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Coddling Caudals

Posted in Frozen Mammals, Reviews, tagged , on February 15, 2015| 10 Comments »

Think of a region of general mammalian anatomy. You’re probably not thinking of the tail. We’re mammals and yet have reduced ours to a puny coccyx embedded in muscle and fat. It’s an alien organ to us. Let’s face it, the tail gets the short shrift when it comes to morphological, functional and evolutionary studies in tetrapod vertebrates. There are notable exceptions such as in studies of prehensile tails or the role of the tail in cetacean locomotion, but broadly we know far less about the caudal vertebrae of mammals than we do about heads or limbs or some other bits. It is timely to coddle caudals: to talk about tails, not turn tail and run rostrally. This post wags its tail affectionately at the topic.

No blog post on tails is complete without a photo of the business end of Euoplocephalus's (Ankylosauria) caudals.

No blog post on tails is complete without a photo of the business end of Euoplocephalus’s (Ankylosauria) caudals.

Thagomizer.

Thagomizer of Stegosaurus. But of course!

Stomach-Churning Rating: well, there are some rancid emu butts, so I’m giving a 7/10; but otherwise mostly just line drawings.

My team has done a bit of work trying to better appreciate the tail as part of our expanded emphasis on the evolutionary morphology and biomechanics of the vertebral column; not just limbs as I was used to. Former PhD student Michael Pittman did his whole thesis on the evolution of tail form and function in dinosaurs, publishing a nice PLOS paper on theropod tail evolution, with other cool stuff in the pipeline. Pittman visited our lab recently with collaborator Heinrich Mallison to gather new data on the tails of archosaurs, focusing on Nile crocodiles and emus as an initial phylogenetic bracket. In my team’s prior work, we’d dabbled with theropod tails, focusing on the caudofemoralis muscle of theropod dinosaurs like T. rex, and on the size of the tail and its effects on the body’s centre of mass, following up on super-duper classic work by my mentor Steve Gatesy. So we have some caudal street cred, but we don’t have the tiger by the tail. (Hang in there, I’m going to milk the tail puns here!)

Don’t be afraid to touch the tail pics- they lead to bigger versions.

Mallison and Pittman know how to coddle caudals!

Mallison and Pittman know how to coddle caudals!

"Emu butt"- the tail is hidden in the smelly bulb of fat on the left side.

“Emu butt”- the tail is hidden in the smelly bulb of fat on the left side.

Bending an emu tail to measure its stiffness.

Bending an emu tail to measure its mobility.

Emu tail bones: our collection

Emu tail bones: our collection

I was inspired to write this post because of Michael’s visit, which gave me the opportunity to shoot some deliriously disgusting images of “emu butts” during the dissections and CT scans, but also got me thinking more about tails. And as usual, I poked around the literature looking for tall tales of tails.

I ran across one of those great review papers that is fodder for a hundred or more research projects: “The mammalian tail: a review of functions” (1979) by Graham C. Hickman (Mammal Review 9(4): 143-157. The rest of this post reviews his review.

Hickman, like I do here, starts off by reminding us of the tail’s neglect in science; e.g. “modifications of caudal vertebrae such as lengthened zygapophyses and neural spines are not as striking as the flexibility shown in the changing length and fusing of limb bones.” True that, but Hickman adds the great turn of phrase “A rodent chewing off its leg to escape a trap seems much more of an extreme than chewing off the tail, though it has four legs and but one tail.” Then he runs through a general overview of the diversity of tail forms and functions in mammals, with plenty of citations of older literature (there’s bound to be much to find in the tailings from the goldmine of 1800s German morphology papers, too).

What would a giant anteater look like without its tail? Odd indeed.

HickmanFig7

Mammalian tails range from four caudals in us freakish humans (does no mammal naturally have fewer, or have truly lost the tail? I wonder if anything has been missed) to fifty in pangolins (huzzah!). Breeds of dogs seem not to vary as much in terms of tail bone count as I’d expect: 20-23. But Hickman’s mention of Thorington’s (1970) study showing that mouse embryos raised at higher temperatures develop longer tails grabbed me… and reminded me of groundbreaking work that RVC PhD student Andrea Pollard is doing with temperature effects on bird and crocodile limbs (stay tuned).

Figure 2 in Hickman (1979) was what grabbed me most, depicting tail disparity in mammals. It’s a figure that gets your tail thumping. Check it out:

TO ADD

Anatomical disparity of mammalian tails! A, Black Rat; B, 9-banded Armadillo; C, Grey Squirrel; D, Horse; E, Fallow Deer; F, Wooly Spider Monkey; G, Coatimundi; H, Beaver; I, Bottle-nosed Whale; J, Manatee; K, Flying Squirrel; L, Fat-tailed Gerbil; M, Scaly-tailed Squirrel, N, Plains Pocket Gopher; O, Porcupine; P, Grey Kangaroo; Q, Naked Sand-rat; R, Big Brown Bat; S, Merriam’s Kangaroo Rat; T, anonymous Glyptodont; U, Ceylon Shrew.

Boom!

Hickman continues on to consider tail functions and behaviours, commenting that most bipedal mammals have long tails whereas humans buck the trend. Pangolins and anteaters get due mention here, but I really liked the factoid that “Beavers occasionally walk bipedally with an armload of mud” (p.145).

Mammals, like other vertebrates, that have substantial tails tend to use them for locomotor support at least when moving slowly, and Hickman lists kangaroos+kin, anteaters, pangolins and beavers as examples of mammals that thus use their tails as “fifth limbs”. But there are stranger tail functions in mammals than this ancestral tail-prop role. The bat Nycteris has a singular tail that ends in a “T”, bracing the uropatagium (tail-leg membrane).

Lovely kangaroo sculpt/skeleton from the incomparable comparative anatomy museum in Paris.

Lovely kangaroo sculpt/skeleton from the incomparable comparative anatomy museum in Paris.

However, some mammals also don’t use their tails the way we might expect- the platypus (Ornithorhynchus) doesn’t power its swimming with its tail so much as it uses it for stabilization, according to Hickman; paddling with the limbs seems more important (but this could use some modern scientific study using proper hydrodynamic testing). Yet they do use their tails to tamp the earth of their burrows and, curling them up to their belly, to bring in vegetation and such to provision their nests, as well as using their tails as energy stores (like many animals do). In contrast, beavers don’t transport much with their flat tails, whereas the more prehensile tails of pangolins may be used for carrying their babies.

HickmanFig5

Hickman notes how few mammals use their tails as weapons to harm others, although he properly brings up glyptodonts as a counter-example.  And then comes the striking description of how, by a “grinding motion of the tail against the body” a pangolin “almost severed the fore paw of a dog.” (p.148) And then, other mammals do the opposite of tail weaponry: Hickman cites that some 15 species of rodents can shed their tails (autotomy) as a defense, and like salamanders or lizards, regenerate them. Autophagy (self tail-cannibalism), however, Hickman rightly infers is a pathological, desperate condition, not a normal adaptation in mammals.

Big glyptodont tail club!

Big Glyptodon tail club!

More glyptodont tail clubs!

More glyptodont tail clubs! Neosclerocalyptus

Giant armadillo, showing glyptodont-lite version of the tail.

Giant armadillo Priodontes, showing glyptodont-lite version of the tail.

Need to motivate a rat to solve a maze puzzle or eat food? Pinching the tail had been shown to help, Hickman explains. This fits with the more obvious role of the tail in mammalian communication, including scent-marking. Here, Hickman notes that rather than using scent glands, hippos take the feces way out and just whip their tails around while pooping to spread their perfume. Which the internet knows well…

And then, finally, Hickman gets to the Rat Kings, which had me incredulous at first… but there are a bunch of references, so… What’s a Rat King? A “ball” of rats (from 3 to 32 of them!) with their tails tangled together for “group cohesion”, fabled in European stories for centuries but possibly “a frequent phenomenon” (p.152). An explanation for this phenomenon, Hickman explains, is confinement of rat in enclosed spaces where their tails do get entangled, only to be “found during a cold part of year, usually as a result of loud squealing noises which drew attention to the hide-away.”(p.153) In surveying the amusing range of explanations through history for Rat Kings (“itchy tails”?), Hickman relents and concludes “perhaps the tails of Rat Kings function best as cocktail discussion.” I concur—and append blogging discussion to that!

HickmanFig9

Tails you win, pre-caudals you lose, but Hickman’s review article is full of win! There’s plenty more of interest in there. I hope you enjoyed the look back at this classic paper, and at the tales that tails tell. This is the tale end.

I’ll let Ray get your caudals shakin’ as we depart:

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Owing Owen

Posted in Reviews, tagged , , , , on February 11, 2015| 15 Comments »

It’s Darwin Day 2015 (or will be shortly), and also on this blog it’s Freezermas, a time of contemplative dissection of morphology and its history. This year I won’t be doing the crazy 7 posts in 7 days that I’ve done before (see 14 past ones here), and I won’t be doing a customary homage to Darwin. Instead, I’m dedicating today’s post to Richard Owen, oft characterized as Darwin’s greatest nemesis. Blasphemy? Nah. I’m a Darwin fan, sure, but today Owen gets his due from me. This post is like a “Top ten things you didn’t know about Richard Owen” post, but without the list, and some of them might be things you know, and I’m not even sure if there are ten of them, but they tend to be about Richard Owen. I feature a bunch of Owen’s papers’ coolest artwork, with links to the free versions of those papers, too. Bone up!

Stomach-Churning Rating: 3/10 for woodcuts that would otherwise be graphic. 7+/10 for rabid Darwin fans.

Owen was one of greatest (vertebrate) anatomists ever, if not the greatest (Alfred Romer gives him a run for his money in my opinion, but was less of a conceptual revolutionary). He was a key player in the divorce of the Natural History Museum from the British Museum and thus its move to its current South Kensington home in London as well as its autonomy and rise to scientific and cultural prominence. Hence, like today’s post’s title indicates, we owe Owen a lot as morphologists and as fans of biology (i.e. natural history). Indeed, his contributions are often undersold in deference to Darwin’s, and in service to a conventional narrative (written by the victorious Darwinians) in which he plays a villainous role. Even if one cannot admire the man as a touchy-feely kind of dude, his work demands respect and historiographic justice.

Rupke

I was inspired to write this post after reading a biography of Richard Owen some months ago: “Richard Owen: Biology Without Darwin, a revised edition”. It’s a fascinating read, and makes some points that challenged my naïve views of the history of biology, especially evolution and Victorian science. Author Nicolaas Rupke hammers home that pro-Darwin propaganda relegated Owen to a more minor and infamous position in the history of science than he deserved, defaming him as a cold-hearted, scheming, inconsistent jerk. This biography admits truth to Owen lacking some social graces and playing tough politics sometimes, but reminds us of his eminence in British science, which reverberated globally and was in no small part due to his determined drive and strategic rigour. I recommend the book to any fans of natural history and science, especially morphology. Indeed, Rupke’s 2009 edition was released in paperback for the Darwinian centennial, as an abridgement of his 1994 book. If you want to know more about Rupke’s 2009 book, there are informative reviews by Switek here and Lynch here. This biography humanizes Owen and casts away some of the demonizing. Scandalous snippets of Darwinians politicking against Owen are memorable– e.g. Owen’s “contest against the surrounding agencies” was a predecessor to Darwin’s “struggle for existence” and natural selection, which Darwin downplayed (Rupke, pp.157,169-171).

As Rupke’s work emphasizes, Owen was a pre-Darwininan evolutionary biologist, not a creationist. He devised an “axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things” that qualifies as evolutionist, but not transmutationist. He had ideas about evolution that just seem odd to a post-Darwinian mind, especially an “internalist” driving mechanism for evolution (something about the embryo that causes evolution to proceed; not a primarily external, environmental impetus as Darwin favoured), leading to orderly patterns of evolution, not the higgledy-piggledy bushy evolution of Darwin and his successors (e.g. Gould). To a modern evolutionary morphologist, Owen’s “transcendental morphology” echoes of earlier continental European work by Oken (& fellow Germanics), Cuvier (& fellow French) and others, and as such often feels strange – even mystically religious (pantheistic) or unscientific. And, like many Victorians, the idea of apes including, and a subset being ancestral to, humans repulsed Owen. That revulsion seems to have clouded his judgement on the scientific matters involved, which he famously sparred over with Thomas Huxley.

Forelimbs of Archaeopteryx compared with falcon, Pterodactylus, and humerus of a raven (left to right). From: Owen, R. (1863). On the Archéoptéryx of von Meyer, with a description of the fossil remains of a long-tailed species, from the lithographic stone of Solenhofen. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 33-47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/108788 FREE!

Forelimbs of Archaeopteryx compared with falcon, Pterodactylus, and humerus of a raven (left to right). Owen classifed the former as a bird, with potential relationships to pterosaurs (Rupke, pp.175-6); Darwinians like Huxley instead saw the dinosaurian, reptilian ancestry.
From:
Owen, R. (1863). On the Archéoptéryx of von Meyer, with a description of the fossil remains of a long-tailed species, from the lithographic stone of Solenhofen. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 33-47.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/108788
FREE!

However, we can credit Owen- like Lamarck and Geoffroy Saint-Hiliare in France- as an early “evo-devo” scientist trying to link transformation across lineages with developmental mechanisms. We can also celebrate Owen as one of the foremost early champions of the study of osteology as a worthy scientific pursuit in and of itself. Much of Rupke’s biography is structured to focus on the institutional structures that Owen played such a pivotal role in creating, especially the curated collections of the Natural History Museum (which Owen spent ~1856-1881 fighting to establish as its own facility!). Owen’s vast monographs on Cretaceous Reptilia, the flightless moa (e.g. Dinornis; with papers covering 40 years of research that continued almost up until Owen’s demise) and odd Gondwanan mammals of the Australian colonies (many of these specimens having been shipped to the museum by Darwin for Owen’s own studies) cement his status as an integrative collections-based researcher who did not eschew palaeontological research “because biologists don’t do that”, or some such divisive nonsense that we still encounter today.

Skull of a crocodile, exploded to show homologies of the bones; and a forelimb for added context. From: Richard Owen, Report on the archetype and homologies of the vertebrate skeleton. BAAS. https://archive.org/details/reportonarchetyp00owen FREE!

Skull of a crocodile, exploded to show homologies of the bones; and a forelimb for added context.
From:
Richard Owen, Report on the archetype and homologies of the vertebrate skeleton. BAAS.
https://archive.org/details/reportonarchetyp00owen
FREE!

Foetal skeleton of a human, with skull exploded for comparison of homologies. From Owen 1847 as above.

Foetal skeleton of a human, with skull exploded for comparison of homologies.
From Owen 1847 as above.

Speaking of palaeontology, and science communication, 1841 was when Owen coined the “Dinosauria”, tying together disparate forms such as Hylaeosaurus, Megalosaurus and Iguanodon by the recognition that they were not “typical reptiles” but rather advanced in many distinct ways (e.g. locomotor adaptations) that united them as a group. We owe a lot to that early recognition, which was no facile achievement considering how fragmentary most of the early (pre-“Bone Wars”) dinosaur fossil discoveries were. Like Darwin, Owen realized that the giant ground sloths that he described (and Darwin found many of during his Beagle voyage), such as Megatherium, were related animals, too, and in this case having extant relatives.

Most broadly, within comparative biology, Owen searched for the principles of and codified the concept he called homology, which was part of his very French/Germanic quest for “unity of type” as an fairly essentialist (but not always Platonic, as Rupke cautions- pp. 126-7,130), typological (even teleological?) principle underlying common themes in comparative anatomy. His tome on the “archetype” and vertebral components of the skull (see pics above) is lavishly detailed and a challenging but rewarding read, with fascinating (even if sometimes quite wrong) ideas about homologous parts of vertebrate heads. Again, Owen’s work in comparative anatomy easily became an integral part of evolutionary theory– homology as a consequence of (and reciprocally, evidence for) common ancestry featured prominently. As Rupke notes (p.179), “With little more than a flick of the fingers, Owen’s archetype could be turned into an ancestor.”

Tail sheath/club of Meiolania! from Owen, R. (1888). On parts of the skeleton of Meiolania platyceps (Ow.). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, 181-191. http://www.jstor.org/stable/91676 FREE!

Tail sheath/club of Meiolania! Reminiscent of this…
from
Owen, R. (1888). On parts of the skeleton of Meiolania platyceps (Ow.). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. B, 181-191.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/91676 FREE!

Jawsome! Thylacoleo, marsupial lion. From: Richard Owen, Additional Evidence of the Affinities of the Extinct Marsupial Quadruped Thylacoleo carnifex (Owen). Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B: 1887; 178: 1-3 http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/178/1 FREE!

Jawsome!
Thylacoleo, marsupial lion.
From: Richard Owen,
Additional Evidence of the Affinities of the Extinct Marsupial Quadruped Thylacoleo carnifex (Owen).
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B: 1887; 178: 1-3
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/178/1 FREE!

This year (2015) is the 350th anniversary of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, in which Owen published key studies of exotic Gondwanan animals such as the giant, tail-clubbed early turtle Meiolania and the “marsupial lion” Thylacoleo (see pics above). Some of Owen’s most outstanding and earliest work, likewise published in Phil. Trans., concerned seemingly aberrant mammals like the platypus (Ornithorhynchus), whose egg-laying and milk-excreting organs he detailed in 1832-1834 (see pics below). Like so many of his discoveries, these detailed descriptions and gorgeous commissioned woodcut illustrations often were sound, groundbreaking work, and are still cited and comprehensible today. Yet Owen’s interpretations sometimes became re-evaluated in a Darwinian rather than transcendentalist light, ironically building the case for Darwinian-style evolution (transmutation). Was the platypus a mammal, reptile or bird? Owen correctly assigned it to the Mammalia and recognized its relationship with the spiny anteaters (echidnas), but today we understand it better as a member of an early branch off the mammalian stem that includes a broad diversity of other species such as the multituberculates. Brian Hall wrote a review of the history of the “platypus paradox” here— it’s a fascinating story.

"Areola" of the female platypus in the abdominal region, with embiggened version below. From: Richard Owen, On the Mammary Glands of the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Vol. 122 (1832), pp. 517-538 http://www.jstor.org/stable/107974 FREE!

“Areola” of the female platypus in the abdominal region, with embiggened version below.
From:
Richard Owen, On the Mammary Glands of the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
Vol. 122 (1832), pp. 517-538
http://www.jstor.org/stable/107974 FREE!

Dissection of a female platypus, showing the egg-laying apparatus. From: On the Ova of the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus Richard Owen Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Vol. 124 (1834), pp. 555-566. http://www.jstor.org/stable/108077 FREE!

Dissection of a female platypus, showing the egg-laying apparatus.
From:
On the Ova of the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus
Richard Owen
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
Vol. 124 (1834), pp. 555-566.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/108077 FREE!

As a PhD student of Prof. Kevin Padian, a Richard Owen afficionado and historian, I couldn’t escape awareness of Owen. His visage decorated many parts of Padian’s office and we were often reminded of Owen’s prodigious prowess (and his sly politics- e.g., his “Parthian shot” letter that Padian described). But I didn’t go back and read much Owen until recently, while researching the evolution of the avian patella with my own PhD student Sophie Regnault. Owen described a patella in the moa Dinornis, but we re-interpreted this as an ankle sesamoid bone (common in moa)– although the described fossil “patella” itself seems to have been lost. Then Owen’s patella research came up in a later, often vitriolic, debate (featuring the eminent bird anatomist Shufeldt as well as other scientists Jeffries and Gill) in Science magazine over what bones cormorants and other birds have in their knees– read more about it here. In perusing Owen’s moa and other anatomical work, I gained a deep appreciation for it and now I’m a fan. I even feel a special kinship with Owen– like me, various zoos sent him their specimens for scientific study via dissection, and he was an active science communicator. I’m sure he’d have appreciated my freezers. Not so sure about this blog…

Find the "patella"! From Professor Owen C.B., F.R.S., F.Z.S., &c. (1883), On Dinornis (Part XXIV.): containing a Description of the Head and Feet, with their dried Integuments, of an Individual of the species Dinornis didinus, Owen. The Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, 11: 257–261. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1096-3642.1883.tb00360.x/abstract FREE!

Find the “patella”!
From Professor Owen C.B., F.R.S., F.Z.S., &c. (1883), On Dinornis (Part XXIV.): containing a Description of the Head and Feet, with their dried Integuments, of an Individual of the species Dinornis didinus, Owen. The Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, 11: 257–261.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1096-3642.1883.tb00360.x/abstract FREE!

So that’s my ode to Owen, which lightly touches on highlights of his storied career. Opinions vary on how fun he would have been to quaff pints of ale with (what do you think?), but as fabled (if flawed) heroes of science go, he deserves the label, and morphologists should continue to imbibe and savour his scholarly works, seeking draughts of inspiration within their contents as gourmands of Owen-ia. With some 600 papers published by Owen, there’s surely more for us all to discover.

Morphologists and friends, what’s your favourite Owen paper and why? Speak up!

[If you remain silent, at least do that while reading some Owen today!]

And happy Darwin Day!

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Birds of an Unfeather Are So Clever: A Review

Posted in Exalting Archosauria, Reviews, tagged , , , , , , , on April 12, 2013| 9 Comments »

frontcover

The Unfeathered Bird book by Katrina van Grouw proclaims immediately in its Introduction that it “is not an anatomy of birds.”  True– it is far more than that, and it would be a shame if it had just been a dry, technical avian osteology reference book. It is a unique blend of art and science- particularly avian anatomy, evolution, taxonomy, natural history and more. The Unfeathered Bird is written for a general audience; birders/twitchers or just natural history buffs would be ideal targets of its unfettered passion for all things avian. A 12-year-old who is very keen on animals could enjoy it, and it may ignite the flames of ornithological excitement in many young or older readers. I am glad it was not called “The Naked Bird” as that would have caused some serious misconceptions (badum-tish!). The book is dripping with illustrations (at least one every two pages, often more). Almost all of the illustrations (except some paintings in the style of the cover) are in the same brownish sketch style that, like much of the book, evokes a bygone era of dark wooden cabinets and shadowed halls packed with skeletons, with nary an interactive graphics display, animatronic dinosaur or hyperdetailed cladogram in sight. It feels like an homage to the Victorian naturalists’ joy for anatomical detail conveyed through painstakingly detailed woodcuts. And while many still think of feathers as “the defining feature of birds,” enough about feathers already. Seriously. This is a book is about what lies beneath, and how all that non-fluffy stuff is important for birds’ lives, too.

(image-intense post; all can be clicked to embiggritate)

Katrina with peacock feather headdress? (back cover pic and rear view of same skeleton)

Katrina with peacock feather headdress? (back cover pic and rear view of same skeleton)

Katrina with front cover framed pic and the peacock skeleton that went with it.

Katrina with front cover framed pic and the peacock skeleton that went with it.

The Introduction continues to explain that the book is truly about how the external anatomy of birds is linked to the bony anatomy, which might remind astute readers of modern approaches like the extant phylogenetic bracket. The rest of the book uses both skeletal and unfeathered, quasi-myological illustrations to get this point across vividly. The explanatory text is written at a basic enough level for the average reader and is just the right length, with interesting anecdotes and natural history facts that even the expert reader will find interesting or even inspirational (e.g. possibly a goldmine for research ideas). First there is a 26 page “Basic” section with an introduction to avian osteology, with bountiful sketches to illustrate key organs and text explaining how it all fits together in the fully accoutered bird. The decision to use classical Linnean taxonomy (defunct or re-arranged taxa from the Systema Naturae like Accipitres, Picae, Anseres, Grallae, Gallinae and Passeres; which are the six “Specific” chapters in the second section of the book) was a good one- it enhances the classical feel of the tome and gives the author a great opportunity to discuss convergent evolution and how that misled past ornithologists.

But for me, the book is most pleasurable for the visualizations and the passion for all things birdy that weaves through them and the accompanying text. The removal of feathers, or even all soft tissues, from bird bodies (posed in naturalistic behaviours) that van Grouw renders in her illustrations shows birds in a new light, emphasizing the strangeness and diversity that lie beneath. The author begins the book with a touching Acknowledgments section in which her husband Hein van Grouw, curator of birds at the Natural History Museum’s Tring collection, features very prominently, making it clear that the book was a team operation and comes from the heart after a 25-year journey. This gives the book a special warmth that is preserved throughout the remainder- although the illustrations are of flayed bodies or boiled / beetle-macerated skeletons, the tone is nothing less than an earnest love for birds of all kinds, and a zest for portraying those feelings to the reader in sketches and prose. It is a joyous celebration, not a somber litany, of the wonder of birds that can be gleaned from dead bodies. There is so much powerful, awesome imagery stuffed into those pages that it is hard to summarize. I’ll let five of my favourite images from the book (more are in her gallery and her book’s Facebook page; but even these are just the tip of the icebird) help get this across (used with permission of the author):

Naked kiwi in action.

Naked kiwi in action.

The unscaled bird: guineafowl feet.

The unscaled bird: guineafowl feet.

Deplumed sparrowhawk with dove trophy, exalting in its triumph.

Deplumed sparrowhawk with dove trophy, exalting in its triumph.

Budgerigar has made a friend? Or came to grips with its own mortality?

Budgerigar has made a friend? Or came to grips with its own mortality?

Trumpet Manucode WTF anatomy! Spiraling tracheal coil made me gasp in awe when I saw this image in the book.

Trumpet Manucode’s WTF anatomy! Spiraling tracheal coil made me gasp in awe when I saw this image in the book.

Now I’ll depart from this post just being a book review. I went to the Tring collection to do some research, and arranged my trip so I’d also get to see the debut of a Tring special exhibit featuring The Unfeathered Bird, and also to meet Katrina as well as Hein van Grouw. The placement of the exhibit at Tring is apropos, because Katrina was a curator at the museum until a few years ago and Hein still is. But the inspiration for the work and the specimens used (with a few exceptions, including from other museums) are Katrina’s. She (with Hein’s help) procured bodies of birds to dissect, macerate and sketch for the book over its 25 year fledging period, noting in the Acknowledgments that “no birds were harmed” to do this– do read those acknowledgments, as there are some amusing tales there of how she obtained some specimens.

I was fortunate to be able to take some photos of the exhibit while they set it up, and grabbed some candid images of Katrina and colleagues during that process. The following images show off the exhibit, which is all in one clean, bright, simply adorned room in the Tring that lets Katrina’s framed sketches be the focus. Here are some examples:

Poster advert for the book in the Tring collections.

Poster advert for the book in the Tring collections.

Tring exhibit setup, with Katrina, husband Hein, and helper finishing it up.

Tring exhibit setup, with Katrina, husband Hein, and helper finishing it up.

Tring exhibit now ready.

Tring exhibit now ready.

Tring exhibit case.

Tring exhibit case.

Framed sketches at Tring exhibit.

Framed sketches at Tring exhibit.

Framed sketches at Tring exhibit.

More framed sketches at Tring exhibit.

The exhibit is fun for people who are already Unfeathered Bird fans, and a good way of drawing in new ones. The book is a precious thing that any fan of birds, especially scientists, really needs to have a hard copy of. While it claims not to be an anatomy text, its illustrations provide ample opportunities to use it for that purpose. But really the point of owning all 287-plus pages is to bask in the warmth of true, pure appreciation for classic ornithology, which I found infectious. It is a book by and for bird lovers, but also for those that find the interface of art and science to be fascinating.

I confess I used to hate birds. I found them annoying and boring; all that flitting and twitting and pretentious feathers. “Get over yourselves, already, and calm down too!” was my reaction to them. When I started grad school, I had an open disdain for birds, even moreso than for mammals (OK, except cats). I was a “herp” fan through and through, for most of my life (childhood spent catching anoles in Florida, or stalking frogs in Ohio; during visits to my grandparents). What won me over was studying birds (and eventually mammals, too) as a young scientist, and learning how incredible they are– not just as endpoints in the story of theropod dinosaur evolution, as my thesis focused on, but as amazing animals with spectacular form-function relationships.  The Unfeathered Bird is saturated with that amazement, so we’re birds of an unfeather.

Framed sketch of dodo head at Tring exhibit.

Framed sketch of dodo head at Tring exhibit.

Entirely unfeathered Indian peafowl in matching views.

Entirely unfeathered Indian peafowl in matching views.

Painted Stork and Toco Toucan sketches.

Painted Stork and Great Hornbill sketches.

Red junglefowl, wild ancestor of domestic chickens (and the book ends with several such breeds illustrated),

Red junglefowl, wild ancestor of domestic chickens (and the book ends with several such breeds illustrated).

Katrina told me that she is already deep into writing the next book, whose subject I won’t spoil for you here but maybe we will be lucky enough to have her appear in the Comments and plug it? 🙂 (Her website does say “It was Hein’s stroke of genius to include domestic birds and they’ve provided the inspiration for my next project.” so the cat is out of the bag and amongst the pigeons!) It is great to hear that the book has done quite well sales-wise and critically, such as ~#67 on the Amazon sales list at one point– I hope this paves the way for more such books not only from Katrina, but from others engaged in lateral thinking (and still others) on the boundaries of science-art.

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Yes- another day, another positive “All Yesterdays” book review

Posted in Exalting Archosauria, Reviews, tagged , , , , , on March 17, 2013| 21 Comments »

If you want to see a new/reinvigorated, exciting direction that palaeoart is headed, check out the All Yesterdays book by Conway, Kosemen and Naish. This review is fully cognizant that I’m late to the party of hailing this book as part of a palaeoart renaissance. I confess I haven’t read any of the many reviews of this book; I just know it is highly regarded and popular, from excitement on social media sites I frequent. So if my review covers ground others have too, so be it; it’s purely my own thoughts but I expect that mine fall in line with many others’. I’m reviewing the book on this blog because I love the interface between science and art (which is very important in anatomy), and because anatomy, and how one infers it when it is unknown, is the fundamental theme of the book.

You can buy All Yesterdays for around £18 (ASIDE: oddly, used copies (“May not include CD, access code, or DJ”– ???) are around £42 on the same site; perhaps those are artist-signed??? I have no idea!). It is a good deal at that price. While you’re at it, get “Dinosaur Art: The World’s Best Paleoart” by White et al. (including Conway) for a similar price. My review will return to some comparisons between these two books, released just a few months apart.

All-Yesterdays-coverworlds-greatest-paleoart

All Yesterdays is about not only how we reconstruct dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, but also about thinking outside-the-box in the ways we reconstruct them and thereby bucking some recent clichés and tropes. Some of those outside-the-box ideas might seem ludicrous, and some probably are. But one of the main points of All Yesterdays is that there is plenty about extinct animals, and even living animals, that we don’t know, even though the field of paleoart has matured into greater scientific rigor than in the days of Knight, Zallinger and others (1920s-1950s). There is a focus on uncertainties about integument (e.g. feathering, spines, colour/patterning, body contours) and behaviour (e.g. avoiding stereotypes like perpetually aggressive predators and frightened prey animals– amen to that!). And the capstone of the book, which in some ways I loved the most, is turning the issue on its head and pretending that we only had skeletons of extant animals, then proceeding to reconstruct those animals (elephants, whales, horses and swans stand out prominently in this section; some of these are shown below). I wish more scientists in my general area would practice this; e.g. validation of a methodology used to reconstruct extinct animals in science.

The ‘speculative zoology’ of All Yesterdays deserves favourable comparison to one of my favourite science-art books, 1981’s After Man by Dougal Dixon. I fell so in love with that book as a 10-year-old that I wouldn’t let my parents return it to the library and I made them pay the hefty lost-book-fee (yes, I was a little bastard!). I still have it, too. (Sorry, Sequoya Branch Public Library of Madison, WI!) Likewise, the whimsy of the Rhinogrades is evoked by this work, and of course Tetrapod Zoology blog readers will be no strangers to it, either.

The book begins with a clear, succinct (7 page) summary of the history and science of reconstructing animals, with a focus on paleoart’s approach rather than science’s. I would have found it interesting (but space constraints presumably precluded) to feature more of the interface/parallels with scientists at the same time, such as the careful reconstructions of musculature in A.S. Romer’s masterful work in the 1920s (e.g. below), or later efforts by palaeontologists like Alick Walker and Walter Coombs. Many of these luminaries sought not to reconstruct animals for artistic purposes, but for almost purely scientific ones: to understand what skeletal anatomy meant in terms of broader biology (e.g. comparative anatomy) and phylogeny (e.g. origin of birds or archosaur evolution). The quality of their own artistic representations as well as scientific interpretations varied a lot. Indeed, sometimes the choice of model organisms (crocodile for Romer; lizard for Walker; birds in the post-1960’s) reveals much about the author’s preconceptions about phylogeny, marshalled towards a favoured hypothesis (e.g. a crocodile origin of birds for Walker; or an avian origin amongst dinosaurs for Bakker, Paul and others), rather than a circumspect assessment of all relevant evidence.

Romer1923-fig6

Figure 6 from Romer, 1923; very crocodylian T. rex right hindlimb muscles.

But eventually the “model organism” approach to reconstructing extinct animals gave way to the extant phylogenetic bracket; very popular today; which itself is an adaptation of the outgroup method for polarity assessment in phylogenetic systematics (cladistics). I am sure many modern paleoartists explicitly consider the “EPB” in their reconstructions, although this leaves many ambiguities (e.g. integument of crocodiles and birds being totally different!) that they must overcome, whereas scientists might just give up. This interface of art and science is part of what make palaeontology so enjoyable.

The EPB mindset has been a big step forward for evolutionary morphology and palaeontology, but still some of the greatest questions (e.g. what were the actual sizes, colour patterns, or behaviours of extinct animals? How did novelties arise and which novelties did dinosaurs have that extant relatives lack?) are left ambiguous by the EPB. This is because either the EPB itself is ambiguous (crocodiles or other taxa do one thing; birds do something altogether different), or because features leave no osteological correlates (e.g. muscle/tendon/ligament scars) on fossils that can be compared with the EPB.  This quandary leads to the fun side of this book– filling in the huge gaps left by both basic anatomical interpretation and the restrictions imposed by the EPB, and then playing with the frontiers of anatomical, behavioural and ecological reconstruction, using informed speculation.

The extant phylogenetic bracket for archosaurs.

The extant phylogenetic bracket for archosaurs.

In addition to the startling, bizarre “All Todays” reconstructions at the end of the book, the highlights for me were the camouflaged Majungasaurus and plesiosaur, the “feathered mountain” (below) of a therizinosaur (can anyone illustrate a plausible therizinosaur and make it normal and boring? I wager not!) and the neck-swinging elasmosaurs engaged in “honest signalling” of their fitness. Many of the illustrations riff on notions popular in the modern palaeo-zeitgeist (and subject of many conversations at conferences, or even publications), such as evidence for the spiny integument of some ornithischians, fat ornithopods, Microraptor of somewhat-known-colouration, and so on. But plenty of other images riff on a “well why not?” theme, challenging the viewer to consider that extinct animals could have many surprises left in store for us with future discoveries, or else plausible features that we’ll never know of but might seem laughable or unfashionable to illustrate now. Each image has text explaining the logic behind it- this is not just a montage of pictures. This is a thinking person’s book- you should buy it for rumination, to challenge your preconceptions, not to have a flashy coffee table book. It’s not eye candy — it’s more like brain jerky.

John Conway's mountain-of-feathers therizinosaurs: eerily beautiful.

John Conway‘s mountain-of-feathers therizinosaurs: eerily beautiful.

I think this is a bold, fun (re)new(ed) direction for palaeoart. There’s always a place for rigorous, conservatively evidence-based, by-comparison-almost-uncreative scientific illustration of extinct organisms. The World’s Best Paleoart presents loads of this, often in vividly colourful, photo-realistic, lavish, glossy detail, whereas the approach in All Yesterdays tends toward a more soft, matte, informal style including sketches or abstractions, toning down the serious and intense (even cluttered?) approach that can characterize modern palaeoart, including The World’s Best Paleoart.  Sometimes those reconstructing life of the past (scientists included!) may emphasize that detailed realism too much and lose some of the joyful playfulness that palaeoart can revel in, at its best, most inspirational or thought-provoking. The former style might be considered the more “safe” or technical practice; the latter more risky or unconstrained.

Memo Kosemen's "All Todays" swans, with tadpolefish, might haunt your nightmares.

C.M. Kosemen‘s “All Todays” swans, with tadpolefish, might haunt your nightmares.

I’m not casting negative judgement on either style; both are absolutely wonderful — and valuable. I love both books! I’m glad we’re in a new age where the fun is waltzing back into palaeoart, that’s all. All Yesterdays doesn’t just waltz, either. It pounces into your field of view, wiggles its rainbow-coloured, mandrill-esque ankylosaurid bottom at you with a cheeky grin, and proceeds to make you smirk, be bemused, and even gasp at its adventurousness in rapid succession as you turn its pages. At 100 pages it doesn’t overstay its welcome either– that kaleidoscopic thyreophoran rump cartwheels off into the sunset at an opportune moment.

You won't forget Memo Kosemen's "All Todays" elephant.

You won’t forget C.M. Kosemen‘s “All Todays” elephant.

If All Yesterdays makes someone uncomfortable with its swashbucklerish daring, they’re probably taking palaeontology way too seriously– and maybe missing not only some good fun, but also some potential truths. Dogma is a terrible thing, and All Yesterdays slaughters it with delightful relish. Bring on the next installment! If you have  All Yesterdays too, what’s your favourite part? Or if you don’t have it, I’d be happy to answer queries in the Comments.

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An Anatomist’s View Inside “Animal Inside Out” (a review of the NHM exhibit)

Posted in Geeking Out, Reviews, tagged , , , , , , , on May 24, 2012| 34 Comments »

Title is so meta?

OK Londoners, and Olympics visitors, and anatomy (or just science/biology) buffs, and those not lucky enough to see other versions of the animal Body Worlds show. You have a mission. And that mission is to go see “Animal Inside Out”, a special (£9 for adults is well worth it!) exhbit at the Natural History Museum, open until September 16. This blog will self destruct, very messily, by turning itself inside out in 5 seconds… Boom.

Hippopotamus attempting to outdo elephant guts.

Anatomy to me is beautiful even when it’s “ugly” (messy, wet, mucosal, intestinal, asymmetrical, unlike human, whatever), and that’s a major theme of this blog. Hence I am embarrassed that I hadn’t yet gone to see this Body Worlds spinoff exhibit until now, but can begin to shake off that shame by means of an almost exclusively effusive gushing of blood love for said exhibit. Wow, wow, wow! I went in with no particular expectations, having seen some pictures and knowing some of what to expect, and having other things on my mind. I came out very pleased; the NHM exhibits folks and von Hagens’s crew have created an inspirational spectacle that could do wonders for anatomical sciences and natural history. More about that at the end.

(Warning: possibility of spoilers, but the exhibit is so visual that I don’t think my descriptions can spoil it)

The entrance

No photos are allowed as usual, so all I have to show you is the entrance and some anatomy pics I’ve interspersed from my team’s research to lighten up the text. I suppose I could have asked for special permission to take photos for review usage but this was a very impromptu visit, and with ~4 months of showing left I may well be back again.

Weighing a hippo; spot on at 1600 kg!

There is a brief panel on homology and why it is the major concept underlying comparative anatomy (and a key part of evolution, co-opted from the not-so-evolutionary ideas of Sir Richard Owen, whom the NHM rightly mentions here). Another panel rightly brings up the issue of ethics, which has plagued Body Worlds before. It comforts the visitors that animals were not slaughtered just for this display and that the NHM applied its strict collections criteria to them. Convincing enough for me, and absolutely necessary to bring up early on.

The entry hall then presents you with about five cephalopods (labelled “squid” and “octopus”—a gripe is that species names/details are not given for most specimens on show) prominently occupying the view. The cephalopods, like basically everything else, are plastinated (by a now US-patented set of procedures, I learned from the exhibit book detailed later). They are stunningly frozen in lifelike poses or with gaping cuts to show their interior anatomy, although there was very little explanation here about cephalopod biology and anatomy (about 1 smallish panel). No mention of Cthulhu. Damn. He’d approve of the Grand Guignol scenery.

Toward the back of the first corridor of specimens and cases, there is a stunning scarlet haze outlining the body of a “shark” (species not given) with its huge liver lying below it. The haze, a technique used repeatedly throughout the exhibit, is some kind of corrosion cast of the circulatory system, I gather. A bunch of cross/longitudinal sections of cephalopods, crocodiles, fish, horse hooves and other animals decorate blank spaces on the walls, some with labels showing basic features and some just hung like paintings. Fair enough, but a missed opportunity for a bit more educational content here.

Gratuitious Melanosuchus (black caiman) shot.

A smallish whole shark confronts you as you turn the corner from the crimson chondrichthyan; again of unknown classification. One would think a museum exhibit would care about classification beyond “shark,” but oh well, I am banging the same drum here too much and missing the point, that the exhibit is really a visual, visceral expose rather than a deep prose-driven intellectual dissection. On one of the shark panels it is noted that sharks have red and white kinds of muscle used for slower and faster swimming, but not clarified that this is a very widespread vertebrate (chordate?) feature. This forms my second gripe, that a truly evolutionary approach, such as that taken by dozens of the museum’s research staff as their major paradigm of phylogenetic systematics, could have helped the public grasp the evolutionary, hierarchical nature of homology and depart with accurate information about what features characterize groups at which levels. I’m not asking for cladograms laid out on the floor as at the American Museum of Natural History, although maybe that could work, but the exhibit tended to fall back on an outmoded “this animal has this feature, and that animal has that feature, and these are cool adaptations” shopping list approach rather than a modern comparative approach. Granted, almost all museum exhibits fall into this trap, for various reasons and some of them justified. But with a spare word or phrase here or there, this could have been done better without drowning the visitors in that dreaded sea of bloodprose.

Passing the sharks, we come to one of several thematic sections about body systems, this first one on the skeleton (later, brain/nerves, circulation, muscles, etc.). A few small skeletal specimens of the type that are seen throughout the museum are presented, with a scallop reminding us that skeletons can come in many types among multicellular organisms. There is a horse skull and a stark white whole skeleton of a young-ish ostrich, which was very nicely mounted. However, I was caught off guard by the pelvis, which lacked the curved, ventral “boot” like connection of the pubic bones that ostriches have—presumably explained by its juvenile status although I wasn’t 100% sure it was even an ostrich pelvis. OK, I am having a serious pelvis-nerd moment here; forgive me as my PhD was on this stuff.

Ostrich in the midst of disassembling.

BUT, once again the small interpretive panel had a moment of Fail. The ostrich was explained to have two toes, in contrast to normal birds which have “five”.  HUH? Birds have three main toes and variably also a fourth, inner (first) toe called the hallux, used for perching and other activities including walking. None have a fifth toe; indeed their dinosaurian forebears lost that feature some 230ish million years ago. Just an embryonic vestige of the base of the fifth toe is visible in bird embryos today. Furthermore, the panel said that two toes in ostriches can grip the ground more strongly than more toes in other birds. I know of no evidence that shows this, and suspect that the contrary might be true. The standard explanation for toe reduction in ostriches is that it is a lightening feature characteristic of “cursorial” (long-legged, sometimes fleet/efficient) animals, to make swinging the long legs easier. These errors really should have been caught by involving experts in polishing the scientific content of the exhibit.

But I don’t want this post to grumble too much; wrong message. There was so much to celebrate in this exhibit, which was felt impressively spacious and full of cool specimens! Visitors pass some plastinated whole sheep and goats, with panels nicely explaining that goats and sheep look quite similar on the inside and are evolutionary relatives. Having “four stomachs” (technically, a four-chambered stomach; not four distinct organs that were duplicated) is attributed as a sheep trait, then being a ruminant is said to be a goat trait; this might get a little confusing for non—anatomists (both are ruminants and have similar stomachs).

I learned that goats have an extra tail muscle that allows them to swing up/down as well as side-to-side. Hey, I teach veterinary anatomy and I don’t know that!? I must tuck my tail between my legs in shame, but I am no goat so I do not think I can (do satyrs count?). But I wasn’t so sure that goats, as described, were the first animals to be domesticated—I thought that was dogs? Ahh, Wikipedia says dogs, then sheep, then pigs, then goats? I’m outside my expertise here, I admit, and resorting to Wikipedia out of ignorant desperation. Anyway, here, another instance of coulda-been-more-phylogenetically-specific presented itself: the forelimb of goats was said to be connected to the thorax by muscles and ligaments, not a joint, but this is a feature common to most Mammalia. Although audience attentions might be wandering at this point, waiting for the next big spectacle (goats and sheep are not a big crowd draw, even plastinated), some more care as to what was written would be good. Some reindeer and horses and other animals join in the fun later on. Good, but mostly ‘filler’ (wise to put these in the middle of the exhibit, after sharks/cephalopods and before climax) unless you’re a big fan of fairly familiar ungulates with fairly homogeneous postcrania. OK, my bias is showing…

Gratuitious image of emu curled up for CT scan.

Next along the path, a longitudinal section of a whole ostrich caught my attention. Wow again! I had no idea that one could make a section like this of such a large animal, all in one plastic sheet like a giant microscope slide! I stared at this for a while, wondering how both legs could be fit in a ~1cm thick panel, and gave up trying to understand the technology. Von Hagens, you got me there; I’m stumped. Were multiple sections glued together somehow to produce a pseudo-2D slice from many thin 3D sections? I could not tell, and felt humbled and deeply impressed by the technical skill shown in the exhibits so far…

And then the punches kept coming, one-two-three! The exhibit approaches its climax with a crescendo of great specimens in the final hall. First, another maroon marvel. A whole ostrich, standing with wings askew, showing off its entire circulatory system (plus a few wing plumes for aesthetics) from head to toes! Gorgeous, technically brilliant, and well worth at least a 5 minute walk around (you can stroll around many of the displays in 360 degrees- very good move!). A plastinated whole ostrich stands next to it, and for a muscular anatomy geek like me, it was nirvana. However, in a churlish moment I had to look away from a panel explaining that an ostrich is “too heavy to fly” (I admit some younger visitors may need reminding of this). But then I looked into the big open space of this main hall, and the climax was before me. I think I’d had my climax a few times since this, but wow this was enormous in so many ways. All the ways. Mind-blowingly, vastly, geektastically kewl.

Gratuitious rhinoceros leg.

Across from the two posed ostriches and flanked by numerous smaller specimens, the elephant and giraffe stand frozen in vigil. There is also a lovingly detailed dissection of a huge male gorilla by the back wall and exit, with a panel reminding us that gorillas are (among) “our closest relatives.” The giraffe is precariously poised on one front toe-tip, in mid-gallop. What a great pose! There is the requisite explanation of how they solve the blood pressure problem in their neck (e.g. arterial valves), but also the statement, news to me, that they are the only animals able to ruminate while running. Who figured that out and how? I really want to know! Must be hard to check. (or was walking intended? Are my notes wrong?) Across from the full-fleshed plastinated giraffe (which I could see with my eyes closed after all our dissections from a month ago), there was another visually arresting and technically monumental giraffe on exhibit: one represented completely by small, reddish cross-sectional slices, from head to toes in a standing pose. That took me a while to absorb, it was so lovely, almost like a hanging mobile of morphological splendour.

There is a panel about genes and variation and inheritance. It is brief. (and it belongs there) Thank you. Let’s celebrate anatomy for anatomy’s sake for once!

“But John,” you might say, “What about the elephant? No love for the elephant? The star of the show?”

Zoinks! I want one! Stoic and triumphant (except against death and plastination), the Asian elephant is the centrepiece of the collection. (The book explains it was “Samba” from Neunkirchen Zoo, Germany, dead of some circulatory problem in 2005 and the first one plastinated, plus the inspiration for the animal show). I was speechless and paralyzed for a moment. I didn’t even know how to start looking at the partly-exploded-to-show-its-insides elephant. I actually avoided it for a while, looking closely at the other specimens, and building up anticipation, before stepping up and taking a long, intense look at this tall drink of water.

Go see the elephant. If you know basic anatomy, look at its leg muscles. Check out the huge triceps, still attached to the elbow; I like to say it is the size of a graduate student. Same for the analogous superficial gluteal and somewhat-fused biceps femoris muscles on the rear end, around the thigh/knee joint. Huge! I’ve never been able to view a standing dissected elephant, so this really impressed me more than a table full of giant muscle slabs like I normally deal with. And best of all, for me, the “false sixth toes”; the prepollex and prehallux; are visible in all four feet (but not noted anywhere, even in the book; too bad, these things were widely known by anatomists before my work on them). So much to marvel at here. It is an anatomical treasure. I wish I had a 3D image of it to use for anatomical studies- it was so easy to identify every single muscle group (except for a few missing around the shoulder/neck), even in the distal limbs. Hmm, photogrammetry might be possible (nugget of idea begins to crawl around John’s brain like a Zimmerian parasite)…

Behold, the triceps muscle of an elephant!

Behind that gorgeous elephant, don’t miss the wall mountings of two cross-sectional slices: through the head/neck of a moderate-sized elephant (How!?!?) and distal leg (no predigits but good features). And definitely don’t miss the stool (non-fecal, furniture form). I almost did. A wooden stool is shaped like a newborn elephant and a cross-section of the body is adhered on top of it. I assume you cannot sit there, and I am very glad that it was not, as I first imagined, an actual plastinated baby elephant turned into a stool. That would be bad taste.

The exhibit is in very good taste, without exception, and although I am gore-desensitized to say the least, it is not gory in my view. The plastination process preserves the reality and even some of the colour faithfully, but renders it just unreal enough (past uncanny valley territory?) that it should not be very disturbing to most viewers.

You can’t leave with your own photographs, but you can be schnookered into buying the exhibit book (£12.99) and a couple of packages of nice colour postcards (£4 for six; excellent quality images and cardstock IMO). The book and postcards show many of the exhibit specimens but not all, and include some others that are not on exhibit. I was saddened that the bear was left out—very cool image of that in the book. I’ve only skimmed the book a bit. I was annoyed by a few mistruths about elephants (25mph running speed, “have no ankle joints, which is one of the reasons why elephants cannot jump”, the bones “do not contain any marrow”—wrong, 15mph and there are ankles, they just are not very flexible (but not immobile either); also the bones do contain marrow (how could a large vertebrate survive entirely without it???) but just not as much of it per unit volume, due to lots of spongy bone). But I am still very happy with the 139 pages chock fulla pretty images, which is all I really wanted. Indeed, the book is a great pictorial anatomical reference- some of the species such as elephants and giraffe lack a really good anatomical resource in the modern, or any, literature! The exhibit shop also sells some good anatomy texts, mostly on humans but I recommend “Animal Anatomy for Artists” very strongly; I use that regularly in my own work.

So, £29.99 of schnookering later (haha, poor victimized me!), I emerged and reflected more on what I’d seen. I’m still a bit giddy about it all. I like the minimalism in most aspects- black backgrounds, minimal signage (but just enough to make it educational—when they got the facts right), focus kept on the specimens. Well done there. The spectacle of the specimens I’ve raved plenty about- it is not at all disappointing. It is AWESOME in every sense. I feel I easily got £9 of value from the ticket, and would (probably will!) pay it again. It is a profound experience to see the rich anatomical detail exposed, and be able to circumnavigate the specimens to absorb multiple perspectives. If you know some anatomy, you’ll be doubly rewarded at least, and if you bring your own phylogenetic perspective that can be trebled.

Baby white rhinoceros. Sad infant mortality.

What makes me happiest after my visit is realizing that we are in an anatomical renaissance for science and public interest therein. Exhibits like this and documentaries like “Inside Nature’s Giants” have tapped a public interest and curiosity in the wonders of basic anatomy. Anatomy is at the core of so many biological sciences and is so immediately accessible to people, because we all have anatomy. Anatomy is at the crossroads of art and science; it is visual, variable and complex, yet concrete, objective and easy to relate to. “Animal Inside Out” is a spectacular blend of art and science. They nail the artistic aspect, and the science is done reasonably well (despite my few gripes)—the exhibit’s science speaks for itself, in a way, although many visitors will need a nudge to grasp that.

I’d like to make a call for a permanent exhibit of the likes of “Animal Inside Out” in the UK. We deserve this! Museum exhibits could use something new, other than lame, quickly broken digital pushbuttons and bland skeletons devoid of soft tissue context (although the latter can be sufficient, e.g. at the Paris NMNH). That’s what makes “Animal Inside Out” (and Body Worlds) such a hit- as Hagens is quoted on the book dustcover, animal anatomy that goes beyond digitized abstractions and dusty bones is able “to sharpen our sense of the extraordinary by looking at the self-evident.” I could not say it better myself. This exhibit is extraordinary; that is self-evident after even a peek. It is a loving tribute to how fantastic the totality of animal structure is. Go! Enjoy. Absorb. Gape. Stare. Thrill. Revel. Think. Question. IT’S BEAUTIFUL.

Impressive hippo mouth says “Farewell for now.”

Edit: @samjamespearson on Twitter has kindly posted some photos (for free NHM/AIO publicity) of the exhibits and here are the links, now that they’re out there– SPOILERS! And thanks, Sam! I don’t think these really spoil the intense visual experience of actually being there and walking around the specimens, not at all.

octopus, whelk, squid, needlefish, scarlet haze of shark, hare brain, cat nerves,  bactrian camel, another camel,  bull (I forgot to mention it; this one was pretty great!)

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