That feeling when you're looking for #otters & you spot a long, dark sinewy mammal slinking along the stream, but it turns out to be a mink. These are invasive species in Britain. When I first saw this one it had a small mammal in its mouth. Cute though. #BreconBeacons #WildWales #MammalWatching

Happy New Year, mammal-watchers! 🦫🦌🐨🐀 I'm desperately hoping that my first mammal of 2026 will be an #otter. 🤞🦦🤞 #BreconBeacons #WildWales

There was some excellent, crazy frost in Bannau Brycheiniog today. The ice was forming like flags on the windward side of the grass stems! Does anyone know what that's called? ❄️❄️❄️ #BreconBeacons #WildWales

Christmas Wombat

A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight, Walking in a #wombat wonderland. Happy Wombatmas on this #WombatWednesday. #Tasmania #mammalwatching #WildOz #wombats

There are many books about #extinction, but this one is different. "Ghosts Behind Glass" is a brilliant reflection on the specimens of extinct species that @dollyjorgensen.bsky.social encountered on display in #museums around the world: what are the stories being told, and why are they important?

Books make the best gifts🎁. Might I suggest these for the curious, inquisitive folk in your life: 🏛️ #NaturesMemory: Behind the Scenes at the World's Natural History #Museums. 🦘 #PlatypusMatters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals. 💯 Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects. 🦇 Wild

Out this year, #NaturesMemory is an insider's guide to the world's natural history #museums. It explores: 🪰what you see (& don't see) when visiting. 🪓honest histories of how collections were made. 🌍how they can help save the world. It's the first book to combine these social and scientific stories

The multi-award winning🏅 #PlatypusMatters tells the story of the world's best animals - the #platypus & its Aussie buddies - exploring not only the incredible ways they live their lives, but also how the wider world came to know them, and how this history shapes their conservation today.

What's the only ethical way to fit #OneHundredAnimals in a Christmas stocking? 🎁🎄🎅 "Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects" tells 100 of nature's most incredible stories, through specimens in natural history #museums. 🐹🐨🐒🦍🐣🦟🦋🐝🐍🐛🦄🦫🦘

My children's book WILD encourages kids to spot similar features in completely different groups of animals, and to wonder why. Why are so many animals spiky?🦔🦔 Or have white bellies and black backs?🐧🐳 Or paddles?🦭🦆 Or venom?🐍🐝🕷️ Or eyes on tops of their heads?🐊🦫🦛 I hope your little people enjoy it!🎁

Everybody loves #Echidna Taxidermy Fails! In #PlatypusMatters, I make the case that no species are more often inaccurately depicted in #taxidermy as #echidnas are.

Name a mammal that's more perfectly rounded than a young #wombat. I'll wait. #WombatWednesday #Tasmania #wombats #MammalWatching #WildOz

Still looking for a great book #Christmas gift idea especially about #Nature @jackdashby.bsky.social

In my humble opinion, #marmots are the world's best non-Australian #mammals (they're basically Northern Hemisphere #wombats), and this one in Birmingham Museums stores perfectly captures their dumpy little character. #taxidermy

Natural history museums teach us about our world, but they aren’t telling us the whole story, writes curator Jack Ashby in Nature's Memory

This was a really enjoyable read - the story of the #dingo, by Roland Breckwoldt, covering their natural history, but more importantly their politics. It's a fascinating insight into #dingoes' place in Australia. 📖🇦🇺 #WildOz

Nature's Memory by Jack Ashby Loved this behind-the-scenes look into natural history museums. Also touches on important issues regarding natural history (e.g. colonialism and sexism). 4/5

There really is no doubt - #wombats are among the greatest things there have ever been. Even just stood around eating grass, they are glorious. #WombatWednesday #Tasmania #MammalWatching #wombat #WildOz

Books make the best gifts🎁. Might I suggest these for the curious, inquisitive folk in your life: 🏛️ #NaturesMemory: Behind the Scenes at the World's Natural History #Museums. 🦘 #PlatypusMatters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals. 💯 Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects. 🦇 Wild

Aw, there's a nice little shout-out for #NaturesMemory (and sex bias in natural history) in this @iflscience.com article about a rare sighting of a seven-arm #octopus, which can reach 75kg, 4 metres long, and has [ahem] eight arms. 🐙 www.iflscience.com/live-seven-a...

Australia has no woodpeckers, but striped #possums are tropical #marsupials that do the same job: their big ears detect beetle grubs tunnelling in wood, which they chip out with large incisors, then use their elongated 4th finger to hook them out of the tunnels (just like aye-ayes do in Madagascar).

Five identical #taxidermy Bosc monitor #lizards in three #museums. All of them terrible (they do not resemble the live animal). Surely they were prepared by the same person, presumably for as souvenirs. The two at @uclgrantmuseum.bsky.social came from a Customs seizure - I expect the others did too

glorious critters! go you little aussies!!!

You don't see many #taxidermy dogs (there's a chapter on why "Ordinary Animals" are rare in #museums in #NaturesMemory). A rottweiler in Birmingham Museums has been posed to look more ferocious than the wolf & hyena next to it. Taxidermy poses often tell us about human social perceptions of animals

The point of #taxidermy is to allow the viewer to forget the animal is not living, but there is a particular subset that deliberately poses it as obviously dead. But almost every time the "dead" animal is a #fox. Why is this? It says something about society's complicated relationship with #foxes. 🦊☠️

Here's a lesson in light-damage in #museums. #Taxidermy exposed to the light fades over time, ultimately creating specimens that no longer resemble the species they are supposed to represent. These two South American cock-of-the-rocks at Birmingham Museums are a clear "before & after".

Wholesome content of which @jackdashby.bsky.social will no doubt approve

Behind the Scenes at the Sedgwick Museum. 🦖 We explored our Collections Team’s favourite specimens, the archive and the evolution of scientific ideas with @richardfallon.bsky.social. We heard from @jackdashby.bsky.social about his new book on Natural History Museums. Thank you for coming!

The world of natural history #museums is a surprisingly strange one. What goes on behind the scenes? Why do they mostly display the same things? Where did they get all their stuff? How do they help save the world? Have a watch of my talk about my book, #NaturesMemory here!👇

Not sure what this coypu was up to, but it's clearly something very shifty. #taxidermy #Birmingham

Licking their bits, dancing with a feather, and cuddling an egg: some very curious curatorial decisions have been made with these #taxidermy stoats in Birmingham #Museums stores. 🤔

The world of natural history #museums is a surprisingly strange one. What goes on behind the scenes? Why do they mostly display the same things? Where did they get all their stuff? How do they help save the world? Have a watch of my talk about my book, #NaturesMemory here!👇

The dead bat symbol is in the sky above #Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery today as the Natural Sciences Collections Association (@natsca.bsky.social) committee gather to try and make the world better for natural history collections and the people who work with them.

Want to read a book about #extinction, as if it was writen by the animals themselves? It's an interesting experiment. Here's my review of Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds. 📚

👀😮😊👍👏 Love this! I really thought it was a wild scene indeed. Beautifully done!

A wet #wombat shakes off the rain and then gets back to some busy grazing. #WombatWednesday #Tasmania #MammalWatching #WildOz #wombats

What a genuinely outstanding book. First Tasmanians by Shayne Breen brings together so much research about the history of Aboriginal culture in #Tasmania, from resilience through the Ice Age, through thriving in a challenging environment, resistance to the genocide and recent revitalisation. 📖👏

Two #dingoes left Australia alive in 1802, with France's Baudin Expedition - the first known to travel overseas with Europeans. This male died during the voyage, but a female made it to the menagerie in Paris. Both are now in @mnhn.fr. #dingo #taxidermy

NICE! What a flipping lovely review of #NaturesMemory. And a lovely way to end the week!😊 "Inspired and inspiring... With Nature’s Memory, Ashby makes a vital contribution to the literature on the history of natural history #museums and collections, and critical museology and decolonizing practice."

Curator: Please can you make me a #taxidermy koala? 🐨 Taxidermist: Sure. Any pointers for what you want it to be doing or how it looks? Curator: Yes, since you've asked, could you give it a pot-belly, and make it scratch it? Taxidermist: 🫡

Be honest, could you tell this was a diorama? Haus der Natur in #Salzburg uses many tricks to make viewers believe they're seeing a wild scene: high-quality #taxidermy, outstanding background painting with perspective to give depth, and hiding the point where the painting meets the 3D foreground. 🐐

THIS IS TONIGHT! Grab a free ticket if you're around #Cambridge and are curious about what natural history #museums get up to.

Surprisingly true.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at #wombats, as I think Oscar Wilde once said. #WombatWednesday #Tasmania #MammalWatching #WildOz #wombat

Another day, another overstuffed #platypus 😍 Meet The #Fattypus of Salzburg.

In #museums we get to help a lot of people with their work (our collections are here to be studied, and researchers are also often interested in the practices we develop) - it turns out I had 290 research visitors or enquiries in 24/25! 🤓 Here's a word cloud of what they were interested in:

CALLING ALL #CAMBRIDGE MUSEUM & NATURAL HISTORY NERDS! This Thursday, the fabulous @sedgwickmuseum.bsky.social opens late for "Behind the Scenes Uncovered" - alongside a bunch of cool activities, I'll be doing an "in-conversation" about my book #NaturesMemory. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sedgwick-m...

Climbing up above #Salzburg - through the low blanket of cloud and fog - brought rewards of stunning views, a spattering of snow, and a few chamois in their thick, dark winter coats. 🐐 #MammalWatching #WildAustria

I've raided some of my #fieldguide shelves for a little consultancy project this weekend. 📚 It's a good excuse to look at books covering different parts of the world together (plus a first proper dive into @jimlabisko.bsky.social's GORGEOUS new #Frog book 🐸)