A museum doesn't need to be big to be beautiful...

Green turtle foetus, displayed at the museum

This week marked the start of British Science Week, a nationwide celebration of everything cool about science. As part of it, on Friday was the university of Sheffield's Discovery Week, and I decided that after work I would finally do what I've been meaning to for years: visit the Alfred Denny Museum.

The museum forms part of the University of Sheffield's animal and plant sciences department and was created in 1905, back when the university was known as Firth College. It was created by the university's' first professor in biology, Alfred Denny, who pulled the collection together to aid his teaching. His lectures were engaging, often drawing in some 600 people and he was fascinated by the quirks and logic of evolution, so it paid to have practical items on hand to use as demonstrations.


The museum itself is located within the Alfred Denny building,just before the Arts Tower as you emerge from under the bridge at the students union. It's tiny, limited to only one room but when you find your way it to it instantly exudes a Victorian/Edwardian charm. The antique cabinets are absolutely jam packed with specimens in formaldehyde jars or displayed as bleached skeletons, to the point where i was quite taken aback. There was so much to see that you didn't quite know where to start.

Luckily the museum does have quite a good sense of order amongst all the variety, with each set of cabinets holding particular groups of animals. Jellyfish blend into molluscs and into sponges and arthropods, insects, fish, crustaceans, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and even a human skeleton, all joined intermittently by beautiful fossils. 

There's a sense of grim beauty about the tightly-packed displays, especially when you happen upon the tiny examples of foetuses vulnerably frozen in time. Or when you find the more unsettling exhibits, such as a cluster of preserved bloatfly larvae in a horses' stomach. The skeletons are especially impressive - a must see for anyone who's got a little goth in them - but you can also find  exhibits with entire organ sets spread out for
consideration, with some even bisected completely.


It's clear that Denny made a wise choice when investing in this museum and it is certainly the best collection of educational taxidermy that I've seen in my travels so far. If you're in the area it's definitely worth checking out for yourself.




The Alfred Denny Museum opens to the public on the first Saturday of every month at 10am, 11am and 12pm for guided tours. 

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Remember, you can follow Preludes: Blog of Words us on Twitter and Facebook. Or Subscribe to us on Blogluvin' to never miss a post.

Stay curious!

For More Museum Trips...

- Wax Vikings: A Trip to the Jorvik Viking Centre
- A Trip to York Castle Museum and the Amazing Victorian Street
- A Visit to Stonehenge

Sometimes one expresses their enthusiasm
for science with naff embroidery.

Water bears just do not give a crap.

When you think of a tough animal you may turn your mind to the image of a proud silverback, the vicious tiger or the tank-like rhino. Go a little smaller and perhaps you could come to respect the seemingly sadistic wasp or the strong worker ant. But the real badass of the animal kingdom is far smaller than that: the tardigrade, also known as the water bear or, even more adorably, the 'moss piglet.'


So what is a water bear?

Tardigrades are microscopic animals (usually about 1mm across) that primarily eat moss and other small plant matter. They're endearingly cute with chubby bodies and 8 stubby legs, which is a large reason behind their popularity with geeky sorts on the internet, though they do suffer from the all too common hellbeast-mouth-syndrome. They have a mouse, digestive tract and nervous system so are most definately animals. There are male and female versions that mate via eggs and on the whole they live rather quiet normal lives sucking on plant juices.

However when you look closer, the water bear is quite remarkable. Recent studies have shown that 17.5% of water bear's genome is made of foreign DNA (that is, where their genes come from outside creatures). While all animals - ourselves included - have some foreign DNA in us, often from the microorganisms that live inside us, this is often less than 1% of our total makeup. Tardigrades can acquire genes from plants, fungi and bacteria 'horizontally'. What this means is that these genes aren't passed down through parents to children, but instead are part of a genetic swap with other species. Scientists think that part of the reason for why tardigrades have such a high number of foreign genes is due to how they survive even the harshest conditions...


What makes it so tough?

Photo by Sinclair Stammers

When water bears are subject to the harshest of environments they don't just curl up and die like us lesser mortals. Instead, their DNA reforms and adapts to survive, often pushing out almost all the water in its body and going into a state of suspended animation. Getting rid of the water is essential, as it's often how water reacts with cells that cause the greatest damage. This process is a tough one and often the DNA itself is broken apart in the stresses. In order to 'revive' the water bears rehydrate themselves and it is thought that at this time the DNA is 'leaky'  and more likely to absorb genetic information from other nearby items. As tardigrades repair their DNA they use these chunks of other molecules as building materials, propping up their own DNA with these foreign, often bacterial, genes. *

What do we classify as the harshest of environments? Well, water bears have been known to survive deep freezes as low as -200 degrees C, extreme heat of over 150 degrees C, and extreme radiation of 570,000 roentgens (just 570 roentgens would kill a human 150 miles downwind of a nuclear blast). They can survive 1,000 atmospheres of pressure and even the vacuum of space!

One of the most famous examples was the 2 water bears that were recovered from frozen moss samples in antarctica in 1983. These samples were stored at -20 degrees C for some 30 years before the scientists, judging the water bears still to be alive, attempted to revive them by taking them out of freeze and putting them in water. Over a process of 2 weeks the hardy tardigrades 'woke up': one unfortunately stopped eating and died after 20 days, but the second named SB-1 (Sleeping Beauty - 1) thrived and even successfully laid eggs.

Most remarkably, during the FOTON-M3 space mission the European Space Agency took a handful of 'hibernating' water bears and exposed them to the vacuum of space and all the X-ray and ultraviolet radiation that entails. They were brought back to the lab and rehydrated to see the effects. Those that has ben exposed to the vacuum of space alone had survived very well, with no difference to the survivability of average water bears that had been kept as a test sample. However, when affected by the combined forces of the radiations  - especially solar radiation -and vacuum combined, they finally started to struggle. 68% revived, but did not survive long, with only a slim number surviving the whole brutal process. They concluded that the vacuum of space did not in any way affect survival or reproduction, and even though the other combined radiations (like unfiltered UV radiation) they fared far better than any other anima. Previously only lichens and bacteria have been reported to survive the combined exposure of the space vacuum and solar/galactic cosmic radiation, so the water bear is the very first animal to ever have been shown that it is possible survive the combination of all three at once.

Either way, they're the Chuck Norris of the animal kingdom.

Keep in touch....

Remember, you can follow Preludes: Blog of Words us on Twitter and Facebook. Or Subscribe to us on Blogluvin' to never miss a post.

Stay curious!

* It's worth noting that this theory is still under dispute, as the scientists involved have been accused of using contaminated samples. But it certainly suggests a theory as to why water bears are so resilient.

Sources
-Wikipedia - Tardigrade
-The water bear - the most extreme animal on our planet
-Water bears: genome sequence says it has the most foreign DNA of any animal on our planet
-Scientists revive microscopic water bears after 30 years of deep freeze
-Tardigrades return from the dead
-First animal to survive in space
-How does the tiny water bear survive in outer space?
-Tardigrades survive exposure to space in low Earth orbit.
-Tardigrade diagram

 Death is hard. As a human, it is perhaps the hardest thing that we can face, and yet you never really understand it until it happens to you. 

Often, the remarkable thing is that - no matter how long you anticipate it - it happens suddenly. There is sick lurch of loss and yet, at the same time, your mind is left reeling and scattered. It's a strange contradiction to be confronted with death. That person - the person you know - is gone and what is left is some sort of husk that bears no resemblance at all to what they are. Yet, as you try to process grief, the most confusing (and yet most comforting) part is that what that person is hasn't left at all. They still feel real and present and there. It's just that you no longer have the opportunity to interact with them any more, and it is that gut-wrenching homesickness that takes the greatest toil
Lemony Snickett perhaps describes it best:

“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”

It is clear that death is an incredibly strong and complex emotion so, when we look into whether animals too can feel the same emotions, it is an important place to start.


 The Elephant is perhaps one of the most intelligent and emotive animals that we know of.

It's commonly regarded that elephants can show joy, anger, grief, compassion and love. Bonding into close matriarchal societies, they are knitted together -rather like humans - by how long their children take to grow into adults. They are often compassionate: for example herds have been observed to slow down their entire pace to match the weakest member. There has been an instance where an elephant physically put her life in danger to try to save a Rhino calf that was stuck in the mud, despite her being attacked by the aggressive mother who misread her actions.

An Elephant Graveyard in The Lion King

When it comes to how deaths are handled within elephant herds, there are many observational tales that circulate  - academically and otherwise - to the point where they become almost urban myths. One of the most popular concepts is the idea of a elephant graveyard, where ageing and sick elephants willingly go to die. This myth has since been debunked - instead 'graveyards' were shown to simply be sites where famine or poisoning had caused the death of a group of elephants all at once. However stories of grieving elephants are still passed around.

Mother Elephants have been observed staying with their dead babies and showing signs of distress. One mother tried to lift up the dead body and move it with her feet, staying with it for around an hour in what might be described as a state of sadness or shock. Some elephants have stayed with dead friends for up to three days at a time, refusing to move from them. Old dying elephants have been cared for by the whole herd when they fall, as the herd try to heave them up with their tusks and tenderly provide food and water for the ill animal, before watching it die. In a case such as this, when the rest of the herd moved on, a mother and her calf remained with the body for a whole day. In other examples, elephants have displayed what Charlie Mahew tentatively be called 'burying behaviour', where they toss dirt and leaves over the carcass of a dead elephant. In another anecdote from the 1940s, George Anderson reported that he shot a bull elephant that would repeatedly break into the government gardens of Kenya. The meat of the elephant was carved and given to the tribes-people and afterwards he dragged the carcass half a mile away. To his surprise, that night other elephants found the body, took a shoulder blade and a leg bone, and returned the bones to the exact place where the elephant was killed. Some people believe that elephants can recognise their own herd members' bones and will ritualistically visit them repeatedly, or will at least pick the bones up and even carry them in an effort to recognise them or pay homage to them.
Surely all of these behaviours show us that elephants can mourn?


Well so far, so much conjecture.

Picture by Sarah Skinner

No matter how many stories circulate about these apparent mourning behaviours, comparatively little scientific studies have been conducted to back them up. For example, we don't know whether elephants actually know what death is as an abstract and inevitable consequence of life. Is their grief one that has this understanding, or is it only a recognition of loss? Does it matter? And how true are any of these stories?


Karen MCComb, Lucy Beker and Cynthia Moss attempted to answer this question, creating a study of how several herds of African elephants interacted with the ivory and skulls of their own species, including some of their own matriarchs that had died within 1-5 years, as compared to wood and other dead animal skulls. All exhibits were washed to prevent any scent or human interaction lingering, and all elements were mixed and presented as per usual fair scientific practice. Primarily, they wanted to eitehr confirm or debunk the myth that elephants could recognise their own dead relatives, and that elephants took special interest in elephant bones above all else.
These assumed traits are important in identfying whether elephants recognise death, or even mourn, more than many other animals. Chimpanzees, for example, do have a complex interaction with deceased members of their own species, but seem to completely lose interest when those members decompose. Elephants however, it was suggested, carry this emotional recognition of death even to the skeltal stage. 
By using controlled experiments, they were able to prove that elephants take a special interest in the bones of their own kind which cannot simply be explained by bones being a 'novelty'.

An Elephant Skull

Elephants displayed a marked preference for investigating and interacting with the skulls and ivory of other elephants in preference to skulls from other animals or natural objects. The ivory gained the most preference and was even investigated with marked preference over the skulls. They suggested that 'the interest in ivory may be enhanced because of its connection with living elephants, individuals sometimes touching the ivory of others with their trunks during social behaviour'. This is especially interesting because the ivory was smallest in size and simplest in shape. If the elephants had been drawn to investigating the largest and most complex structures, they would have surely chosen skulls, and if they were drawn to the rarest structure, it would surely have been the Rhinoceros skull.

Importantly, the experience seemed to debunk the myth that elephants selectively recognise and revisit the bones of their relatives. There was no strong preference for investigating the Matriarch's skull over the other elephant skulls present. So, while they may not specifically select the skulls of their own relatives for investigation, the strong interest in ivory and the skulls of their own species mean that they would be highly likely to visit the bones of relatives who died within their home range. In this case, I would even say that it would be true of humans. If you're presented with the bones of a stranger or a dead relative, it is an unusual individual who can recognise them out of nowhere after all, yet the presence of a human skeleton is a natural cause of sadness and unease. However, while a human might perform some form of ritual for the body - such as reburying it or leaving a token on it - it is still unknown how far elephant behaviour is simply a sensible evolutionary curiosity or more of a genuinely emotional and respectful response. To further complicate things, this behaviour isn't unique to every elephant: in the end it is a very personal display.


In the end, a lot more study has to be done on this subject. And Elephants aren't alone in potentially mourning, of course.

Throughout the world, many intelligent animals display the behaviours of grief - whether this means a true 'mouning' and recognition of death, or simply a depression following the loss of a close companion. Even some less intelligent animals, such as ducks, have been shown to miss a departed companion so much that they never fully recover. 

To this day I still remember by own experience of viewing animal mourning behaviour.
I was 12, on my first ever holiday abroad to Tenerife where we took a catamaran to go view the dolphins (hopefully!) playing in the sun and sea. While no dolphins showed themselves that day, we experienced something far rarer and more poignant. Emerging from the sea, a whole pod of medium-sized sleeping whales swam around and under our boat. They were all black but for one striking small bleached-white figure: a dead baby being carried on its mother's back. The guide told us that when the calf died it would be carried in this way for some weeks before finally being let go to drift to the bottom of the ocean.

It's very difficult indeed to know what thoughts or emotions pass through these animals when they display such behaviour, but the effect is always haunting. At the very least, it reminds us what it means to be human.



Sources
- African Elephants Show High Interest in the Skulls of Their Own Species: From Biology Letters (McComb, Baker, Moss)
- Echo: An Elephant to Remember - Elephant Emotions (PBS)
-Of Mournful Elephants and sorrowful chimpanzees (How Animals Grieve by Barbara J King)
- Animal Grief: How Animals Mourn by David Alderton
-Elephants Really Grieve Like Us (The Daily Mail)

On the 11th of October 1568, the men of Ipswich were in battle with monsters.


With a great thrashing of waves, fishermen's boats were violently assaulted as they attempted to restrain a vast writhing beast that has no business being in local waters. They gripped on for dear life as the huge creature 'swam awaye with the boat & all the men that were on it, towards the sea at a marvaylous swift pace'. The men were only saved by the multitude of other small vessels that had collected to see the spectacle.

The monster was not alone. In total Timothy Granger - an eyewitness along with other sailors and shipmen in Ipswich- counted sixteen more monstrous fish, both males and females, who seem to have swam into trouble on a low tide. Ipswich wharf was soon bustling with onlookers who 'came together to help and see the taking of them' and they were amazed by what they saw. 

The fish were strange creatures: they were 'white beneath the eyes...else black' with white bellies and with huge jaws. The tail of each 'marvelous fishe' was so strong and large that when ten men stood upon it it was said to have overthrown them all. Strangest of all, Granger commented, 'upon thyr heds were holes, as big that a man might put in both his fistes at once'. From these holes Granger exclaimed that they spurted out so much water that, in their attempt to drag the beast back to Ipswich Wharf, they almost drowned two boatsmen.

The attempt to capture all seventeen animals was arduous and, as per the norm at the time, cruel. After many failed attempts where the boats of the hunters were dragged out to sea, or where cable ropes snapped, the onlookers and sailors managed to wrap cable rope around each fish's tail and drag them to the wharf, where they were each tethered to a tree. With much effort, they managed to heave each animal up, despite the occasional broken 'wyndlace', and granger commented on their sheer 'marvaylous greatness, strength and wayght'. Seeing the fish as a valuable resource, the townspeople instantly went about attempting to slay the creatures for their meat. To their surprise, despite being stricken with axes and other weapons, some of the creatures lay on the wharf for two days and a night before they died. It was said that 'the ryver wherein they weare taken was coloured red', and that three butchers worked a whole day carving up just one fish.

As the butchers worked, Granger marvelled at the anatomy of the beast. The fish was said to be a man's height in thickness 'from the top of the backe to the bones, and his bones hard as stones'. Despite the challenge of the butchery, the meat of the beast was carved up and distributed to the people at the town, 'that did eate of it, and it was verye good meate'.

Credit: Robert L. Pitman, NOAA Fisheries, USA

Nowadays it's perhaps easy for us to identify these whales as killer whales, though at the time they were completely strange and bizarre creatures, unknown by the common person. Certainly Timothy Granger thought it strange enough to justify putting it to print and it, like other sensational texts at the time, was picked up, read and displayed with enthusiasm as proof of the wonders of God's ways. Even now, the sudden arrival of seventeen Orcas on Ipswich's shores wouldn't look out of place in any tabloid paper.


Sources


-Granger,Timothy, A Most True and Marveilous Straunge Wonder, the lyke hath seldom ben seene, of XVII Monstrous Fishes, taken in Suffolke, at Downham brydgem within a myle of Ipswiche The .XI.daye of October. In the yeare of our Lordge God. M.D.LX.VIII. (London, 1568).