The Perfect Specimen

@perfect-specimen

A lighthearted look at natural history via objects in the NHM London collections, hung loosely on a different adjective every episode. Podcast available on Spotify, Apple and YouTube:

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The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Jun 7

Images for this week… no image of the lonely whale sadly but you can enjoy Whalien52 from BTS m.youtube.com/watch?v=N6o-...

Stuffed Galapagos tortoise with a label round its neck

Close up of the head of a tuatara in a jar showing its cute big eyes

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Apr 29

Images of the specimens from this week :)

Jar with a bat in it. The bat has its mouth wide open

A jar containing test tubes that contain midges and labels

A clam with a label next to it. This is the real Megalodon!

Fossil clam in a lovely box with foam holding it in place. Clam has both sides of the shell and the hinge.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Apr 12

Here are the specimens from this week! Still can’t believe @joshlukedavis.com was allowed to bring in such an old and important book. 📕😍

Illustration from a 17th century book of The Boas. A scaled snake like creature with no limbs but a fat body, long tail in a knot, eating a person.

Massive toad in a large jar of fluid, and a second jar with massive tadpole in it

Frog in a jar of fluid head down. Its legs are very long

A large herbarium sheet with dried palm leaves and palm fruits on it. All leaves and fruit are brown in colour

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Apr 3

Images of the specimens for this episode. Well an image of the moss which is full of meiofauna at least!

Black beetle in a white box. This one can be run over by a car and survive!

Lovely long horn beetle. Beetle is balck with iridescent green stripes and its antennae are folded back and longer than its body. Pinned in a white box with a barcode and label

Some dark coloured snails in a jar. Their skin is scaly and slightly shiny grey colour.

An open glass jar with a lump of green moss in it

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Mar 18

Here are some images of this episodes specimens :)

Mammal skull held by person. Skull is about hand sized. This is a quokka

A white board in which is pinned a large wasp with ovipositors longer than its body, body is black with thin yellow stripes. There is also a piece of wood with an ovipositor sticking out of it.

Close up of a crabs underside with a parasitic barnacle growing out of it.

A very very small pinned wasp on top of very small label with tiny writing

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Mar 1

If youd like your own copy of the nomenclature of colours you can buy one here: www.nhmshop.co.uk/werner-s-nom...

A large jar with fluid inside and a big brown blob which is a sponge.

Small jar full of liquid, inside is a small brown frog with large pale spots on its legs, side and head. A label the same size as the frog is attached to its leg.

The open pages of a book, on the left page colours are described, on the right page there are small squares of the corresponding colour, along with examples of what is that colour.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Feb 17

Specimens for this week!

Henbane. A dried plant specimen with pale whitish flowers and green spiky leaves, flattened and stuck to card

Small firefly beetle pinned in a box with a label underneath it with information about the species and location it was found. Beetle has a brown body, yellow head and long antennae.

A shiny bee. Bee is iridescent blue and pinned in a drawer. Wings are sticking out and are brown.

Close up of two very flat flatworms in a jar. They are dark on top and light brown underneath and about 3mm thick.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Feb 2

Christmas Island shrew. Small stuffed brown shrew with a label attached to it. Next to it a test tube containing a tiny skull from the shrew.

Close up of the head of a Christmas Island shrew

Grease fish specimen in a jar. Looks like a fish version of the Michelin man with tires of fat

Close up of the head of the grease fish. It has a very small eye and the typical “whiskers” of a catfish.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Jan 24

Forgot to post the specimens for this! Here’s the tiny ants and the lovely wild cabbage. 🐜 🥬

Wild cabbage specimen on a herbarium sheet

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Jan 24

Here’s the cute lil pufferfish in a jar and from the book.

Cute lil painting of a pufferfish in an old book

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Nov 23

Somehow failed to take pics of any of the specimens for this one so please enjoy this unlucky fox instead…

A red fox with one back paw stuck in a letterbox half way up a large back door to someone’s house. How it got like this no one knows…

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Nov 9

And just look at these gorgeous tinamou eggs and spooky Monotropa! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotro...

Eggs in a basket. There are 4 rows each of 4 eggs. Top row is turquoise, second is grey, third is spring green, fourth is chocolate brown. All are shiny like porcelain.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Nov 9

Forgot to share the extra pics for this one!

Close up of the face of a Halloween crab. The claws and lower half of the face are white, the top of the carapace is a lovely dark red. The crab is preserved in a jar of alcohol

Jar of Halloween three or four crabs. The claws, legs and lower half of the carapace are white, the top of the carapace is a lovely dark red. The crabs are preserved in a jar of alcohol

Josh in a skeleton onesie with his face painted like a skeleton. It is disturbing.

Natalie in a black top wearing (like an apron) a planet earth painted blue with green continents as they were in the Cretaceous. Upside down glow in the dark dinosaurs with x for eyes are stuck to the landmasses. Her headband is a brown comet with orange tissue paper flames. Both the earth and the comet (and Natalie lol) have googly eyes

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Oct 24

And here's the great paper @nhcooper123.bsky.social mentioned on the three wattled bellbird (Snow 1977): www.jstor.org/stable/40852... complete with this amazing figure...

Line drawing from a paper that shows bellbird mating dsiplays. Panel A shows a male bellbird calling at the end of a branch and a female looking on from closer to the trunk of the tree. Panel B shows the male shaking his wattles and indicates he has now moved inside the female so she is now closer to the end of the tree branch and he is closer to the trunk. Panel C shows the female right at the end of the branch and the male crowding her and shouting into her ear.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Oct 7

Who ❤️ data? Our 36 specimens (31 animal, 5 plant) so far represent 8/31 (25%) animal and 2/14 (14%) plant phyla/divisions. Chordata/mammals are winning (but many of these appeared in OVERRATED). @joshlukedavis.com and @nhcooper123.bsky.social have done OK so far but there's more diversity to cover!

Barchart showing distribution of specimens across animal phyla. Chordata = 15, Arthropoda = 8, Mollusca = 3, Annelida, Cnidaria, Echinodermata, Nemertea and Onychophora = 1. Chordata is coloured to show that we have most mammals (7) then fishes/reptiles (3), then birds/tunicates (1).

Bar chart showing that 4 plant specimens were angiosperms and 1 was a bryophyte

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Sep 24

Forgot to share the crisp menus we mentioned in RELIABLE. Found in Walthamstow here: prettydecentbeer.co

Crisp list set menus.
Surf and Turf: scampi fries, bacon fries, skips.
Ploughman’s: pickled onion monster munch, cheese quavers, ready salted hoops.
Kids menu: Pom bears, skips, scampi fries

Crisp List.
- Something to Start: peanuts
- Full bodied: Pairs well with dark beers and west coast IPAs. Bacon fries, Scampi fries.
- Mineral: All rounders, will complement most beers. Pom bears, big hoops.
- Zippy: stands up to a big fruit sour. Discos salt and vinegar, pickled onion monster munch.
- Funky: pairs perfectly with a NEIPA. Trust us. Skips, quavers.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Sep 16

Last chance to ask us any questions about the last 9 episodes of Perfect Specimen as we’re recording the Q&A tomorrow!

Taxidermy wildcat posed lying down and baring its teeth as if meowing angrily, in front is a dead looking red squirrel

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Aug 17

We love these commemorative space monkey patches ❤️

Patches with images of space monkey Gordo and another of Able and Miss Baker.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Aug 13

Here’s the lovely praying mantis ootheca. Complete with tiny baby mantis skins.

Round brown ball pinned to a white background. On the top are loose bits of material. Looks like a tiny Alien egg…

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Aug 13

Our attempts to describe *Anomalocaris* didn't really do it justice so here's an image. [Credit: By Junnn11 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?...

A reconstruction of Anomalocaris, colour reddish. It's a segemented animal, a bit like an armoured squid. It has swimming flaps running along its body, large compound eyes, and a single pair of segmented, frontal appendages that look like long weird shrimp

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Jul 14

Amazing image showing baby ichthyosaurs inside a female in a fossil. Image by Ryosuke Motani at UC Davis.

Two images of the same fossil, the top panel shows the fossil itself. It's the torso of an ichthyosaur with a very small baby ichythosaur clearly peeking out of the centre. The bottom panel is the same image with the baby ichythosaur coloured in yellow, the paddle of the ichthyosaur in blue and the ribs in green.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Jul 4

And the beautiful jewel beetle dress Josh mentioned is described here: www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/11188... Here’s the Sargent painting of it with Ellen Terry playing Lady Macbeth.

A white woman with long red hair raising a crown in both hands above her head. She is wearing a floor length beautiful gown, all green, with long trailing sleeves. Some parts are green and shine like gems. These are the beetles.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Jun 15

Join us next time for EXUBERANT... And remember if you have any Qs please send them in or comment wherever you've been listening. We'll have a special Q&A episode later in the series!

Elton John Carpool meme (Elton John dressed in a massive prink feather boa, with pink glasses and feather headdress, sat next to his manager dressed in black.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Jun 14

These can get up to 12m long. Here’s my favourite image of someone on a massive one…

A huge pyrosome under water with a diver riding it for scale.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Jun 14

Here’s the pyrosome (which Josh refers to as a hairy sock).

Rectangular jar in portrait orientation. Inside is clear fluid and what looks like a white furry sock

A close up of the white hairy sock where it is clear that it is made up of many small parts with hairs all stuck together

Even closer up photo showing individual zooids

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Jun 2

This is a dugong not a manatee but shows the extremely weird snouts of adult Sirenia that we mention in the podcast. Zebra butt in the background for scale lol.

Skull of a dugong. It is a very weird shaped skull with the snout and mouth pointing down at a 90 degree angle allowing the animal to graze on the bottom while still looking forwards. Skull is in a collections area so in the background there are some obvious striped legs of a zebra.

The Perfect Specimen@perfect-specimen· Jun 2

Close up of the hairs on the baleen plate