Hidden Treasures of the LKC Natural History Museum – Part 6 Bonus: The Visionary Digital Lab

Hi there! This article is the final part of a series featuring the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum in Singapore. If you’d like to learn more, why not start at the beginning? Otherwise, enjoy the second bonus of our feature!

While visiting the Cryogenic Collection, I was blessed with an unexpected discovery. Adjacent to the collection is a humble office used by resident scientists. At first glance, it looks like an ordinary science lab – computers, boxes of gloves, pipettes – but step in a little further and you’ll witness this impressive contraption:

This device, known as the Visionary Digital Lab, transforms an ordinary DSLR camera into a high powered camera suited for photographing tiny insects in extraordinary detail. And when I say extraordinary, I mean this:

See the thin black line in the bottom left? That represents 1mm. This stunning capture of a Nemopoda speiseri fly is constructed by combining several brightly lit, high resolution images, each focusing on a particular spot on the specimen, to create a composite image that brings every nook and cranny of this miniscule insect into sharp detail. Some of these images are in fact uploaded to an online archive managed by the Museum at the Biodiversity of Singapore Online, where researchers from all over the world can use it as a reference.

Still not impressed? Here’s another version of the same device in one of the museum’s dedicated labs:

I promise you there’s a specimen on that dish. Just keep squinting. Or look over here:

There it is! From the slimmest bristle to the thinnest wing, our little friend has appeared. As mentioned, you can peruse other photos like this courtesy of the museum and its partners at Museum at the Biodiversity of Singapore Online , which also features Southeast Asian birds, mammals, reptiles and more in exquisite quality.

Hidden Treasures of the LKC Natural History Museum – Part 5 Bonus: Insect research

Pinning and sorting

On the way to the dry collection, I passed through a lab that was bustling with activity. This is one of the preparation labs where specimens acquired by the museum are put through the preservation process. In particular, I got to see a few insect specimens that were in the middle of get preserved dry.

If you’ve been to the museum, you’ll know that dry insect specimens are beautifully arranged – wings spread, legs in position, perky antennas – but that isn’t quite what they look like in the wild. For example, some butterflies usually close their wings when they’re resting, so you’d seldom see the upper side of their wings on display. When these insects die, they don’t get really get any better at modelling. They shrivel up, and their legs bunch together due to rigor mortis – you’ve had dead insects on your bathroom floor, you know it. So, what you see in the museum displays is no accident. Thank goodness for insect pinning.

Before a dead insect is irreversibly taken over by the jaws of rigor mortis, its form and structure can be rescued by pinning. Tiny needles are used to hold different parts of the insect: legs, wings, even the fine antennas, to keep them in place.

The pinning board is then covered with cellophane paper to flatten and straighten out the wings, and the specimen is left to dry in a fume hood or a drying cabinet, which helps keep the moisture away. As time passes, the insect hardens into its intended shape. This process requires little to no chemicals; in fact, everything revolves around keeping the specimen as dry as possible, because moisture and humidity facilitate decomposition. You might be wondering about the insides of the insects – don’t they contain blood? Wet blood, and organs? You’re absolutely right. For small insects, their insides are so tiny in amount that they can dry out all by themselves after death. Larger insects, however, need to be gutted – a small incision is made in the side, from which their innards are scooped out or squeezed out. Sounds surgical, doesn’t it? That’s why the curator has an impressive array of instruments specially made for handling these fragile specimens – except maybe for that plastic spoon that looks like it was stolen from a Starbucks.

This article is brought to you by entosupplies.com – I wish.

The pinning method is also used for other animals like spiders and even small crabs.

More legs, more work.

Pinning isn’t the only thing going on in this lab. There’s also an ongoing project aiming to document all the insects in Singapore – a daunting task. This involves the collection of a huge plethora of insects… which then need to be sorted.

Spencer, a student at the National University of Singapore (NUS), is painstakingly examining each tiny bug under a microscope, to determine their species and classification. Sitting between piles of reference books and jars filled with insects, it certainly looks like he’s got his work cut out for him. Salute.

Let’s all pray for Spencer’s eyes.

 

Hidden Treasures of the LKC Natural History Museum – Part 4: The Vertebrate Wet Collection

Warning: This article contains pictures of dead animals. They are super dead.

What is the difference between the vertebrate and invertebrate wet collections, you ask? Not much, they’re all… wet. But perhaps one of the striking things about the vertebrate wet collection is that many of the specimens tend to be bigger. We’re reaching the territory of mammals, birds, fish, snakes and more.

Middle row, left: Notice those flaps on the side of its body? That’s a Javanese flying squirrel, which can glide through the air by stretching out that loose skin.

Oh, this is from that movie! Finding… what was it, Fabio? Finding Chico?

You’ll notice that some of these animals could also be found in the dry collection. As mentioned, whether a specimen is preserved dry or wet depends on the researcher or collector’s aim. Though a wet specimen may be more likely to discolour over time, this won’t happen for animals like birds, as their colours mostly come not from pigments, but from microscopic structures (structural colour) in their feathers that absorb and reflect light.

That’s how this bird from the 1960s is still killing it.

This bat is dubbed ‘Yoda’ because, look at that serene little face. This bat is saying, “Relax. You can do it.”

Specimens like this native leopard cat are generally the work of local taxidermists.

Apart from the compactors, the wet collection also has a store of steel tanks for the animals too big to fit into jars.

What are those big black contraptions that look like the things they put over your head at the hair salon? Like the jars, the steel tanks are filled with large amounts of preserving alcohol, and boy is it nasty when you open the lid. To protect the people working with these specimens, those flexible fume hoods suck up the evaporated alcohol escaping from the tanks, and no one has to breathe them.

This concludes our tour of the LKC Natural History Museum’s archives. Our natural history museum, together with natural history museums across the globe, is a beacon of scientific progress, conservation and education. So next time you come for a visit, remember to blow a kiss upwards for all the specimens and researchers making the world a better place. And if you’d like to contribute to this endeavour, take your friends and family (and dates) to the museum to learn more about our environment! You can also donate to the museum’s Endowment Fund here.

We’ve done a walkthrough of most of the archives in the museum, but exactly what sort of research do the curators get up to in there? Stay tuned for upcoming bonus posts featuring cool gadgets and even cooler people!

Hidden Treasures of the LKC Natural History Museum – Part 3: The Invertebrate Wet Collection

Warning: this article contains pictures of dead animals – but mostly the kinds that you’re used to seeing. You know, on dinner plates.

Here we come to the specimens preserved in fluid. This entire floor is dedicated to the invertebrates: insects, crabs, snails, octopuses, all your classic crawly pals. While some of these animals could also be preserved dry, soft-bodied creatures like aphids and several types of insect larvae would shrivel up if they were to be left dry. Otherwise, it depends on the aims of the researchers themselves.

Specimens are kept in jars filled with formalin, denatured ethanol, or unmethylated ethanol. This is somewhat similar to how animals like snakes have been infused in wine and enjoyed by Chinese, Vietnamese and Southeast Asians for thousands of years. That is strictly a fun fact and NOT an endorsement of you breaking into the museum to get drunk off funky isopod liquor. Please, don’t.

Don’t panic, those are just unfortunately placed barnacles.

With the constant use of the specimens for research, the preservative liquid will evaporate, so the the curators top up the jars from time to time. These specimens can’t survive long without their booze.

I stole this and it looks great on my coffee table. Just kidding.

Most of the specimens are from Southeast Asia, including specimens collected on expeditions. In fact, some of the museum’s scientists recently embarked on a two-week long deep sea expedition called the South Java Deep Sea Biodiversity Expedition (SJADES 2018). It was led by the head of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, Professor Peter Ng, as well as Professor Dwi Listyo Rahayu, Senior Research Scientist of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI). With their ship hovering over relatively unexplored deep seas, they collected over 12 000 deep sea animals, including over a dozen new species of hermit crabs, lobsters and prawns. Some of those specimens are now sitting in compactors specially labelled “Expeditions/Trips”, awaiting our scientists’ groundbreaking research.

Next up is the vertebrates. See you in part 4!

 

Hidden Treasures of the LKC Natural History Museum – Part 2: The Dry Collection

Warning: this article contains pictures of dead animals. If you’re a little squeamish, maybe give this one a pass.

There are two main ways of preserving specimens – dry and wet. Dry specimens can stay preserved simply by staying in a cool and dry environment. That’s why the temperature and humidity levels are rigidly controlled in the dry collection.

I’d say this is a good place for an Instagram photoshoot.

The dry collection is located on one of the upper floors of the museum itself. It is a labyrinth of metal cabinets known as compactors, all arranged in straight rows. Each compactor can be moved left and right simply by turning a wheel, so that they can be jam packed together to conserve space. When anyone needs to use a particular cabinet, they can simply move them apart again to open the doors. It’s chicken soup for the neat freak’s soul.

The dry collection hosts a mind-boggling variety of specimens. The pale remains of corals!

Birds, mammals, sea shells, eggs, even nests! Even poop! Scientists really go for anything, huh?

Objectively? Probably the coolest drawers you’ll ever pull open.

There’s also a little herbarium, which seems indistinguishable from an ordinary office filing cabinet at first. Plant specimens are dried and pressed, much in the same way you see artists pressing flowers poetically into the pages of books. They’re sealed in Ziploc bags for future reference.

Because my hands are too crude and clumsy, I didn’t get to open them. But, you know, they’re plants, but flat.

Keep reading to continue our tour at the wet collections!