Special Report from The Natural History Museum!

Yesterday Scott took us on an amazing trip to the Natural History museum to go on the Spirit tour and look at the Images of Nature exhibition

We learned so many amazing facts along the way, here's a few of the best:

- The Spirit building holds a whopping 22 MILLION specimens! But HOLD ON...

- The entire museum holds 71 million in it's entirety, all neatly labelled and arranged and colour coded on shelves- as a fervent coloured pencil arranger that is actually my idea of HEAVEN!

- DID YOU KNOW that per year more animals enter the country than animals in the form of stuffed animals, live drugged animals and bees.

- Darkness levels can dramatically effect the growth and lifespan of not only wild animals but humans in the city! The scientists at the museum study the differences in behaviour and lifespan of wild squirrels in London

- They use carrion beetles to clean up the skeletons, this does less damage to the bones! READ ABOUT THEM HERE

- On the tour we also met a Coelecanth, the discovery of a live one of which became a pivotal moment in evolutionary science as it provided an insight into the link between land and sea creatures due to the small legs which grew on the body of the fish. They were thought to have been extinct for 65 million years before this little chap was discovered!

- We also met a nine metre long GIANT SQUID! Did you know that squids grasp their prey using their tentacles which as we all know, have suckers on the end- however "suckers" isn't really an appropriate term, as they are actually circular rows of teeth that swivel and cling to the skin! EEEK! They then eat their prey with a beak, like a parrot!

- Platypuses are one of the only mammals to lay eggs! They are also the only venomous mammal.

We also looked at Charles Darwin's collection of specimens from his voyage on the ship The Beagle!

At the end of the tour we met an artist named Alice Shirley who had written to the Museum and was allowed to work with the collection- this is an idea for people who want to work with primary sources from nature and would be a fantastic thing to put on your CV I think!

Will update later with pics from the Images of Nature exhibition and postcard from panama!