If you’re a fan of taxidermy, you’ll love the new Natural World
galleries at National Museum of Scotland. Animal World, Animal
Senses and Survival galleries feature a stunning array of taxidermy
and casts: from echidnas to elephants, voles to vampire bats, foxes
to flying hippos, all the wonders of the Animal Kingdom are waiting
to amaze you.
Above: Animal World gallery.
But have you ever wondered where these birds and animals come
from? Here we follow some of our rarest new specimens, the
Australian mammals, on their journey to the Museum.
Going down under
Over 80 per cent of the mammals found in Australia are unique to
that continent. So, while many animal specimens can be sourced from
natural deaths within a vast network of zoos, wildlife parks and
aquaria across Europe, the best way to acquire Australian specimens
is to take a trip down under.
Therefore, as part of the preparations for the new galleries, Dr
Andrew Kitchener, Principal Curator of Vertebrates, and
taxidermists Phil Howard and Jack Fishwick jetted off to gather
specimens for the new galleries.
A number of numbats
Dr Kitchener’s main target was a numbat, a striped marsupial
anteater with a pointed snout and long bushy tail that has not been
on display in the Museum for many years. Once widespread in the
south of Australia, this attractive animal is now an endangered
species, found in the wild only in eucalyptus woodland in Western
Australia.
A rummage in the freezer at Perth Zoo unearthed two of the rare
animals. Although a trip to the Dryandra Forest did not result in a
sighting, Dr Kitchener was able to see the numbat’s habitat and
collect some dried vegetation for the new display. He did meet one
of the zoo’s resident numbats, which he photographed as a reference
for the taxidermists.
Above: A numbat in Perth Zoo.
He was also offered a few extras, including a mallee fowl and a
blue-tongued skink. “This was fortunate,” he explains, “because I
had received frantic emails from Phil and Jack about freezers
breaking down and specimens being too rotten to use for taxidermy.
This is a constant worry, a concern we get over by collecting
several specimens and choosing the best one.”
Rare specimens
Next, Dr Kitchener flew to Adelaide with his trusty cool box, to
hunt through the freezers of the South Australian Museum and
Adelaide Zoo. This revealed another half dozen specimens, including
a very rare bilby, or rabbit-eared bandicoot.
The trio eventually returned to Scotland with three cool boxes
full of Antipodean animals, including platypuses, antechinuses
(marsupial “mice”), a tawny frogmouth (an owl-like bird), frilled
lizards and the first new koala to be displayed to visitors since
1871.
“I was expecting to bring back thirty or so specimens, but
through the kindness of our colleagues in other museums, we managed
about 130,” says Dr Kitchener.
You can see more of the Australian animals from our Natural
World galleries here. Click on the thumbnails to see a larger
image.
So next time you’re in the Museum, remember to say g’day to the
numbat!