The Museum’s collections house many eye-catching items, from the towering Tyrannosaurus to striking totem poles. But there is also a whole category of significant specimens that are imperceptible to the naked eye. We’re talking microbes: single-celled organisms stored in petri dishes or on glass slides.
These vials are full of spiders preserved in alcohol. They are just a tiny sample of the collection at the American Museum of Natural History. In fact, with over a million spiders, the Museum’s holdings are the largest in the world.
Archives like this one are a treasure trove for scientific research. Painstakingly labeled with precise data as to time and place of collection, the specimens are a library of life for researchers tackling questions ranging from evolution to biogeography to climate change.
Why alcohol? The spiders in the Museum’s collection are preserved in alcohol so they don’t dry out. A shriveled spider is impossible to study—researchers rely on minute anatomical details to determine species, for instance. Even when examining a spider under a microscope, scientists place it in a dish of alcohol.
See this and live spiders in Spiders Alive! open now through November 29.
Mark your calendar! Episode 2 of Shelf Life premieres December 15.
Catch up on episode 1 above, and learn much more about the approximately 33 million million artifacts and specimens at the Museum on the Shelf Life website.
Cymbomonas alga
No. PLY262
This green alga, Cymbomonas,was recently caught on camera (okay, electron microscope) devouring bacteria. The images were definitive proof of a process that scientists have long thought was used by early organisms to acquire free-living chloroplasts, the structures that convert light into food. Bacteria-eating was likely the first step in the evolution of photosynthetic algae and land plants, which helped raise Earth’s oxygen levels and made the planet hospitable to animal life.
Check out the beautiful trailer for Shelf Life, a new series for curious minds.
In 1869, the year the Museum was incorporated, the Trustees turned to the critical task of building its collections. Within a few months, they sent Daniel Giraud Elliot, a noted ornithologist and naturalist, and Museum Trustee William T. Blodgett to negotiate the purchase of “certain collections of specimens in Natural History” in Europe.
Elliot and Blodgett ultimately purchased the collection of Prince Maximilian zu Wied (1782–1867), an explorer from the German principality of Wied-Neuwied. Prince Maximilian’s collection “is regarded as one of the most important private collections in Europe, and has long been consulted by the scientific world,” wrote Blodgett in his report. It was a fantastic opportunity for the nascent Museum to acquire specimens that would form the nucleus of its holdings.
The value of the Maximilian collection lay largely in its diversity and the rarity of its specimens, containing 4,000 mounted birds, 600 mounted mammals, and about 2,000 fishes and reptiles, either mounted or in alcohol. Researchers at the Museum still study these today.
Do you have a weird rock or mysterious shell? Are you dying to know about that feather you found in the park? Hoping to talk to an expert in the field? You're in luck! Next Saturday, May 10, is the Museum's annual Identification Day.
Inspired by the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt, the Museum celebrates the importance of natural history collections by inviting visitors to bring in their own specimens to our annual Identification Day. You provide the object, and our Museum experts will do their best to tell you what the heck they are. Items identified in previous years have included a whale jawbone, a green-beetle bracelet from Brazil, and a 5,000-year-old stone spear point from Morocco.
We'll also be 3D scanning your objects and will have our Makerbot 3D printers at the event. The first 2,000 visitors receive their very own 3D printed Tiny Teddy Roosevelt!
With over 1 million specimens, the Museum's spider collection is the largest in the world. It serves as a growing resource for scientists worldwide. Find out more about the collection behind Spiders Alive! after the link: http://bit.ly/OD4NCf
Mantis Shrimp from the Museum's collection
Photo by Denis
Butterflies from the Museum's collection
Photo by Denis
Inside the Museum's Ichthyology Collection
Photo by Rod
Hall of Biodiversity
Photo by Denis
From the Museum's Herpetology Collection: Craig photographed a selection of items originally used by author, educator, and conservationist Roger Conant
A few amber-related items from the Museum's collections, photographed by Craig
