Pickled moles, anyone?

To the Grant Museum of Zoology in the Rockerfeller Building at UCL yesterday. Why? Because we'd heard that it housed a 5m long anaconda skeleton and a jar of pickled moles - that, and the fact that Fulham weren't at home.

The Grant Museum houses 67,000 specimens - pickled, preserved, stuffed or mounted - ranging in size from the skull of an elephant and the largest set of Elk antlers ever seen (3 metres across) to a complete set of flea legs mounted on a microscope slide. I'm aware that there may have been smaller things which I couldn't see...

Last month the museum turned one of it's store cupboards into a Micrarium, allowing visitors to see 2000 such slides, backlit and with microscopic creatures - or parts thereof - mounted on them. According to the museum, 95% of all living things are invisible to the naked eye and the slides reveal the stunningly complex and beautiful design that we miss. It's inspiring and uplifting stuff, and pointing to the creative wonder of the God behind it all.

The Grant Museum was established by Robert Grant in 1827 - having been appointed the first Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at the newly founded University of London he began to gather specimens in order to dissect and to illustrate his lectures. The young Charles Darwin was influenced by Grant's work. The exhibits are still housed in Victorian display cases, with bell jars and pickling jars alongside wired-together skeletons - but dotted around are interactive iPads allowing you to join in with online discussions about the ethics of it all (http://www.qrator.org/).

Fascinating fact: the museum houses a few dodo bones, which are the closest you get to a dodo these days - even the stuffed ones that were once in existence have all been destroyed or fallen apart. And the rumour is that the stuffed ones were all covered by pigeon feathers anyway...

It is only a small and quirky museum, part classroom for the Zoology students at UCL, and the last of its kind in the UK, but definitely worth a couple of hours visit! Where else will you ever get see a large jar of pickled moles, a perfectly dried and preserved Portugese Man-O-War, and a gorilla skeleton? And it's free admission. 

Pickled mole, anyone?