The Grant Museum of Zoology is one of my favourites in London. The building is very near the Euston UCL campus, which to my mind is about as quintessential as London university buildings get (although my own alma meter, Goldsmiths, looked nothing like this!). Anyway, as we know, I love animals and I am passionate about animal rights so the Museums slant on ecology and biodiversity is perfect for me.
One of the most emotive exhibits is on extinct animals which includes the fur and skeleton of a thylacine – otherwise known as the Tasmanian Tiger. This animal went in extinct in the 1930s and remarkably we have video footage which I’ve linked below. I remember first seeing this short video when I was about 16 and basically weeping for hours; I was so moved to be seeing an animal that simply no longer existed and will never walk the earth again. I find it so upsetting to think of how many thousands of years it takes for each species of animal to evolve, and in the short time we’ve been around we are just watching species die. It’s those thoughts that enforce my resolve to try and live in a green and ethical way.
I was also really interested in the wall of slides. As the description said there are tons and tons of creatures that are too small to house in a cabinet so a slide makes more sense; in practise the wall of slides is overwhelming to look at! The slide that stuck out most to me was this one of “helobdella stagnalis”. It’s a species of leech so not the most instagrammable, but I was weirdly moved by the mother leech and her babies on the slide alongside the description that babies were “carried”.
On a side note, these images are the first featuring my new lens! I also just wanted to mention my readers blog survey – if you haven’t taken part there’s just one week left to tell me what you think and I’d be so grateful!
These pictures are from the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. It’s a relatively small museum which joins onto the Natural History museum, which I also visited. The Pitt Rivers museum is pretty small, but stuffed with exhibits featuring a lot of anthropological and archaeological artefacts from around the whole world.
It was fascinating looking at decorated weapons, customised playing cards and all manner of trinkets used as currency; I really want a replica animal lock but unfortunately the gift shop couldn’t help me on that front! I was particularly entranced by the shrunken heads and decorative skulls, painted bright colours and displayed to taunt and humiliate the victims in death.
In the past, tribes had to embark on long, exhausting missions to capture and kill an enemy. Today we kill thousands of innocent people with guns, drones, missiles at the blink of an eye. We obviously do not mock the dead, but we also don’t really mourn or acknowledge the death in any meaningful way at all. The dead are not failings or losses, but merely statistics in our daily news report. Our weapons make it easier to kill, but is it also easier because we don’t recognise the murder for what it is anymore? It’s one of the stranger facets of human nature that we are so intent on killing one another.
Camel Skeleton
I was lucky enough to spend a week in Oxford recently with one of my dear friends. There is a certain charm to the place itself but for me the highlights are definitely the museums. Last time I was there I wrote a post on the wonderful History of Science Museum and this trip we visited the OUM of Natural History and adjoining Pitt-Rivers Museum.
It was actually quite an odd experience. The Museum itself is great; wonderful architecture and factual displays. As you probably know by now, I’m obsessed with animals. Whilst we wandered around I thought that perhaps my love of animals stems from being exposed to a lot of animals at a young age. There were a lot of kids wandering around and drawing pictures of giraffes, tigers, lions etc – all the exotic, faraway animals you learn about in school.
Thing is, I can first remember seeing a giraffe aged about 4 and at this point in my life I’ve met most of these animals numerous times. I wondered if that has something to do with why I’ve always felt so strongly about animal rights and care. Perhaps the dangers and problems animals face seem more real when the animals themselves stop being theoretical?
Seeing a preserved taxidermy tortoise when just a few short weeks ago I was interacting with real ones was a truly bizarre experience, the camel skeleton just reminded me of Casanova (the camel that “flirted” with me in Egypt), and by the time we reached a stuffed fox, all I could unhappily think about was the foxes that play outside my bedroom window here in London. I was still fascinated by the skeletons of dinosaurs and the fossils of long extinct animals, but for some reason I found the exhibits of animals still alive today really jarring and it left me feeling a bit despondent (as per usual) about the way animals are treated in our society.
My friend made the point that it’s weird to see skeletons and taxidermy and think that all those animals were hunted. I sarcastically replied that it’s hardly like animals roll over and die for us to eat them every day – but he had genuinely never considered the fact that animals were hunted to be displayed before. Perhaps it’s just the way different brains work?
Dubai is one of those places that has a very distinct reputation; you’re not going for the culture, the history or the scenery, you’re going for the shopping, the money and the ritzy hotels. I mean, what is there to actually do apart from ogle at the money splashed around? At least, that’s what I thought before I went.
So I was pleasantly surprised to find pockets of history; the museum and the covered markets in the old part of town. Of course, there are a huge number of flashy hotels and massive skyscrapers as well! It’s definitely an unusual place; the people are a rough mix of expats, young Arabs working in hospitality and recent graduates working in the city. Just 11% of the population are native to the country. Can you imagine the UK with just 11% of the population being British? It is crazy.
I really loved the old town, where we got around via water taxi (as shown in the pictures) and I especially enjoyed Dubai Museum which is housed in the old fort. It is astonishing to think the fort was at one point the capitals main building for defence: a huge fixture on an otherwise empty landscape. Today it is not even the most notable building on that street- we actually walked past it and had to double back as it is surrounded by skyscrapers.
Dubai has undergone MASSIVE growth in the last century, with the population increasing from 3000 at the turn of the century to 2 million in 2013. As anybody who has been will tell you, building seems to be constantly ongoing with a development site every which way you turn. It was really bizarre to think about what it must have been like to watch this huge modern city spring up around you in an otherwise very empty part of the desert. Have you been to Dubai, and if so, what did you think?
I was unsure of whether to post about my brief time in Hiroshima, because obviously the events that occurred there were so devastating and so upsetting. In many ways, there’s nothing further to observe. But I left feeling like my time in Hiroshima (and Japan) was so important to me, so I’ve decided to share a few of my pictures and my thoughts. I hope you find it interesting and if not – I’ll be back to pretty dresses and sakura in the next post.
We spent most of our morning at the Peace Museum, which contains artefacts left by the bomb (of which there were very, very few) and informative displays about the science of the atomic bomb, the events leading up to and after, the medical, biological and political effects of the bomb, and lastly, an opportunity to sign an international treaty calling to an end for nuclear weapons.
*Highlight to read – some of the stories in the next paragraph you may find distressing* Some of the exhibits that have stuck in my memory particularly include the burnt school-dress of a 13 year old victim – she had sewn the dress herself, and her embroidery was still visible on the collar; a metal lunchbox found by a mother with her dead child’s uneaten lunch still intact; and a cap belonging to a boy which had some of his hair fused into the fabric from the heat of the bomb. His mother kept the cap to show his father, who was away at the time fighting in the war. There was a set of cups fused together by the intense heat – found by a man who returned home to find his entire village destroyed. The nearest he could find to a personal belonging was a set of fused cups he recognised as belonging to a cafe nearby. And there was a heartbreaking story of a wife who found her husbands skeleton, completely stripped bare, sat at his desk and holding a pen.
Due to the unprecedented nature of the atomic bomb, nobody knew what the long-term effects were. Many children who were seemingly unharmed by the bomb in neighbouring villages grew up to have fertility problems, seemingly random cancers and tumours, or degenerative diseases. Medical anomalies continued to appear for the hibakusha up to 65 years after the bomb dropped. I can’t think of any other disaster that has caused repercussions for that length of time – it is insane. As the museum explained, people were forced to live their lives in fear from the moment the bomb dropped, not knowing when or what might affect them. How can you rebuild your life under a shadow like that?
The story of Sadako Sasaki was highlighted. Sadako was a healthy 2 year old who survived the bomb in a nearby village, developed an aggressive cancer aged 12 and tried to fight it by folding a thousand paper cranes (an ancient Japanese legend that if you fold 1000 cranes your wish will come true). The museum had some of her cranes on display, and heartbreakingly, some of the squares she had folded but not completed into cranes by the time she died.
Sadako became an international symbol for the innocent children whose lives were affected by the bomb and to this day people fold cranes and bring them to the peace museum. A statue of Sadako features in the Peace Garden, surrounded by boxed displays- it was incredibly moving to see large pictures that had been created from thousands of tiny folded cranes.
I left feeling completely desolate – I wish I could console myself but the fact is there are so many countries with fighting and tragedy on a similar scale every day, and it’s hard to know how to fix it. Upon reflection, I think what struck me most at Hiroshima, beyond the sheer horror and tragedy, was the total and complete decimation of the city and everything in it. It was impossible to rebuild when there was literally nothing left – any history, culture or stories attached to the town were wiped out in a nano-second. The Hiroshima we saw (outside of the central Peace Garden) could have been anywhere. It was like an eerie cut and paste city – pleasant and functionable enough, but devoid of history, of culture. Everything was completely standard. I can’t really explain but I’ve never been somewhere that felt so utterly far from history. And I think that to me is the huge tragedy that colours all of the personal ones – the irretrievable loss of an entire community.
I have to confess that as a youngster I was terrified of robots – my Mum showed me a clip of the film Short Circuit when I was about 5 and it terrified me. In the last few years I’ve become more and more appreciative of technology because I’ve realised that’s the future, and if you want to move forwards you have to embrace the future! It took me a while but I’m now fully appreciative of the applications of robotics and filled with awe and amazement at what fellow humans have managed to create, when I sometimes spend all day struggling on a single chord… anyway. If you want to see robots in Japan you can either go down the Robot Restaurant route (futuristic Moulin Rouge type cabaret show) or you can head to Miraikin and meet the developers, scientists and robots themselves. Miraikin, the museum of Emerging Science and Technology (aka, Museum of the Future), was top of my museum list before going to Japan and it did not disappoint.
Robot highlights include the worlds first walking robot, Taro the seal robot, an Otonoroid, a Teleloid, a Personoid and a series of small androids which respond to speech. Robots may still seem very sci-fi and frivolous in this country but the Japanese are really exploring what robots can do and how we can integrate them into society in a logical and useful way – combatting loneliness in elderly people or encouraging children to watch the news. I liked that a lot of their robots are designed to fill jobs our Western society gives to animals – machines are quicker, cheaper and more reliable… and not animals!
Aside from the robots the Miraikin had fascinating displays on the importance of making mistakes, the spread of science, deep-sea exploration, space exploration and renewable technologies. It was fascinating! The focal point of the museum is the huge globe, constructed of tiny screens – every 15 minutes a new show plays over the globe showing videos of the shifting plates of the earth, the spread of population, the spread of energy and the destruction of forests.
I’ve always been interested in older, traditional methods (see here and here) and as I say, I’ve often been a bit wary of technology as it’s not something I understand so easily. I’ve realised that technology is nothing without application, and the sooner people like me can understand and integrate technology, the sooner we will all be better-equipped to start solving problems in our society – not exactly a ground-breaking realisation but an important one. I’m all for embracing robots, trigger floors and intuitive furniture if it means we can eradicate other problems, like housing deficit, renewable energy, world hunger or the employment of animals. Bring on the future!
TAPE PARADE 