Jack Ashby

"Wild" by Jack Ashby, illustrated by Sara Boccaccini-Meadows, depicting many drawings of animals in forest background. The book is photographed among some cut-out paper leaves

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!🎁

The cover of "Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects" by Jack Ashby, showing a several specimens (a taxidermy bird of paradise; a pinned bumblebee; a viper skull; a chimp skeleton; a pinned butterfly; and a preserved sea horse) on a green background

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. 🐹🐨🐒🦍🐣🦟🦋🐝🐍🐛🦄🦫🦘

The cover of "PlatypusMatters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals", depicting a photo of a platypus diving in blue water.

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.

The cover of "Natures Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World's Natural History Museums" by Jack Ashby, depicting a bright green snail shell on a black background.

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 cover of "Natures Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World's Natural History Museums" by Jack Ashby, depicting a bright green snail shell on a black background.

The cover of "Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals" by Jack Ashby, depicting a photo of a platypus diving in blue water.

The cover of "Animal Kingdom: A Natural History in 100 Objects" by Jack Ashby, showing a several specimens (a taxidermy bird of paradise; a pinned bumblebee; a viper skull; a chimp skeleton; a pinned butterfly; and a preserved sea horse) on a green background

The cover of the children's book "Wild" by Jack Ashby, illustrated by Sara Boccaccini-Meadows, depicting many drawings of animals in forest background

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

Live Seven-Arm Octopus Spotted In The Deep Sea – Only The Fourth Time It’s Been Seen In 40 Years It actually has eight arms, but then the males do something rather strange…

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...

A gorgeous taxidermy striped possum on display in the Haus der Natur in Salzburg

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).

A terrible overstuffed Bosc monitor from the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL. Cotton wadding has been rammed into the empty skin so that it carries its own weight, like an inflated balloon animal. The wadding can been seen stick out of its mouth.

Back in the day, I wrote a blog about the Awful Bosc Monitor #CrapTaxidermy, and how it's weird that #museums have specimens that they know don't look anything like the species they are supposed to represent.
blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2017...

A terrible overstuffed Bosc monitor from the Manchester Museum, photographed from above. It looks exactly the same as the lizards in the other museums.

Two terrible overstuffed Bosc monitors from Birmingham Museums stores. Cotton wadding has been rammed into the empty skins so that they carry their own weight, like an inflated balloon animal. The wadding can been seen stick out of its mouth. It looks exactly the same as the lizards in the other museums.

Two terrible overstuffed Bosc monitors from the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL. Cotton wadding has been rammed into the empty skin so that it carries its own weight, like an inflated balloon animal. The wadding can been seen stick out of its mouth. It looks exactly the same as the lizards in the other museums.

A live Bosc monitor, which looks nothing like the taxidermy specimens. Photo by Daniel Bennett

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!!!

A taxidermy rottweiler posed with an open-mouthed snarl, teeth bared and eyes intense, with an aggressive pose. The wolf and hyena on the shelf next to it are posed much more neutrally

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

A taxidermy fox posed as dead, at Naturalis in Leiden, Netherlands

A taxidermy fox posed as dead and starting to rot, with its ribs exposed, at Oxford University Museum of Natural History

A taxidermy fox posed as dead, with blood pooling from its mouth, at Birmingham Museums stores

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. 🦊☠️

Two taxidermy birds in a storage cage. On the left is a bird is bright hot orange, whereas the one on the right has faded to a muted baby pink

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

Jack Ashby, a man wearing a green jumper, standing in front of a Giant Deer.

Richard Fallon, wearing a Sedgwick Museum t-Shirt, standing with a diplodocus model speaking to visitors.

A collections team staff member wearing a Sedgwick Museum t-shirt pointing to an Ichthyosaur snout. They are speaking to visitors.

The Sedgwick Museum Archivist standing at their stall talking to 2 visitors. The stall has archive facsimiles on it.

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!👇

A taxidermy stoat with a completely disastrous face

... but I'm not sure I'd describe this fella's pose as a "decision". 😬

A taxidermy coypu with a very guilty expression

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

A taxidermy stoat posed leaning on one arm and licking its groin

A taxidermy stoat posed upright, jumping, catching a small feather

A taxidermy stoat lying down hugging a white egg

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 Bat Symbol shining in a dark sky, but with a bat skeleton drawn over the bat sillhouette

A selfie of the NatSCA Committee stood in front of a display at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, with Clare Brown stood at front taking the photo

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

The cover of First Tasmanians by Shayne Breen

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. 📖👏

A taxidermy dingo on a museum storage rack. It has its head lowered with an open-mouth snarl, and is back is raised with its tail between its legs

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."

A very rotund taxidermy koala at the Haus der Natur in Salzburg. It is mounted upright on a branch, with one hand scratching its rounded belly. Its expression is the kind of face you'd pull while staring into the middle distance, lost in the satisfaction of a good scratch

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: 🫡

Sedgwick Museum Lates: Behind the Scenes Uncovered Explore the Museum in an atmospheric evening setting, as we share our work and collections behind the scenes.

Oh, and here's the link to the tickets!

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sedgwick-m...

A male (taxidermy) ibex emerges from behind (fake) rocks in front of a vast (painted) mountain panorama of nearby cliffs and distant valleys

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. 🐐