Build a mini-habitat using a cardboard box and recyclable materials from around your home. The guide below will give you some ideas to get you started, but the rest is up to you! You will need: Cardboard box Old magazines, greetings cards, scrap paper. Pens or pencils Scissors Glue Once you have gathered all of your materials, watch the video below for museum learning assistant, … Continue reading Habitat in-a-box
Swastika Issar, PhD student, writes: “I’ve always been fascinated by how new species can emerge from the way populations adapt to their local environments. For my PhD, I worked on the burying beetles. These incredible insects turn the carcass of a small vertebrate, such as a bird or a mammal, into an edible nest for their larvae. I was interested in studying how local adaptations … Continue reading Studying evolution through the specialisations of burying beetles
The okapi is the only living relative of giraffes and looking closer you can see the similarities. It has camouflaging body patterns, large ears and the males have stout horns above the eyes (ossicones). They even have a similar long, prehensile (meaning that it can grasp things) tongue, just like a giraffe. This helps them to quickly strip leaves from tree branches. They are however, … Continue reading Okapi? Okapi!
Gabriel Jamie writes: Research recently published in the journal Evolution shows that the nestlings of brood-parasitic finches mimic the appearance, sound and movements of their host’s chicks. Working in the savannas of Zambia, Dr Gabriel Jamie and a team of international collaborators collected images, sounds and videos over four years to demonstrate this striking and highly specialised form of mimicry. The study, funded by The … Continue reading Parasitic finches mimic their hosts to deceive foster parents
Join artist Kaitlin Ferguson as she talks you through how to Look, Copy, and Make with the Museum of Zoology’s fin whale skeleton. You will need: Paper Pens or pencils Scissors Kaitlin’s whale tail template Video of fin whale skeleton: https://youtu.be/CEb2UyXZq_w These activities can be enjoyed by anyone and have been made with young people with special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) in mind. See … Continue reading Look Copy Make – Fin Whale
Stanley Quek, an MPhil student focusing on assessing the effectiveness of the Nature Ways network in Singapore, writes: Singapore is an island country in the biodiverse region of Southeast Asia. Singapore is also a large city, with urban landscapes dominating the island. In the past, Singapore was completely covered with dense primary forests and mangroves, however, much of that has been lost with the development … Continue reading Singapore’s Nature Ways
To celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month the Museum is sharing the stories of 27 inspirational women, alongside the animals they work with the most. Dr Roz Wade Museum of Zoology “I wasn’t one of those children obsessed with dinosaurs. It was later, at university, that I discovered a love of fossils. I went on to study the Middle Devonian osteolepidid fishes of … Continue reading 390 million year old fish
To celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month the Museum is sharing the stories of 27 inspirational women, alongside the animals they work with the most. Dr Jenny York Department of Zoology “Right now, I am studying the conspicuous nests built by male African weaverbirds. These work marvellously to woo females, who carefully inspect the nests before choosing their favourite and mating with the … Continue reading How a weaverbird outsmarts a cuckcoo
Beetles are insects, which means that their body is made up of three parts; a head, a thorax and an abdomen. Antennae are found on the head, and six legs attach to the thorax in the middle. If a beetle has wings for flying, they are usually found protected underneath a hard carapace on the abdomen. Beetles come in many different shapes and sizes. Discover … Continue reading Build a Beetle
To celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month the Museum is sharing the stories of 27 inspirational women, alongside the animals they work with the most. Dr Rebecca Smith Department of Zoology “Cape mountain zebras declined to fewer than 80 animals in the 1950s. Following conservation initiatives, by 2000 there were around 1,600 animals, but the subspecies was still listed as Endangered. To help … Continue reading Can you tell a zebra by its stripes?
Sara Steele, Museum learning assistant says: With 400,000 named species of beetle found across the world and over 4,000 species in the British Isles, beetles are a diverse bunch even among invertebrates. They come in all shapes and sizes, from long and thin soldier beetles to rounded ladybirds. This diversity points in part to their distribution; being found in every habitat except the sea and … Continue reading Basking Beetles
To celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month the Museum is sharing the stories of 27 inspirational women, alongside the animals they work with the most. Dr Katie Sainsbury Department of Zoology “For my PhD, I researched ecological and social aspects of the changing status of polecats in Great Britain. Since almost being eradicated from Britain in the nineteenth century, polecats have been recolonising … Continue reading Bringing polecats back to Britain
To celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month the Museum is sharing the stories of 27 inspirational women, alongside the animals they work with the most. Dr Jennifer Smart RSPB “Species conservation is at the heart of everything I do, and my favourite group of birds are waders like the black-tailed godwit. I work for the RSPB where as a scientist, I was trying … Continue reading Reversing the decline of priority species
Thank you to everyone who took part in our Zoology Live iRecord challenge. We asked you to send in wildlife sightings from where you live and we received over 100 entries, which included 86 different species. Our involvement with national insect week clearly struck a chord as 79 of these species were minibeasts and the most common sightings were hoverflies. We also had sightings of … Continue reading Zoology Live: your sightings on iRecord
To celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month the Museum is sharing the stories of 27 inspirational women, alongside the animals they work with the most. Dr Susana Requena-Moreno RSPB, International Science Team “The European turtle dove is threatened with extinction. I analyse the information from satellite tracking and remote sensing to help identify the drivers of population decline throughout the doves’ migratory cycle. … Continue reading Conserving migratory species through mapping
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