An animal exodus
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What preparations are being made for the move of the Natural History Museum's specimens?
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The spectacular central hall of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington in London. This museum is one of the UK's most celebrated treasures. This building is full of natural wonders. We didn't bump into the world-famous naturalist David Attenborough. This is his audio guide to the museum. Since its opening in 1881, the museum's collections have grown to around 80 million specimens. Each of them enables us to understand the natural world, the way it began, how it developed, and what its future may be. Over 7 million people visit from all over the world every year. Above your head in the vast arched ceiling, elegant paintings in red, gold and green depict a wide variety of plants from across the globe.
As you look around, you will see that the building is enlivened by sculptures of all kinds of animal, some living, some prehistoric. from imposing feline gargoyles on the roof to mischievous monkeys clambering up the pillars. But there's another part of the museum, a separate building that the public doesn't see, that's just as important. It's the Natural History Museum's store, hidden to protect the collection. This is a research collection. It is unique in its form and its function. It's a resource for the entire global scientific community. There's nothing to identify this industrial building on a quiet side street. You could walk straight past and never guess. But step through an unmarked door and then an airlock and you're met by a truly astonishing sight.
A vast space, absolutely full of all creatures, great and small. One of the big misconceptions I think that people have about museum collections in storage is that they're just things waiting to go on display. You know, those poor museums don't have space for that stuff in the galleries. It's not about that. The collections behind the scenes, in inverted commas, are here for research. That's what they're all about. Principal curator of mammals, Richard Sabin, is part of a team preparing to move one of the greatest scientific collections ever assembled. Tens of millions of specimens, some microscopic, others bigger than buses. Fragile, precious, even extinct examples from every corner of the globe.
How do curators ensure the safety of delicate specimens during transportation?
Some are millions of years old. They'll be going to a new state-of-the-art store and research centre near Reading, a town outside London. This is something that you can only do with research collections like this once, possibly if you're crazy, twice in a lifetime. This facility is old, it's crumbling, it's deteriorating and it's not suitable, it's not fit for purpose. I'm Stephen Coates, and for the documentary from the BBC World Service, we've been to visit the store as preparations get underway.
Here we go. My name's Geoff Stryker. I'm an evolutionary biologist. I look after the museum's very large collection of amphibian and reptile specimens. So these are animals like frogs and snakes, toads, lizards, crocodilians. We've got shelves with hundreds of specimens. So we've got the storks there, and on our other side we have some very colorful tropical birds.
They're amazingly lifelike. Some of them even seem to be looking back at us with bright eyes.
Watch your step. We've got some warning tape as we go through this narrow area around a very large leatherback sea turtle, the world's largest living turtle.
We begin the process really with looking at everything that we have, opening every cupboard, opening every drawer to see what state everything is currently in.
Maggie White is the collections move preparation manager, organising a team of around 50 specialists, conservators, engineers, project managers and logistics experts who work alongside the curators.
So looking at a physical condition of something like you would when you move house, thinking, does that thing have a crack in it? Does it need to be wrapped really, really carefully before we can put it in a box? And a lot of our collections are going into fluid to be preserved. So we have a lot of things in jars.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What preparations are being made for the move of the Natural History Museum's specimens?
0:00–3:35
2
How do curators ensure the safety of delicate specimens during transportation?
3:35–6:24
3
What challenges arise when moving large specimens like the anaconda?
6:24–10:08
4
How do technological advancements aid in the preservation of specimens?
10:08–13:13
5
What role do local communities play in the history of specimen collection?
13:13–16:00
6
How is the new storage facility designed to protect the collections?
16:00–20:32
7
What logistical challenges are faced in moving a vast array of specimens?
20:32–25:02
8
What emotional connections do curators have with the specimens they manage?
25:02–28:28