Jack Ashby
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jackdashby.bsky.social
Jack Ashby
@jackdashby.bsky.social
3.1K followers 280 following 660 posts
Award-winning author #PlatypusMatters & #NaturesMemory. Assistant Director of @ZoologyMuseum.bsky.social at Cambridge Uni. President of the Society for the History of Natural History. Australian mammal nerd. He/him. Own views.
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jackdashby.bsky.social
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: 🫡
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
November 21, 2025 at 7:55 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
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. 🐐
A male (taxidermy) ibex emerges from behind (fake) rocks in front of a vast (painted) mountain panorama of nearby cliffs and distant valleys
November 20, 2025 at 8:01 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at #wombats, as I think Oscar Wilde once said.
#WombatWednesday #Tasmania #MammalWatching #WildOz #wombat
A grey wombat walks towards the camera on a bed of light green grass with patches of deep green ferns
November 19, 2025 at 7:32 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Another day, another overstuffed #platypus 😍
Meet The #Fattypus of Salzburg.
A very rotund taxidermy platypus on a beige shelf
November 18, 2025 at 7:54 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
In #museums we get to help a lot of people with their work (our collections are here to be studied, and researchers are also often interested in the practices we develop) - it turns out I had 290 research visitors or enquiries in 24/25! 🤓
Here's a word cloud of what they were interested in:
A word-cloud with the following words featuring particularly highly: Colonial History Humanitues thylacines AI Platypus Display
November 17, 2025 at 3:57 PM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Climbing up above #Salzburg - through the low blanket of cloud and fog - brought rewards of stunning views, a spattering of snow, and a few chamois in their thick, dark winter coats. 🐐
#MammalWatching #WildAustria
A steep wooded slope in thick mist, with a hint of blue sky above, and a thick layer of autumn leaves on the ground A mountain scene with bright blue sky and a dusting of snow A cloud inversion - mountain ridges poke through a fluffy layer of cloud, under a bright blue sky A steep slope with browning grass and rocks and a layer of pine trees. A dark brown chamois stands by one of the trees
November 17, 2025 at 8:05 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
I've raided some of my #fieldguide shelves for a little consultancy project this weekend. 📚 It's a good excuse to look at books covering different parts of the world together (plus a first proper dive into @jimlabisko.bsky.social's GORGEOUS new #Frog book 🐸)
Fieldguides covering birds and mammals from Australia, Europe, Africa, North America and India. Plus "The Lives of Frogs - A Natural History" by Jim Labisco and Richard Griffiths
November 15, 2025 at 5:06 PM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Some people visit historic cabinets of curiosities for the sense of Enlightenment wonder, some for the exquisite displays of incredible specimens and artefacts. Me? It's all about the #CrapTaxidermy.
I'm guessing this little beauty is doing its best to be a leopard cat. St Peter's Abbey in #Salzburg
A cabinet of black wood, with a gold grille over the glass, displaying artefacts carved from ibex horn. A giant clam and elk horn are on the floor below A close-up of a cabinet with a gold grille,containing taxidermy reptiles, fishes, and starfish A cabinet of black wood, with a gold grille over the glass, displaying corals A truly terrible taxidermy cat with spots. It has been absurdly stretched. It has yellow goggly eyes and a open mouth
November 14, 2025 at 8:17 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Most people, particularly in Europe, don't imagine #wombats (or any Australian #mammals!) in the snow, so it's cool that the #wombat diorama at @nhmwien.bsky.social depicts a snowy habitat. Snow wombats are common in #Tasmania - like the live one above. #taxidermy
A taxidermy wombat in a diorama including a dusting of snow on the leaf litter, and a painted background showing a snowy scene
November 13, 2025 at 11:19 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Up in the Tasmanian highlands, a little #wombat grazes in the driving snow, braced against the wind.
#WombatWednesday #Tasmania #MammalWatching #wombats #WildOz
With its body hunched up and its head turned against the wind, a wombat grazes on a small clear patch of vegetation on a slope of snow. Snowflakes can be seen being blown horizontally across the photo.
November 12, 2025 at 7:53 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Want to know more about how #echidnas got their European names? Here's part of that story from my book #PlatypusMatters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals (the bit about why we can't explain that echidnas appear to have been named after vipers is in the footnote).
The cover of PlatypusMatters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals by Jack Ashby. The image shows a platypus diving A screenshot of a page of the book. It reads: "Shaw dithered about where they should be placed taxonom-ically, suggesting that a new genus may need to be created for them, but in the end decided to lump them in the same group – Myrmecophaga – as South America’s giant anteaters. He gave them the common name ‘porcupine ant- eater’, and they have otherwise become known as the ‘spiny anteater’, ‘Australian porcupine’ and ‘New Holland hedgehog’.* Over the years they were subsequently put in the same genus as porcupines and then platypuses, but eventually taxonomists followed Shaw’s original notion and gave them a name of their own. The one we have settled on is Tachyglossus, meaning ‘swift tongue’, with the species name aculeatus, or ‘prickly’. This is perfectly descriptive – echidna tongues can flick out 100 times in a minute in search of their insect prey.One of the strangest, most surprising and most fondly remembered social experiences of my life took place in the tiny township of Adventure Bay, on Bruny Island, off Tasmania’s south coast. Toby and I were there for the island’s incredible wildlife – particularly the abundant echidnas. We spent a couple of weeks sleeping in our car – a minuscule, ancient bright- yellow Holden Gemini – in the empty beach parking lot overlooking the Southern Ocean (it was, without exaggeration, * The etymology of the word echidna is an interesting one, as ékhidna in Ancient Greek means ‘viper’. The word ekhînos, meaning ‘hedgehog’ (or, if Latinised to echinus, also ‘sea urchin’), would make much more sense, but that doesn’t explain where the ‘d’ came from"
November 11, 2025 at 4:53 PM
jackdashby.bsky.social
What does a snowflake moray eel have in common with an adorable egg-laying, anteating Australian mammal?
They are both #echidnas! The scientific name of the eel is #Echidna. Ékhidna means "viper" in Ancient Greek, which makes sense for a snake-shaped fish, but is more confusing for the mammal.
A preserved eel in a long tall jar. The specimen is evenly patched with black and brown. The label below reads: "Echidna nebuliser (Ahl) Netzmürane Pazifik" (On display at the Natural History Museum in Vienna) A wild echidna - a dark brown spiny animal with a pointy anteating snout - stood amongst grass and ferns
November 11, 2025 at 7:31 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
The only other #taxidermy #thylacine in Austria is also posed to look non-threatening. This one in storage in @nhmwien.bsky.social is crouching in a diminutive or even curious pose. It came from a natural history dealer in Hamburg in 1870. Looking closely it appears to have been given a full pouch.
A taxidermy thylacine specimen on a shelf of other marsupials (a quoll is in front). Viewed from its left side, the animal has been posed to have its head dipped, looking down, and both front and back legs bent into a crouch. Between its back legs the pouch is extended A taxidermy thylacine specimen on a shelf of other marsupials (a bandicoot is to the left). Viewed from its front right side, the animal has been posed to have its head dipped, looking down, and both front and back legs bent into a crouch. Between its back legs the pouch is extended. A label around its neck reads: ST134 THYLACINUS CYNOCEPHALUS
November 10, 2025 at 7:29 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Obviously it's sad when historic #taxidermy cracks, but it can show you how these specimens were converted from flat, treated skins to stand "alive" again. Here, the crack in this rhino at @nhmwien.bsky.social reveals an inner cage of willow beams. 🦏
A cracked rhino taxidermy surrounded by other taxidermy specimens. The crack shows tightly arranged horizontal wooden branches. [NB the horns are fakes] A close-up of of the cracked rhino skin, showing tightly arranged horizontal wooden branches.
November 6, 2025 at 6:12 PM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Only four #taxidermy bluebuck are known in #museums (Paris, Leiden, Stockholm, Vienna): the only large mammal species to become extinct in Africa in recent centuries. Bluebuck disappeared in ~1800.
(It feels weird to know I've seen them all - the only physical evidence of what bluebuck looked like)
A bluebuck specimen in the stores at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. It's a large beige antelope with long thin curving horns). The specimen is surrounded by many other taxidermy mammals
November 5, 2025 at 2:20 PM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Excited to be at the Haus der Nature in Salzburg today, talking through some of my reflections on what natural history #museums have been up to for the last couple of centuries, and why that's important for how we think of them today.
The opening image for Symbiosis showing a natural history museum workshop in the 1950s A conference paper blurb. It reads miorld's Natural History Museums Past, Present and Future Panel 06 Chair: John Holmes University of Birmingham Jack Ashby Cambridge University Museum of Zoology Nature's Memory: Panel 06- WED 5 NOV 2025 - 9:15 Jack Ashby NATURE'S MEMORY Bemnd the Scene at the World, Natuiral Hustor Museum Behind the Scenes at the World's Natural History Museums Jack Ashby's new book, Nature's Memory shares hidden stories behind the world's iconic natural history museums, from enormous mounted whale skeletons to cabinets of impossibly tiny insects Look closely and all is not as it seems: these museums are not as natural as we might think. Mammals dominate the displays, for example, even though they make up less than 1 percent of species; there are many more male specimens than females; and often a museum's most popular draw - the dinosaur skeletons - are not actually real. Over 99 percent of museum collections are held in im- mense, unseen storehouses. And it's becoming clear that these institutions have not been as honest about their complex histories as they should be. Yet it is also just starting to be understood that their vast collections are indispensable resources in the fight against biodiversity loss and climate catastrophe. In this talk, Jack will share stories from the three main themes of the book How well do natural history museums really represent nature, how did they really come together and how can they help save the world? Part of the whale warehouse at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Support Centre 22 SYMBIOSIS 2025
November 5, 2025 at 8:12 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Spotted in Vienna!
At @nhmwien.bsky.social 🏛
Josh Davis book Queer: Sex und Geschlecht in der Welt der Tiere und Pflanzen
November 4, 2025 at 5:34 PM
jackdashby.bsky.social
The largest ever turtle - 74-million-year-old Archelon - really was quite large. (@themuseumofliz.bsky.social for scale) 🐢
On display at @nhmwien.bsky.social
Liz Hide inspecting a huge fossil turtle - around the size of a car
November 4, 2025 at 1:30 PM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Stellar's sea cows are fascinating for many reasons, not least because they were giant marine mammals that were first encountered by Europeans in 1741, & were driven to #extinction by 1768. I recently learnt they didn't have any finger bones (it's not just that they're missing from museum skeletons)
A Steller's sea cow skeleton in Vienna, with arrows drawn on the photo to point out the missing phalanges A Steller's sea cow skeleton in Vienna A Steller's sea cow skeleton in Vienna
November 4, 2025 at 11:09 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Little and large.
I really like this display at @nhmwien.bsky.social showing the size difference between the biggest and smallest #mammals, with a single #whale vertebra alongside a tiny shrew.
A whale vertebra and taxidermy shrew. The label reads (translated from German): "Giants and Dwarfs Mammals have achieved great diversity in form and also they have evolved gigantic forms like whales (the blue whale weighs 130 tons) but also tiny species like the pygmy shrew (4 grams).
November 4, 2025 at 10:16 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
You don't often see a #taxidermy echidna that is actually shaped like a live #echidna.
✅️ Correctly backwards-pointing feet.
✅️ Belly correctly not flattened on the ground.
✅️ Smoothly graded neck.
@nhmwien.bsky.social
A taxidermy echidna with its front legs propped up on a rock
November 4, 2025 at 8:15 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
Look at this absolute chunker of a #platypus (Schnabeltier in German = "beak-animal")!
#Fattypus
A really fat taxidermy platypus at the Natural History Museum in Vienna
November 4, 2025 at 7:15 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
An absolutely stunning #thylacine at @nhmwien.bsky.social, which hasn't been posed to convey the impression that #thylacines were dangerous or threatening in the way that so many other #taxidermy specimens do. That idea was central to the false claim that they threatened #Tasmania's sheep industry.
Head and shoulders of a thylacine reclining Vienna's thylacine specimen, posed lying down with its head up, and no teeth bared Vienna's thylacine specimen, posed lying down with its head up, and no teeth bared Vienna's thylacine specimen, posed lying down with its head up, and no teeth bared
November 4, 2025 at 6:29 AM
jackdashby.bsky.social
I like the idea of museum specimens having "siblings", like casts of the same original #fossils that were sent to different #museums around the world. @themuseumofliz.bsky.social and I have been "collecting" siblings of the Iguanodon in Cambridge - here's one in @nhmwien.bsky.social in #Vienna. 🦖
Liz Hide and Jack Ashby in front of the cast of Iguanodon in Vienna cast of Iguanodon in Vienna cast of Iguanodon in Vienna
November 3, 2025 at 4:31 PM
jackdashby.bsky.social
If you don't have space for a whole #mammoth, half a mammoth works just fine. 🦣
@nhmwien.bsky.social
A model woolly mammoth in the corner of a museum gallery. It's just the front half, sticking out of the wall
November 3, 2025 at 3:57 PM