thebrainscoop:

ceeesaw:

why-animals-do-the-thing:

khrysdiebee:

thebrainscoop:

khrysdiebee:

why-animals-do-the-thing:

Was the animal killed or kept in confinement/an unnatural environment? Etc. Do you ever have this problem? And even if you don’t, do you have any ideas on how to get around it? Thank you very much!

There is literally no way to get around the fact that most animals in museum collections were either captive specimens while they were alive or collected through hunting. It’s simply not practical to pick up things that are already dead and attempt to turn them into museum quality specimens – roadkill or things that are already rotting have damage, and you can’t accurately study them. 

Here’s how I would encourage thinking about it: you’re not perpetuating any further death through your patronage of facilities with animal-based collections. With the advancement of technology, the scientific world has almost entirely moved on from needing to kill things in order to study them.*

The animals in the collection are already dead, but they’re effectively ambassadors for the protection of their brethren because they’re part of the collection. Their death has allowed scientists to study them in order to protect and conserve the ones still living, has let them touch the minds of of visitors and spark their passion, has given us a way to still value and remember the species we’ve driven into extinction. There’s a very solid truth to the educational mantra that people will often only care about the things they have personal experience with. The animals in these collections are vital for that, and I think it’s much more important to honor them by supporting the good they can still do for every other living member of their species than to boycott educational facilities due to choices that were made decades, if not centuries before now. Even if those specimens were held captive for pride or killed for a trophy, they are valuable and vital for scientific advancement and education. 

You can’t change how they died – but you can choose, with your actions, to support what that sacrifice means now. 

*Some facilities will still do collection trips, and no institution will turn down access to the body of a rare animal in order to study it in ways that are impossible while they were alive. However, these projects are often grant- or school-funded, and it is highly unlikely that your presence and admission fee or lack therof will effect the continuation of these practices in any significant way. 

You’ll never hear me argue against the merit of scientific collections, but the scientific world is no where near moving on to stop killing things to study them. While this may be an appropriate answer for vertebrate animals (and even then, only some vertebrates), this is entirely untrue for most invertebrates (you know, like 90% of all animal life?).

I’ve killed thousands of bees. And I’m going to kill thousands more. Because you have to. You can even remotely accurately study insects and other invertebrates without collecting them. However, their populations are usually so numerous it won’t make a difference, and will hopefully even benefit them in the long run.

There are some not-so-pretty sides to science, and I completely understand how you feel, I’m a vegetarian myself. Be rest assured though, that the scientists studying (and yes, killing) these animals have the utmost respect for them. There are rigorous guidelines and hoops to jump through to research animals, including ones used for scientific collections (except for invertebrates, no one seems to care much about them). You should look up some articles about the ethics of scientific collections, there are many that are far more eloquent than anything I could express.

Yup, this^ @khrysdiebee. For more information, check out our video Where’d you get all those dead animals?

Really good example from @thebrainscoop of a far more eloquent answer, so thanks, Emily (also, those bee earrings, where did you get those????)!

And again, a plug for inverts, scientists literally can’t tell what’s going on with regards to invert ecology until they know what’s even there. This absolutely necessitates collection on the most basic level, as most inverts can’t even be identified without closer (i.e. microscopic) investigation. I try to use observational methods as often as I can, but even in a group as arguably well known as bees, field identification is shoddy as best.

This is such good commentary and I’m also fangirling like hella in regards to brainscoop chiming in!

Yeah, when I made the comment about the field having moved on I was mostly thinking about old taxidermy collections and the fact that we don’t go out and hunt to get educational specimens like that anymore. I think that’s because the original question was in regards to specimens visible to the public and not those used for current research endeavors.

In addition to appreciating the corrections to my commentary – even I didn’t realize how necessary and common it is to cull inverts for study – it’s been really cool to see all the commentary this discussion has engendered about ongoing research and the thoughts the people working on it have about the ethical aspects involved.

are there reasons why it’s “necessary” to research these animals other than to satisfy human curiosity & to correct human damage to the world? i’m genuinely curious & not attempting to be purposefully inflammatory.

@Ceeesaw Ooooh boy yes welcome to The Brain Scoop. One of the primary goals of our channel is to tell stories about the use of specimens in collections, and to help this conversation. The continued collecting of specimens informs us about things like: 

• what organisms are naturally occurring in an area, and which are invasive. Not all collections for/in museums look at populations in decline. For example, we know the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis), a highly destructive invasive beetle from northeastern Asia responsible for killing hundreds of millions of ash trees, is gradually making its way across the United States thanks in part to monitoring efforts and early environmental surveys. Every time the emerald ash borer is found in a new locality, a record is made and it can be deposited in a collection. By creating maps of this species’ radiation we can make predictions about how quickly it may spread in the future, and measure the effectiveness of our efforts to mitigate that spread, and subsequent damage caused.
• spread of disease. Like, the reason we know what species of mosquito is carrying Zika virus is thanks to museums and taxonomists! And if we want to know where those mosquitoes are going… we gotta collect them. Continuously. 
• rates/patterns of climate change. Since we’ve been collecting in certain parts of the globe for over a century, we can compare the distribution and biogeography of new collections to previously-known areas for those populations. A common trend is seeing that organisms which used to live in lower elevation are now moving to points of higher elevation, in order to reach cooler climates. Creating predictive models with this information can inform us of which habitats and species are at particular risk for loss of numbers, or destruction of ecosystems – which brings me to the next point:
• understanding changes in biodiversity (what lives where) and population numbers is a key part of habitat monitoring, and conservation efforts. Our recent interview with Dr. Inger is a good example of this – when he started collecting frogs in Borneo in the 1950′s, they knew of perhaps 90 species. In his lifetime they’ve come to describe another 100 or so from that country. He also mentions the pervasive deforestation that wipes out populations and entire species. Gotta collect from an area in order to know what was once there – and then perform additional collections to see whether or not it’s extinct. 

All of these examples ^^^ are significant when you apply this knowledge to informing policy, the regulation of private industry, and advancing other fields of science. Knowing which species of mosquito is what is fine, but knowing that a certain species is responsible for transmitting illness that kills millions of people is, inarguably, hugely important. Museum collections serve as the baseline for our knowledge of this ever-changing planet and its threatened ecosystems.

EDIT: I just found this in my drafts from 7 months ago and I’m not sure why I never posted it, but oh boy does it feel timely.