This sounds amazing - can’t wait to read it. I remember writing essays about pigeon-homing as an undergraduate, when it was all (excuse the pun) up in the air. Exciting that we’re still learning more about it nearly 40 years later 🐦 🧲

This is a wonderful book - totally recommend for anyone interested in zoology and museums

Whoop whoop! My first book, Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects is out again in a new reprint! 🤩 It explores the *astonishing* things we can learn about the natural world from incredible specimens in natural history #museums. Go get your hands on it! #OneHundredAnimals

Ant Course is back! This year, in Mexico:

Parenting is 24/7

Prepping for another roasting day!

New evolutionary tree for all of the world's bumblebee species, from (1) slow-evolving nuclear genes, (2) fast-evolving mitochondrial genes, and (3) results from genomic data, to provide a complete starting point for comparative studies of all bumblebees www.researchgate.net/publication/...

It’s World Bee 🐝 Day! A day to celebrate these amazing insects, and to reflect on how we can support wild populations of 🐝 🐝 for the future. Museum collections are key in showing where bees used to be, setting baselines to understand impacts of stressors and set restoration/conservation targets

Spring joys

To celebrate International Day of Families, a reminder from @zoologymuseum.bsky.social that families come in all shapes and sizes. From life-mated sea horses with paternal care, through oil bird nuclear families, to the mostly female families of social insects, to brooding male sea spiders, & beyond

Hi everyone. Please respond to @morganmorrison73.bsky.social if you have info on this, or repost to your networks if you don’t. Thank you 🤩 🐝 🦋🪰🪲

My morning commute has been heralded by these glorious singers for weeks - sound on 🤩

Happy 100th Birthday to Sir David Attenborough from the @zoologymuseum.bsky.social He studied here, re-opened us after our renovation in 2018, loaned his famous reconstructed elephant bird egg to us to share with visitors, and has inspired us all to love and protect biodiversity around the globe 😍

A May Day swarm 🐝 There’s a queen 🫅 in there somewhere!

Happy Beltane! As well as 🔥 this ancient Gaelic festival is associated with animals, including cattle, hares, swallows, and honey bees - all signs of spring, food, and fertility. Cultural associations like this shape how we think and feel about animals. What do these museum specimens do for you?

What a beautiful morning 😍

Two dance flies (Empis tessellata) in a hedgerow. The male hangs by his front legs as he copulates with a female who is feeding on a nuptial gift (a bibionid fly) he has caught and offered her as a prelude to mating...I watched the whole event..transfixed!

It’s Earth Day. This year’s focus is community action, so let’s look at specimens where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The amazing architecture of corals and wasp nests emerges from combined actions of many individuals. Let’s be inspired by nature to make the world a better place!

I was lucky enough to spend some time with our Entomology collection this week, and sometimes it’s the small things that stick. This is a case of ladybirds 🐞 collected by Alfred Russell Wallace (www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who...) who co-discovered the idea of natural selection and evolution. Just wow 🤩

📢We need you!📢Volunteers are essential at the Museum from providing a warm welcome to visitors, to getting hands on with our specimens. No zoology knowledge is needed, just enthusiasm! Different times & days available. Get in touch 🙂University of Cambridge Museums https://ow.ly/EB4i50YJPIZ

Homes and a cloud of sand martins - always uplifted by how small interventions can have big impacts on biodiversity. Great work at Webbs Hole Sluice - incorporate their homes in your industrial architecture and they will come. So, what small thing can each of us do to make a difference?

@cubotanicgarden.bsky.social looking lovely today 😍

Cambridge histories through blur plaques

I’ve been thinking about scale this week. And that’s something zoology museums are great at helping us grasp. Many of our public specimens are arranged to help people understand the physical range of closely related animals, so I thought I’d share some of my favourites @zoologymuseum.bsky.social

It’s Family Day at the Museum, with lots of fun activities. Having a great time being a volunteer for the day @zoologymuseum.bsky.social

Really important work by @aclassen.bsky.social and colleagues, demonstrating the importance of long-term ecological studies - climate change will drive the disappearance of alpine meadows 🌼🌸🪻😢 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Today is the International Day of Happiness, a chance to reflect on what makes us happy. Right now, working with all my amazing new colleagues @zoologymuseum.bsky.social @camzoology.bsky.social makes me 😍. This leopard seal is also very happy, and would love to have you visit. What makes you happy?

Very sad to learn of Paul’s death. A brilliant mind, a great mentor to so many grad students, and a kind and funny man. Definitely not a life without controversy, but the fields of ecology and conservation are lucky to have had him

Today is World Sleep Day 😴 and in celebration of that, here are some of the snooziest animals in the world @zoologymuseum.bsky.social

Never thought that the genus of ants 🐜 I worked on in my PhD would be the target of illegal wildlife trade. ❤️ 🐜 but dont illegally trade them! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Research groups here in Zoology play an important part in Europe’s response to pollinator decline. Read about their recent work: bit.ly/40rpMly @markjfbrown.bsky.social @restpoll.bsky.social @safeguard-pollinators.eu

Here’s a great PhD opportunity in the crossover between humanities and natural history- please repost 🙏 www.ccc.cam.ac.uk/initiatives/...

So, marsupials are in the news this week, with the discovery of a new genus of possum in New Guinea. Museum specimens were key to the identification of this new species. So, here’s our lovely ring-tailed possum, a relative of the new discovery. For more, read on: theconversation.com/meet-tous-an...

IUCN updated Red List of Bees finally published: op.europa.eu/en/publicati...

Katarzyna Biala (European Environment Agency) gives a final stakeholder perspective and suggests how we can build for the future across scales and costs of action and inaction @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting #bee 🐝 🪰 🦋

Delphine Depeux (European Landowners Organisation) gives a stakeholder view and landowner perspective on the context for pollinator conservation - it is a land management conversation delivered through partnership @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting #bee 🐝 🪰 🦋

Zafarani Uwingabire (Dijon) digs into the important detail of how world views impact effective pollinator conservation - we need to understand this to get conservation right @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting #bee 🐝 🪰 🦋

Rene van der Wal (SLU): pollinators mean different things to different people, enabling multiple actors to gather; if we define the ‘right’ pollinator, we lose the chance to engage the multiple parts of society needed to generate effective conservation @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting 🐝 🪰 🦋

Now Lorenzo Marini (Uni Padua) tells us how total wild bee abundance can be a good indicator for wild species richness, and so a valuable monitoring tool, particularly for citizen/community scientists @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting #bee 🐝

Dirk Maes (Butterfly Conservation Europe) talks about how the Grassland Butterfly Index is generated, the trends in butterfly abundance it identifies, and how to mitigate and reverse butterfly declines in Europe @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting 🦋

Simon Potts (Uni Reading) introduces understudied pressures and focuses on traffic impacts on pollinators in Europe @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting - clear recommendations to enhance pollinators (see new paper at bottom of last photo) #bee 🐝 🦋 🪰

@ingolfsteffan.bsky.social (who led the project) shows what factors in protected areas and the landscapes around them drive pollinator populations in Europe @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting - identifying drivers enable conservation actions to enhance pollinators #bee 🐝 🦋 🪰

Olli Schweiger (Leipzig) explains what factors drive large-scale distribution in bees, and how extreme climate events can drive local declines and collapse in pollinator populations - but also how we can mitigate against such dangers @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting #bee 🐝 🦋 🪰

Niamh Phelan (IUCN) shows the red list of pollinator taxonomists in Europe @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting - saving pollinators requires pollinator experts #bee 🐝 🦋 🪰

Denis Michez (Mons University) follows up at the @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting by updating us on the status of wild bees and hover flies across Europe #bee 🐝 🦋 🪰 - key message, we now have distributional data to underpin conservation strategies for wild bees and hover flies across Europe

Andreas Gumbert (EU DG Environment) kicks off the @safeguard-pollinators.eu final meeting by summarising the state of European policy, driven by years of local, national, and EU-level research #bee 🐝 🦋 🪰

Finally, the bug is back with a round of the Guinness.

Baby #wombats (wombatlets) are particularly adorable when they're still in their shaped-like-a-potato phase. #WombatWednesday #fieldwork #Tasmania #wombat #MammalWatching #WildOz

It’s World Pangolin Day tomorrow! Why isn’t there an emoji for pangolins? In its absence, here are some pangolins from the @zoologymuseum.bsky.social Museum specimens help define species distributions, aid conservation action, and make a world where we have a better chance of seeing live pangolins 😍

When your collection derives from a series of sea-borne expeditions, how do you present that? The Regional Natural History Museum in Turin came up with a great solution - this exhibition mocks up the inside of a boat, with each booth representing an expedition @zoologymuseum.bsky.social