tiny intensely metal object
(with a coin)

😻

A dense roost of bats in a stone building, with their eyes glowing white

It's #BatAppreciationDay, but sometimes there are almost TOO MANY #bats to appreciate.
🦇🤩🦇🤩🦇🤩🦇🤩🦇🤩🦇🤩🦇🤩🦇🤩🦇🤩🦇🤩
#MammalWatching #WildIndia

A fulvous fruit bat flies with its wings at the top of their stoke, with a baby clinging to its belly. In the background, four smaller bats cling to a stone wall.

As if it wasn't incredible enough to modify their hands so a wing is formed between the fingers, #bats can also fly with their babies attached. 🦇
Look closely! 👀
#BatAppreciationDay #MammalWatching #WildIndia

A leather-gloved hands holds a bat with nein-orange fur and a pink, wrinkled naked face, looking into the camera

It's #BatAppreciationDay.
Bats are an incredibly diverse group (around 1500 species - the second largest group of #mammals), performing incredibly important roles in their ecosystems. 🦇🦇🦇🦇🦇
Plus, some of them are bright orange. 🧡
#OrangeLeafNosedBat #bats #fieldwork #WildOz #MammalWatching

A tiny skull with a long snout and long curved teeth sits on a glass shelf next to a five pence coin. The coin is larger

Happy #BatAppreciationDay! 🦇
Mouse-eared #bat skulls are absurdly small, but utterly fierce.
That's a five pence piece on the right (which is 18mm across).
I appreciate the heck out of this bat skull. #bats

Copies of Natures Memory: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Natural History Museums displayed on a table in a fan arrangement

PAPERBACK PUBLICATION DAY IS IN A WEEK 🤩

#NaturesMemory: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Natural History #Museums offers an insider’s guide to the unnatural ways museums represent nature, [sometimes uncomfortable] stories of how collections were built, & how they help save the world. Order it now!

Fair call

📢We need you!📢Volunteers are essential at the Museum from providing a warm welcome to visitors, to getting hands on with our specimens. No zoology knowledge is needed, just enthusiasm! Different times & days available. Get in touch 🙂University of Cambridge Museums https://ow.ly/EB4i50YJPIZ

It must be Wednesday @jackdashby.bsky.social is posting wombats

Munching and scratching in the snow - typical winter #wombat pastimes in the mountains.
#WombatWednesday #fieldwork #Tasmania #MammalWatching #WildOz #wombats

Cover of The Vanishing Wild : Australian Wildlife and the Fight Against Extinction by Justine Hausheer.

The back cover. Jack Ashby's quote reads: "With her engaging and impassioned accounts, Justine Hausheer takes readers with her as she visits conservationists in the field and lab working tirelessly to save a series of incredible animals from extinction, while the world waits for politicians to take the environment seriously." The whole cover reads: "'I'M LISTENING FOR A GHOST. BRIGHT GREEN AND YELLOW WITH A TAIL STRIPED LIKE A BUMBLE-BEE.IT CROUCHES IN WAIT AS THE SUN SINKS BELOW THE ESCARPMENT.' Australia is a country celebrated for its wildlife, yet native species are in crisis. In the last 200 years, Australia has lost more biodiversity than any other developed nation, In this book, award-winning science writer Justine E. Hausheer encounters pygmy possums that live high in the Snowy Mountains, hears the booming calls of bitterns from their adopted home in the Riverina's rice fields, crouches after dark in the spinifex grasslands listening for the elusive night parrot and meets adorable fat-tailed dunnarts who might hold the answers to reviving the Tasmanian tiger. The Vanishing Wild immerses us in the harsh reality of the extinction crisis - and shows us the future of conservation and what can be done to save Australia's native species. Justine Hausheer takes readers with her as she visits conservationists in the field and lab working tirelessly to save a series of incredible animals from extinction, while the world waits for politicians to take the environment seriously. Jack Ashby , author of Platypus Matters 'Beautifully gives voice both to the animals on the precipice as well as those dedicated to bringing them back,' Sean Dooley, BirdLife Australia NEWSOUTH 9 1781761117039 WILDLIFE/ POPULAR SCIENCE/ NATURAL HISTORY" A UNSW COMPANY

Here's a great book about Australian #conservation. I was delighted to provide a quote for the cover. @justinehausheer.bsky.social takes readers into the lab and field to meet conservationists working to stop Australia's #extinction crisis, and the political inertia they're battling against.

a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a blue dress are touching a turtle statue . Alt: a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a blue dress are touching a turtle in a museum, with a "Do Not Touch" sign behind them.

🚨MUSEUM JOB KLAXON🚨
Join us to work with one of the country's best natural history collections at @zoologymuseum.bsky.social!
We're recruiting for a new **Assistant Conservator** to help us with a major moves project. IS IT YOU?
www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assista...
#MuseumJob #MuseumJobs

Another enjoyable @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast with Miranda Melcher interviewing Jack Ashby on the complex collecting histories and modern storehouses behind the world's natural history museums: newbooksnetwork.com/natures-memory

I really hope you enjoy it!

It's the only museum I've ever visited with a "Phallus-fest"! 🤩

COMING SOON! #NaturesMemory: Behind the Scenes at the World’s Natural History #Museums is in Penguin paperback three weeks today, offering an insider’s guide to the unnatural ways museums display nature, [sometimes uncomfortable] stories of how collections were built, & how they help save the world.

Why Don’t Humans Have A Penis Bone When The Majority Of Mammals Do? And why they’re surprisingly hard to find in natural history museums.

Have #museums been changing the anatomy of specimens to avoid embarrassment? Why don't you see penis bones in museums? Are visitors being deliberately mislead? Find out more as our Assistant Director @jackdashby.bsky.social talks to @iflscience.com @camunivmuseums.bsky.social tinyurl.com/422tkdvt

Why Don’t Humans Have A Penis Bone When The Majority Of Mammals Do? And why they’re surprisingly hard to find in natural history museums.

Why don't you see penis bones in #museums?
I spoke to @iflscience.com about how museums have been deliberately modifying the anatomy of their specimens: they knowingly mislead visitors about what most male mammal skeletons look like, as I wrote in #NaturesMemory:
www.iflscience.com/the-majority...

A damp #wombat searching for juicy grass shoots to nibble amongst a sea of tough alpine coral fern.
#WombatWednesday #fieldwork #Tasmania #MammalWatching #WildOz #wombats

A screenshot of a spreadsheet of mammals, with columns for where and when they were seen. Mediterranean monk seal is highlighted in green.

An up-and-down #MammalWatching trip to #Madeira: I failed to find any #whales, but I did glimpse of one of the world's rarest marine #mammals. 🦭 High seas cancelled my boat to the main colony of Mediterranean monk #seals, but one swam through the island's main marina! 🤩I've added it to the list:

A canary pecks seeds from a low shrub with volcanic boulders behind. It's a small yellow bird sub grey/brown flecks

Canaries became extraordinarily common captive #birds around the world, but in the wild they're only native to small islands in the Atlantic: the Canary Islands (after which they are named), the Azores, and here on #Madeira.
#birding #WildPortugal

Nothing but the sounds of waves against our hull, and #dolphins breathing. 🌊🐬
#Madeira #MammalWatching #WildPortugal #CommonDolphin

sometimes we need nature to recognise us too 🥰😻

I wonder what gulls think when a bunch of #dolphins pop up around them. 🐬
#Madeira #MammalWatching #WildPortugal

A Madeira wall lizard on a volcanic rock, among some palm fronds

There's only one native species of #reptile on land in #Madeira, and here it is: the Madeira wall lizard.
Madeira is a volcanic island - it has never been attached to a continent - so the ancestors of all its native animals had to float, swim or fly to get here.

There's nothing quite like when wild #mammals come to say hi on their own terms. 🐬🐬
#CommonDolphin #Madeira #MammalWatching #WildPortugal #dolphins

Any animal with "common" in its name gets a raw deal. It's impossible not to feel joy watching "common #dolphins" at play. 🐬🐬🐬
#Madeira #MammalWatching #WildPortugal

Natural History Museum tops UK attraction list with record visitors London museum defies drop in numbers seen elsewhere, attributed to cost of living and fall in international tourists

Yet another line of evidence that natural history #museums are the best museums: 7.3 million people visited @nhm-london.bsky.social last year, an all-time record for any UK museum or gallery.
Natural history museums play a huge role in our relationship with nature
www.theguardian.com/culture/2026...

This is tonight! If you're around London, come along!