Hannah Cornish

Specimens in a display case at the Grant Museum of Zoology.

See this year's @ucl.ac.uk zoology student presentations and find out what they have discovered about their mystery museum specimens. Drop in between 2pm - 5pm on 5 December.

Maria Dragoi stood in the Micrarium at the Grant Museum of Zoology.

What’s missing from natural history collections? Maria Dragoi, @ucl.ac.uk Museum Studies alumna and current PhD candidate, discusses her research into our entomology collection and the importance of interpreting collections through a decolonial lens. www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-coll...

Decolonising the Zoology Museum: A Conservation Ritual Join the Grant Museum of Zoology for a very special after hours event celebrating our continued collaboration with Guarani and Kaiowá indigenous elders.

Join us tomorrow for a very special night @uclgrantmuseum.bsky.social as a part of @ucl.ac.uk MultiCOP supporting COP30. www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-coll...

My job is very glamorous

Hannah Cornish and Alice Holloway holding up a black drape behind UCL Grant Museum’s male gorilla skeleton ‘Hugo’ for some quick photos. They are smiling but their arms are screaming.

If you ever wondered how to photograph a gorilla skeleton without a studio …

African rock python skeleton articulated around a branch and temporarily suspended between coat racks. Which is the best use of coat racks ever.

Emilia Kingham holding branch with python skeleton before mounting in newly refurbished case. Alice Holloway crunching the numbers in distance.

Alice Holloway, Cyrus Shroff and Hannah Cornish ease python skeleton into case for positioning.

She’s up! Python skeleton hanging in case at UCL’s Grant Museum of Zoology.

So the answer to the question ‘how many people does it take to hang a python skeleton’ is five.

Taxidermy pink fairy armadillo specimen on black base with decanted Grant Museum specimens on tables in the background.

One of the benefits of decanting thousands of specimens for casework and redisplay is that you have the opportunity to deep dive into their histories and records. Just connected the archival dots of this pink fairy armadillo and it is an original @uclgrantmuseum.bsky.social specimen from 1828!

Tables packed full of animal specimen

An office with a lion skeleton on one of the desks and large jars of fish specimens on another

Tables packed full of animal specimens

Why is @uclgrantmuseum.bsky.social closed for two weeks? We are refitting some cases, so right now, it looks like this. Trust me, it's more organised than it appears! I'm enjoying sharing a desk with my lion skeleton coworker

Huge thanks to @tannisdavidson.bsky.social and team for making the impossible dream come true:

THE WORLD'S FIRST ART-SCIENCE WASP EXHIBITION!
www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-coll...

...from wasp researchers behind #WorldOfWasps @uclgrantmuseum.bsky.social...

@cintiaoi.bsky.social @idrisadams.bsky.social

A wasp nest on a curved brown leaf.

See the life of wasps as master architects, pest controllers and pollinators. Discover the delightfully relatable social goings-on inside our virtual nest at our upcoming exhibition from 25 June. www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-coll... #GMZWasps

Yes!

Everyone needs a jar of moles

I flipping love Operation Mincemeat! I cried twice. 11/10, would watch again.

A beige totebag with a black and white image of a jar full of moles on it. In the background is the Micrarium, a glowing alcove with walls made of microscope slides

It's finally here, the totebag to end all totebags from @uclgrantmuseum.bsky.social

Don't miss what is almost certainly the world's first museum exhibition all about wasps, opening on 25th June. The Grant Museum will be buzzing 🐝

Crabs in name only

Close up of four large brown horseshoe crabs in a glass jar. The fronts of their bodies are domed and horseshoe shaped with a serrated triangular back end and a long, pointed tail

What's on the @uclgrantmuseum.bsky.social trolley today?

Hannah Cornish stood at a lectern with her title slide behind her. It reads: "Making an exhibition of ourselves: displaying and not displaying human remains in the Grant Museum" and shows images of two museum displays

A PowerPoint slide reading "But then..." showing a comemrcially available plastic cast skull being unpacked from a cardboard box.

A lot of #museums are removing human remains from display if they don't have explicit consent from the person. They're often replaced with casts sourced commercially, but @hannahcornish.bsky.social at #NatSCA2025 pointed out that often these casts are made from remains that also don't have consent.

Three smiling people carry the ribcage of a large animal on the pavement outside the Grant Museum, while a fourth checks for traffic.

How do you move a 3 metre long, 150 year old dugong skeleton?

The @uclgrantmuseum.bsky.social dugong (known as Dougal or Derek to its friends) has been taken off display to be re-mounted by conservator Nigel Larkin. It will be back in the new year looking better than ever.

Animal specimens including skulls and jars

On the trolley today at the Grant Museum @uclgrantmuseum.bsky.social

Yes, I think it's still a font. I adapted it from an 1873 sampler to get the mid-Victorian vibes right

I love this! I recently finished a piece with 100,000 stitches, so clearly, I am to be feared!

The Surprising (And Very Unscientific) Reason Why Penis Bones Are So Rare In Natural History Museums #NotAllMuseums (but a lot of them) seem have to banished the penis bone. Why?

When it comes to certain parts of anatomy, #museums have been deliberately teaching people the wrong thing.
Most #mammals have a bone in their penis but natural history museums usually remove them from display, as I told @iflscience.com (& wrote in #NaturesMemory):
www.iflscience.com/where-have-a...

And barnacles are harder to cross stitch

This was brilliant!

Cross stitch embroidery of beetles and the words: But I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything. C Darwin to C Lyell 1861

I thought my first post on Bluesky should be something positive and motivational