Life Collections – Page 15 – More Than A Dodo

This year the Museum is playing host to three poets in residence as part of our Visions of Nature year. The poets, John Barnie, Steven Matthews, and Kelley Swain, have been working alongside staff in our collections and out in the Museum itself to gain inspiration for their writing over the past six months. In the autumn, they will take part in a number of events and activities to present their work, and will be publishing a small anthology at the end of the year.

Here Steven Matthews reveals what has inspired his poems during one of his recent visits to the Museum.

PAL_CL04499_03 (2) — Fossil in the Charles Lyell collection

I was struck strongly, during our early visits as poets-in-residence behind the scenes at the Museum, by one particular aspect of the research being undertaken. The history of the Museum collections, their vast reach, is being traced in several instances by the identification of the particular individual specimen which was drawn and lithographed as part of a key scientific paper, in the nineteenth- or twentieth-centuries. Out of the many thousands of specimens held at the Museum, for example, we were shown the exact fossil in the Charles Lyell Collection which had helped, when reproduced in a paper, confirm the geological record of part of the United States.

'Observations on the White Limestone and other Eocene or Older Tertiary Formations of Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia' by Charles Lyell, 1845 — ‘Observations on the White Limestone and other Eocene or Older Tertiary Formations of Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia’ by Charles Lyell, 1845

The history of the Collections, in other words, is the history not just of their remarkable beauty or strangeness, but of their usefulness in advancing scientific thought; just as it is the history of the individual people who have recognised something new to say from the specimens they were studying. There is a firm analogy between this activity and what the making of poems involves. Concise comparison is, after all, what poetry also seeks to attain, bringing the multifariously divergent elements of the world into intense and new combinations with each other.

In preparing to write poems in response to the Museum building and Collections, I have kept that history in mind, researched it. I have read pamphlets by Henry Acland and John Ruskin, Victorians key to the impulse behind the creation of a Museum here to Science, and to defining what the nature of a building on these principles should look like. I have re-read much Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poetry in order to steep myself in the kinds of language being used to describe Nature by poets at the time the Museum was becoming active. I have read in the work of scientists working at, or associated with, the Museum in its early days and subsequently.

One of the capitals that adorn the Museum court carved by the O’Shea brothers

Out of this reading, but also out of the looking, the many hours spent with the Collections on public display or behind the scenes, have come what is a surprising variety of poems which reflects the wonderful and overwhelming reach of the items at the Museum. I have written about the O’Shea brothers who did much of the amazing carving of column-tops on the Ground Floor; there is a poem on the crystallographer Dorothy Hodgkin, whose lab I was privileged to spend some time alone in.

Nonsense verses have arisen from contemplating the presence of Lewis Carroll here; the astounding collection of multi-coloured marble blocks, the Corsi Collection, has impelled me to create blocks of prose-poetry in their shape. There is a poem ‘voiced’ by an ammonite. The sadness of some specimens, posed in isolation (or in glass jars) far from their original contexts, has moved me; as has the shocked intensified awareness that the history of the Collections is a history of accelerating losses, as more and more of the species gathered in the Museum are extinguished from the world each day.

6 July 201611 July 2016

Ellena Grillo1 Comment

Gemstones, fairy boats and the Orchid Mantis

Here Kelley Swain reveals what has inspired her poems during one of her recent visits to the Museum.

In May, I had the opportunity to meet with several curators who had previously introduced me to their collections. This time, with the orientation they’d provided, I had more specific questions:

For Monica in Minerology, I wanted to know more about what people historically considered ‘sympathies’ of gemstones. She directed me to Nichols’ Faithfull Lapidary of 1652, the oldest book in English about the properties of gemstones. The Museum has a copy of the book on loan to the Bodleian, so I’m heading in the direction of that most famous library to get to see the book, perhaps on my next visit.

With Amo in Entomology, I was eager to pay another visit to the Orchid Mantis whom I’d named ‘Daphne’ on my last visit. In the interim, the Mantis had moulted to her final life stage – she has wings and is now fully adult, but we don’t know how long she’ll live. She might not be there when I next visit. (Amo said this is the reason she stopped naming the insects – she became too attached.)

It was especially wondrous to see that Daphne’s colouring had changed from that of a bright pink-and-white orchid blossom to something darker, that looks just like a dying orchid blossom – and she seemed much less alert than before – almost sleepy. I know a bit about cryptography and camouflage, but that the lifespan of the Orchid Mantis directly correlates with the lifespan of the orchid blossoms on which it hunts is more than I might have imagined. I’ve been working on a poem about Daphne, which, by the time of our poetry-residency anthology is published, is likely to be ‘in memoriam’.

IMG_9120Daphne2 — Daphne the Orchid Mantis in May after moulting

And thanks to Mark, Curator of Life Collections, I was able to finally see something that I’ve wanted to see for a very long time: not only one, but a large collection of fragile, mysterious Argonauta brood chambers. Cepalopods are a particular interest of mine, and while many people have collected marvellous ammonite fossils in Lyme Regis or admired the highly-polished specimen of a nautilus shell, Argonauta brood chambers are often mistaken for similar shells, when they are something rather different.

They are secreted by the female of the species (which is a type of octopus). Though this case is not attached to her body, she lives in it with her tentacles dangling out – she can spin it and turn it, but will never completely let go of it. This is the egg sac or brood chamber for her young: she lays her eggs in it, and when they hatch, they are in a safe, contained chamber in the sea. It’s likely that, as with many cephalopods, senescence sets in around the time the young are about to hatch – that is, the adults deteriorate and seem to have a kind of dementia, until they die and their bodies fall apart, just as the young hatch and need food.

An Argonauta argo specimen from the Museum’s collections

The thing about the Argonauta that most intrigues me is that, though this papery shell is not attached to the female, she will die without it. Studies have revealed that other species of octopus, placed in cages, would squeeze out of the bars of the cage to reach food; the Argonaut, on the other hand, would not let go of its shell, remained in the cage, and died.

Argonauts can direct their buoyancy and swimming, but seem to drift with tides, and there are a few videos online of scuba divers happening upon them: they seem quite directionless and cumbersome. Despite this, to me they are, without doubt, one of the most beautiful, mysterious, and poignant creatures in the ocean, and it was a great gift to be able to see so many Argonauta cases in the Museum stores.

The Argonaut is often called the ‘paper nautilus,’ though their beautiful remnants were also called ‘fairy boats’. The best chapter I’ve read so far on these creatures is ‘Flight of the Argonauts’ by Helen Scales in her book Spirals in Time. I’m working on a poem about these marvellous creatures for the Museum residency.

4 July 20166 July 2016

Ellena GrilloLeave a comment

Cockroaches on my mind

Here John Barnie reveals what has inspired him during his residency as well his creative process.

P1120467 — Madagascar hissing cockroach (Gromphadorhina portentosa)

Recently, Kelley Swain and I were allowed to handle live tropical cockroaches at the Museum. They were much larger than the ones I knew when I lived for a time in Memphis, Tennessee. Those lived in the kitchen inside the stove and behind the fridge, waiting to crawl out if you turned your back for a moment while chopping vegetables or meat. Pest control officers came a few times, spraying foul-smelling insecticide everywhere, but next day the cockroaches were back, seemingly unaffected by the poison.

The tropical cockroaches at the Museum were beautiful, their exoskeletons gleaming as their antennae whirred, trying to identify what the palm of my hand might be, and I could see why some people keep them as pets.

My experience of writing poetry is that you can’t decide consciously what the subject of a poem is going to be. A poem ‘emerges’, shaping itself in the mind. Usually it is written quite quickly. There may be a good deal of revision later, but at this first stage the process is almost automatic.

I was apprehensive, therefore, about having to write poems to order as a poet in residence at the Museum. I needn’t have worried, though. During my visits so far, subjects for poems have crowded in, one on another.

Take cockroaches. Over the years I have read a number of books on the mass extinctions that have occurred during the past 650 million years and I’m aware that leading biologists and naturalists, Edward O. Wilson and David Attenborough among them, believe we are in the middle of one now, caused primarily by our own species. Mass extinctions create bottlenecks and it seems that it is a question of luck rather than ‘fitness’ that determines which species survive to radiate beyond.

This set me thinking about cockroaches, that seemingly indestructible group of insects I encountered in Memphis and now again at the Museum. I’d bet on them getting through the bottleneck to evolve and proliferate in a brave new world. As to humans, well that’s another matter.

These experiences and thoughts gradually fused into a poem, ‘Cockroaches on my Mind’, which I never could have thought up and which certainly would not have emerged without tropical cockroaches prickling my skin that day in the Museum.

30 June 20164 July 2016

More than a Dodo2 Comments

Climbing down the primate family tree

This is the first in a short series of articles to accompany the new Stone Age Primates temporary display at the Museum, created with the Primate Archaeology group at Oxford University. Here, Michael Haslam, ERC Senior Research Fellow in Primate Archaeology, outlines the importance of this emerging field of study.

Humans evolved over millions of years. You can see displays about this in natural history museums all over the world, usually with skulls of extinct ancestors such as Homo erectus. Alongside these bones there are often stone tools of various shapes and sizes, showing how our technology has also changed over time. Ultimately, human tool use has led all the way from sticks and stones to the computer, phone or tablet that you’re using to read these words.

However, for all those millions of years other members of our family were evolving too. What if we had an archaeological record for non-human animals as well? The Primate Archaeology project at Oxford University exists to answer this question.

Rise of Modern Humans display — ‘The Rise of Modern Humans’ display in the Museum

Primates, the group that humans belong to, also includes apes and monkeys, as well as more remotely related animals such as lemurs. Yet when we see these animals in museums, they very rarely have a set of their own extinct ancestors on display, or any examples of the technologies that they have developed.

Why not? For one thing, it is difficult to find fossil ancestors of animals that live mostly in tropical forests because their bones aren’t preserved well in that environment. And most primates, like most animals, don’t use tools in the wild, so there is nothing left behind to tell us about their past behaviour.

But there is another reason. We view the human past as a series of ancestors evolving towards the way we are now; yet we tend to see monkeys and apes as unchanging over time. If asked to imagine a chimpanzee three million years ago, you would probably picture something that looks like a chimpanzee today. But modern chimpanzees didn’t exist back then, just as modern humans didn’t.

Wild chimpanzee at Bossou, Guinea. Photo by Michael Haslam.

The main reason we think of humans as changing and evolving is because of the archaeological evidence that we’ve collected. As we discovered more and more bones and stones it became clear that dozens of human ancestor species have lived on Earth, including close relatives such as the Neanderthals in Europe and Asia.

A hammerstone used by a capuchin, on display in the Museum

So what would we find if we looked for the archaeology of other primates? They don’t build cathedrals, or use pottery or metal, and they don’t leave behind written messages like the Egyptians, Maya or Romans did. That’s a problem. But the solution to the problem is actually the same one that archaeologists have always used for human ancestors: find the stone tools.

There are three types of wild primate that use stone tools: the chimpanzees of West Africa (Pan troglodytes verus); the Bearded Capuchin monkeys of Brazil (Sapajus libidinosus); and the Burmese Long-tailed Macaques of Southeast Asia (Macaca fasciaulria aurea). They mainly use stones as hand-held hammers, to break open hard foods such as nuts and shellfish. The capuchins also use stones to dig in the hard ground, which helps to protect their fingers when searching for roots or spiders to eat.

Wild long-tailed macaque using a stone tool at Laem Son National Park, Thailand. Photo by Michael Gumert.

The Primate Archaeology Project was set up at Oxford University in 2012, supported by the European Research Council. Since that time, our team has spent many months watching these animals use stone tools in the wild. We record how they select certain sizes and types of stones (you wouldn’t use a soft sponge as a hammer, and neither would they!), and how they carry their tools around from job to job like a modern tradesman. We used these observations to work out what primate tools look like today, and then we went digging into the past.

We found macaque tools buried in beach sands in western Thailand, and ancient capuchin tools in the forests of northeast Brazil. In both cases, we recognized the tools because they were similar to ones still in use today. Importantly, we also found that the tools were damaged in very particular ways by the monkeys that had used them, because hitting hard things together usually means that one of them gets broken.

Primate archaeology excavation, Serra da Capivara National Park, Brazil. Photo by Michael Haslam.

We used radiocarbon dating to work out that the archaeological capuchin tools were at least 600 years old. That means that there were monkeys sitting around in Brazil with stone hammers, cracking and eating nuts, before Christopher Columbus ever left Europe. Previous excavations in the Ivory Coast have found even older primate tools – chimpanzees there were using stone hammers more than 4,000 years ago!

Primate archaeology is still a new research field, with more questions than answers, but then so was human archaeology when it began. We really don’t know what technology apes and monkeys were using during the millions of years that they have evolved, but we are taking the first steps towards solving that mystery.

Stone Age Primates display in the Museum

Working with the Museum, the Primate Archaeology project team has put together a new temporary display, ‘Stone Age Primates’, to sit alongside the current human evolution cases in the Museum. In the display you can learn more about the research and see tools used by primates past and present. You can also follow the group on Twitter @primatearch.

27 June 201630 June 2016

Ellena GrilloLeave a comment

Shared visions

Have you created a ‘vision of nature’ that you could share with us? During 2016, the Museum has seen some wonderful work inspired by nature and the natural environment, as part of our Visions of Nature year. To take the idea further we’d like to showcase work by our visitors and online readers too.

Visions of Nature kicked off with Kurt Jackson’s Bees (and the odd wasp) in my Bonnet exhibition, a celebration of the diversity of bees through Jackson’s textured paintings, mixed media sculptures and beautiful ceramics. This was followed in May by Microsculpture, a showcase of photographer Levon Biss’ extraordinary portraits of insects from our collections.

And later this autumn our three poets in residence will round off the year with a poetic vision of nature, inspired by their time here.

Splendid-necked Dung Beetle (*Helictopleurus splendidicollis*) from the Microsculpture exhibition by Levon Biss

The Museum’s court is often alive with visitors engaging artistically with the collections, sketchpad or camera in hand. The Visions of Nature year is the perfect opportunity to share your work with us. Whether it’s paintings, photographs, sculptures, drawings, or textiles, we would love to see what has inspired you, either in the Museum or out there in the natural world.

To show us your vision of nature, whether old or new, just Tweet or Instagram a photo of your work using #visionsofnature and tag @morethanadodo too so that we’ll definitely see it. Alternatively, you can email your photos to communications@oum.ox.ac.uk.

Then we’ll choose a rolling selection of submissions to exhibit throughout the rest of the year on the Visions of Nature website. If your image is selected we’ll get in touch to make sure you are happy for us to do this.

Get busy – we can’t wait to see your work…

21 June 201627 June 2016

Ellena Grillo1 Comment

Why the world needs Dung Beetles

To celebrate National Insect Week 2016 we thought we would introduce you to the custodians of the Hope Entomology Collection here at the Museum. Our insect collection is made up of a whopping 6 million specimens, so our resident entomologists definitely have their work cut out. However, they have taken a little time out to tell us all about their specialisms and why their favourite insects are the best.

Darren Mann – Head of Life Collections

Darren out in the field collecting Dung Beetles

Dung beetles have been my passion since my late teens. I started with British species and then gradually broadened my interests to encompass the world fauna. But why dung beetles?

Well, they are beautiful insects, exhibiting an array of shapes and colours; they have been around since the dinosaurs, and have interesting biologies and behaviours, from nest-building and parental care, to stargazing. As a group, dung beetles are also very important in the ecosystem, removing dung and recycling nutrients.

Not only that, but dung removal and relocation offers additional ‘ecosystem services’ of fly control, livestock parasite suppression, plant growth enhancement, improved soil structure, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, seed dispersal, and pollination. Inevitably, they are a source of food for other animals too.

Darren takes a closer look at a collected specimen

Dung beetles are found in all regions of the world, and consist of three main groups: the dor or earth-boring beetles (Family Geotrupidae) of around 600 species; the ‘lesser’ dung beetles (Family Scarabaeidae, subfamily Aphodiinae) of around 3,500 species; and the ‘true’ dung beetles (Family Scarabaeidae, Subfamily Scarabaeinae) of around 6,000 species.

With just over 10,000 species in total you’d think we have found all the dung beetles out there, but not so: it’s estimated that 40 per cent of species new to science are still to be discovered. In the UK we have just 60 species and over half of these are in decline due to agricultural intensification, pollution, use of veterinary drugs, and changes in livestock farming practises. The Dung Beetle Mapping UK Project (DUMP) aims to highlight the importance of this group and promote research and conservation in this area.

Despite their name, not all dung beetles eat dung, with some species preferring fallen fruit, fungi, or even dead animals. The South American roller (Deltochilum valgum) is an avid predator of millipedes and another South American species (Zonocopris gibbicollis) feeds on snail mucus!

So with their high diversity, fascinating ecology, and great economic benefit, perhaps the question really should be ‘why not study dung beetles?’.

Category: Life Collections

Beauty, strangeness and science