long as you’ve been there (or longer), most will have found their way in more recently. Points of entry are varied and often uncontrollable (you can’t check the coats or bags of every visitor for hitch-hiking beetles and moths), but where possible there should be checks in place that reduce the ability of pests to get into a building. A quarantine area is ideal (dare I say essential) for controlling pests that can be transported on museum objects, but at home it may simply be a case of checking that your newly purchased bunch of flowers or bag of flour isn’t crawling with beetles.
Various holes, vents and chimneys are excellent entry points for pests so it’s good to keep an eye on them – block up the ones that don’t belong there (like broken windows or holes in ceilings) and make sure that the ones that do belong (like air vents and chimneys) are kept clean and, where practical, protected with a mesh on the outside.
Rats
Part of what inspired me to start writing this was an incident at home that Melissa and I recently dealt with. We live in a basement flat, which means that we are likely to have certain types of pest finding their way into our home quite easily. In this case it was one of the most unpleasant pests you can get – we had a rat in our kitchen.
We knew that there was a rat in the garden, because we had seen it before. In fact, we have an entertaining video of it chasing magpies right under the nose of a disinterested local fox one Sunday morning:
However, a rat in the garden and a rat in the kitchen are two different things. Rats carry a host of nasty diseases and they are incredibly destructive because of their droppings, urine and need to gnaw – rats gnawing wires are a common cause of fire. There’s some useful information about problems caused by rats here. Our rat appears to have entered through a hole in the wall that takes the waste pipe from our washing machine – unfortunately the hole is much bigger than the pipe and the rat must have squeezed through the gap, something that rats are very good at.
We had a suspicion that a something was amiss when Melissa heard rustling and caught movement out of the corner of her eye one evening. The next day I also saw something fleeing behind the fridge when I walked into the kitchen and I thought it looked a bit too big to be a mouse – I was also fairly sure I had seen a long scaly tail. That clinched it, so we immediately did a fairly deep clean of the kitchen and we cleared out all the boxes and bags crammed into our airing cupboard, which is in one corner of the kitchen. On removing everything from there I spotted that the insulation around the boiler had started being gnawed to make what looked like nesting material. There were also droppings that were too big for a mouse (between 10-15mm):
Rat dropping
Whilst clearing out the airing cupboard our unwelcome guest was spotted as it dashed for cover, reconfirming the evidence that it was a rat. Obviously we were not pleased. Once everything edible was secured in containers in upper wall mounted cupboards or hanging from wall hooks, we shut the kitchen door and hoped the rat would stay put until it could be dealt with. Fat chance – we found fresh droppings in the hall after the rat had squeezed under the kitchen door. Our deep cleaning had probably removed enough accessible food from the kitchen to force the rat to roam further afield.
The advantage of this was that it suggested the rat was hungry and that there was enough disruption from our activities to have forced the rat out of its comfort zone. That discomfiture of the rat was an important, since rats are neophobic – they don’t like new things in their environment. Reducing the available food meant that the rat was forced to explore further and by altering its environment (i.e. removing most of the cover it relied on) we were forcing it to deal with changes, which meant that it would probably become familiarised more quickly with the traps we baited and put down at around the same time.
We chose break-back traps over poison for several reasons:
some rats have learned to avoid poison (although some are also trap shy)
there is no control over where the rat dies, so it could expire in an inaccessible place and then stink the flat out for weeks while it decomposed, incidentally providing a source of food for insect pests
if the poisoned rat went back outside it could well be eaten by something else, which could be harmed
neither of us are happy having poison hanging around the house, particularly in case we are visited by friends and family with younger children
I have ethical concerns about the suffering an animal experiences before it dies – I think a quick death is preferable to a slow one, and I consider poison to be too slow
A good strong break-back trap seemed to be the best option, since there is greater control of where the rat is killed and a trap is far more easily disarmed and tidied up than poison – it’s also a quick death for the rat (though see below). Live traps can also be used, although for rats I think they are inappropriate since releasing a rat in a new location strikes me as being irresponsible to residents of the area in which it’s released, and it’s pretty stressful for the rat.
Glue boards are also available for trapping rats – these are obviously a slow way for the rat to die, unless they are checked frequently and you are willing to kill the rat yourself. We did use a sticky board under the kitchen door when it was shut (I had a rubber mallet ready to despatch the rat), but that was more as an effort to reduce the rat’s movements within the house than to trap it.
I should make sure I mention that break-back traps need to be checked regularly – sometimes they can go off without killing the rat, merely trapping it (and injuring it) and sometimes the bait can be removed or material from ratty activities can jam the mechanism, making it less effective. Although I was aware of this, I was a bit surprised when I first checked the trap and found a scouring sponge right in the jaws near the hinge:
The snap trap was initially baited with chocolate (rats really like chocolate), but that was switched to nuts and raisins as soon as I realised that bitter dark chocolate that we had in the house was probably not quite the sugary, fatty confectionery treat that a rat would be after. The change of bait seemed to work out well, because we had the rat in the trap a few hours later:
Since the rat was a bit crushed from the powerful jaws of the trap I decided not to bother skeletonising it or getting it taxidermied. Instead I checked the local council website to find out what their disposal requirement was – double bagging and putting it in with the household waste – so that’s what I did.
All in all an unpleasant business, but it only took two days from the first sighting for the rat to be dealt with. Our next action is to contact our landlord to get the hole sealed up properly and we will probably clear out the crumbs from the toaster and bread-board a bit more often, since that’s what the rat seemed to be subsisting on.
If you have a rat then I recommend that you clean and disinfect thoroughly, make food as inaccessible as possible (easier said than done since rats can get through tiny holes, climb well and gnaw through plastic, wood and even concrete with ease), check where the blighters are getting in and work out where they are going, so that you can take steps to stop them. Most councils offer a pest control service to deal with rats (often it’s free), so if you don’t feel up to dealing with the rats then you’re probably best off contacting them. That said, I personally find it’s more effort to deal with contractors in my home than it is to kill a rat.
Last Friday’s mystery object was this formidable looking lower jaw chosen by my volunteer Cat:
I asked you to tell me what this was from and you haven’t disappointed! Cromercrox led the charge by deftly discounting it as being from a tetrapod – and even after an attempt at obfuscation on my part he identified that it was from “some mutha of a fish”. Jack Ashby jumped in with the correct suggestion that it was from a perciform fish and Jim slammed home with the correct answer of Continue reading →
After last week’s exceptionally tricky object I’ve decided to give you something that should prove a challenge, but which will hopefully be a bit more straightforward than the last one: Continue reading →
Suggestions for an identification ranged from earwax to fungi, from a monstrous gall stone to diseased bone. The first ranging shot from Gimpy (It looks like bone that has been calcified or has some sort of tumour growing on it. It also seems to have … no internal blood vessels or marrow) was actually very close and I thought this would be nailed in short order, but perhaps my evasive answer put people off the scent more effectively than I had intended. Eventually the one person who has managed to guess all of the correct elements is Jake – so a hearty round of applause to our youngest contributor! It is in fact a section of Continue reading →
Zygoma 