The Muséum nationale d’Historie naturelle in Paris has a room dedicated to extinct and endangered animals. Entering the room has the feel of entering a chapel for a funeral. It is dimly lit from above with cases of animals scarcely visible. Each taxidermied animal (even insects and plants are on display) is presented in a case with a black background. The labels appear on the sides on the glass to minimise distraction. The visitor is drawn to each specimen as if you were approaching the casket at a funeral. You cannot but feel the weight of extinction in the room. In this space, I was struck by the inclusion of…

At the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, the Breeds Barn hosts horse shows in which different breeds are paraded out and presented for the visitors. I had a chance to see one such presentation when I visited Lexington for the Agricultural History Society 2015 meeting. I was struck by how the breeds are presented as belonging to specific countries based on the breed’s history and origin. The horses are each presented with a rider clothed to accentuate the horse’s homeland. Some of these were quite exaggerated with the English shire presented as a medieval knight’s war horse and the arabian in fancy embroidered silk. The horse park has, of course, not invented…

I met Martha. Martha the last passenger pigeon. She sat on a branch with her body facing away from me, her head turning in my direction. I stared at her as she seemingly stared back with a glassy red eye. In a way she looked too life-like to sympathise with, to wonder what she had thought about as she spent her last fews years without her mate George. Now she was placed near a potential mate. A male bird, one Martha never knew, reached out with a seed in beak, possibly as an offering to Martha’s passing. But he too seemed too real, too alive. The bird laying down did not. In front…

I had the pleasure yesterday of visiting the Field Museum in Chicago, USA. The museum, founded in 1893 as an outgrowth of the World’s Columbian Exhibition hosted in Chicago that year, is home to one of the world’s premiere natural history collections. As someone interested in museum storytelling about animals, I was looking forward to seeing how the Field Museum approached history in their displays. I was impressed that animal histories with conservation messages pervaded many of the exhibits. Take the case of this gray wolf (Canis lupis):   The display not only puts the gray wolf’s decline into cultural context–“Our fears led to the wolf’s decline”–but it also tells the story…