12 March 2009
Giants of New Zealand stamp series
Not content with getting an exhibition, the Colossal Squid now has her own stamp and coin! The dollar stamp and coin no less. Cool. Thanks NZ Post!
Giants of New Zealand coins
The other giants are the Giant Moa (extinct), Giant Eagle (extinct), Southern Right Whale, Giant Weta.
I’m going to chase down a curator tomorrow and find out a) what the scientific names of these creatures are and b) whether New Zealand has more Giant species than most places.
12 February 2009
Margaret Stoddart, Roses, 1920s
In Europe during the 1300s February 14th was thought to be the day when birds paired off to mate. This date was originally an ancient Greco-Roman pagan festival, and was later called St Valentines Day Feast by the Church. Since the 1300s, on February 14th each year, roses (and flowers in general), have been widely accepted as gifts and Saint Valentines Day is now celebrated by many cultures in different parts of the world. The art collection at Te Papa houses numerous paintings of roses and other flowers – for example Margaret Stoddart’s watercolour still life of roses.
The natural history collections at Te Papa also include many specimens of flowering plants (Angiosperms). However, in order to preserve them, these specimens are pressed and dried, and consequently loose the colour and beauty of the fresh flowers. Some of the oldest specimens in our collections were obtained by the naturalists who visited New Zealand during the voyages of Captain James Cook in the late 1700s.
Jersey cudweed. Specimen collected by Joseph Banks Oct. 1769
This specimen of jersey cudweed or pukatea (at left), was collected by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on 8th October 1769 shortly after the Endeavour arrived in New Zealand waters and sailed into a bay at the entrance of a small river in Tuuranga-nui (today’s Poverty Bay, near modern Gisborne).
Storing these specimens provides an invaluable resource for scientific research, and the flowers are very important in determining the relationships between different species. However, the giving of flowers on Valentines Day raises an interesting question, as flowers are the sexual organs of plants!
What exactly is the meaning behind severing the sexual organs from a plant and giving them to a friend?
Sexual organs of animals are frequently used in traditional medicines and sold as aphrodisiacs – particularly the dried and ground-up remains of bacula (or penis bones), from seals, bears and other canines. However, presenting somebody with the severed sexual organs of a small mammal probably wouldn’t win many friends!
Collection Manager Anton van Helden alongside a stranded male pygmy blue whale.
Meanwhile, James Cook continued his voyages of discovery, and Banks and the other naturalists collected many specimens of flowering plants which are still held in the collections at Te Papa and in other museums in Europe.
Valentines Day is also remembered for other reasons – on February 14th 1779, the Endeavour arrived in at Kealakekua Bay, Hawai’i, where during an altercation with local natives, James Cook was clubbed and stabbed to death. Perhaps he should have brought flowers.
27 January 2009
Move over big squid – there’s competition at Te Papa for the most popular exhibit these holidays !
You love the blue whale heart in NatureSpace, including crawling into it, stuffing things inside it (like big toy penguins) and having your picture taken with it.
The model was a highlight of the Whales | Tohorā exhibition. It was so popular we made two of them! The other heart model is now on tour with the exhibition, which closed at the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC on 18 Jan 2009 and will open on 28 February at Exploration Place, in Kansas.
The blue whale heart is a favourite Te Papa photo spot and it’s great to see your pics up on Flickr.
If you’ve got photos of you and your mates with the blue whale heart we’d love to see them!
8 January 2009
It seems like New Zealand museums are setting a new trend for staging scientific dissections of big interesting animals and getting the public involved in them online.
It’s a great way to engage visitors with the scientific activities of natural history museums – it takes the behind-the-scenes stuff out into the public arena. And it can be a real boost to public knowledge and understanding about animal biology and conservation.
Today Auckland Museum is holding a dissection of a Great White Shark and you can view it on their website from 2pm. The necropsy, or animal autopsy, will raise public awareness of this magnificent, and vulnerable fish species.
Here at Te Papa we have also had great success with making some recent scientific examinations and dissections available online. In April 2008 a team of scientists thawed and examined a colossal squid, but didn’t dissect it. This is the colossal squid now on display , along with lots of info explaining it’s anatomy. While the team examined the big colossal squid specimen they dissected a smaller, incomplete colossal squid specimen and a giant squid specimen and blogged about it live. The information we got from dissecting these other big squid specimens was vital to understanding the biology of the colossal squid, and then communicating this in the exhibition.
After the success of the squid investigations we then decided to blog about a dissection of a pygmy right whale in May 2008. Looking at our blog stats we still have heaps of people going to these posts about the pygmy right whale heart and lungs – somewhat strange, but true. I’m not sure why these posts would be so popular - so if anyone out there knows please tell me!
Then in July 2008 the Melbourne Museum held a public dissection of a giant squid, which you can view here.
From big molluscs we have now moved on to big fish! It’s great to see these new ways of communicating science in museums being explored and our museum-based scientists taking centre stage - I’m interested to know what others think about this.
6 November 2008
ARLs 3D glasses © Copyright Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 2008
Today the Exhibition team got our first taste of what our 3D Colossal Squid movie is going to look like. The exhibition opens in December and it will include Te Papa’s first 3D movie!
The production company Animation Research Ltd (ARL) sent us the latest cut of the movie and special 3D viewing glasses. Don’t worry we’ll have normal 3D glasses in the exhibition.
We all took turns to watch using the glasses – that’s Judy our Project Co-coordinator in the photo. Wow. It’s amazing to see the Colossal Squid and a whole lot of other deep sea fish literally come to life in front of you.
You might just be able to make out that the movie is still two separate images side-by-side. Each eye looks at one picture when you use the glasses. Your brain then recompiles them in to a single 3D image. When ARL have finished you’ll see a single image projected onto a screen and use normal 3D glasses.
Judy looking at the movie on her PC © Copyright Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 2008
We’re pretty excited about this part of the exhibition. The goal is to give you an idea of what the Squid’s life and environment might be like. We have to say might because until someone films one down in the deep sea we really won’t know for sure.
It has meant there have been some interesting conversations. How does it swim – cockatoo position or with arms straight out in front? How does the beak move when it’s eating? When would it use its light organs, or headlights when hunting?
We’ve been working with ARL for the last 2 months on this 3D movie. ARLis an amazing company in Dunedin who we worked with on the Whales/Tohora exhibition. They created the amazing Sperm Whale versus Giant Squid video.
Not long ‘til the exhibition opens – Dec 13th - and our girl goes on display. We’ll also have a new Squid website. It’ll have lots of the cool exhibition stuff including a version of the movie for those of you who can’t make it into the building. It’ll be a 2D version ‘cos as far as I know you can’t get 3D on the web – or can you?
Lucy Hoffman
20 October 2008
17 October 2008
Te Papa’s Whales Tohorā exhibition opened at the National Geographic Museum on 15 October with a traditional Māori dawn ceremony that blew Washington away!
This was the same day Chile announced that its waters are now a whale sanctuary - that’s 5,500km of coastal waters protected from whale hunting for commercial or scientific purposes. A good day for ceteceans!
See Fox News’ coverage of the Whales exhibition here: http://www.myfoxdc.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail;jsessionid=15D5F1DA273ECCB7F7EFD061556BEB9E?contentId=7653443&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1&sflg=1.
I hope to get some images up soon of the ceremony so stay tuned!
14 July 2008
So I’m at my desk when my cell rings – its Anton (you know – our Collection Manager Marine Mammals)…
“Do you wanna see a dead whale?”
Of course! So off I trot (nice and quicksmart in time with whatever’s playing on my MP3) – not even worrying about what the Wellington wind was doing to my hair… you can’t turn your nose up to this kind of opportunity!
Anton pointing down to the washed up dead whale.
And there it was – I wasn’t too sure what I was expecting but this poor creature had been dead at least a couple of days, so it wasn’t in the best shape. It had been battered around by waves, dashed against rocks, pecked and chewed by various creatures.
My first view of the dead Pygmy Sperm whale
Two things I have learnt about a Pygmy sperm whale – notice three-quarters of the way towards its tail there’s discolouring in the water – I thought it was blood… its ink! We think they squirt ink out much like a squid does to confuse and escape from predators.
The other thing (although it has decomposed so much you couldn’t see it) is that these whales have markings just behind their heads that imitate gills. So, from a distance they could be mistaken for great white sharks.
The sneaky camouflage whale!
Measuring
By this time critical mass of onlookers had been achieved so passers by were now stopping to see what the go was. Of course nobody had been interested when it was just Anton and myself 
All those people walked on by who missed this opportunity… hence the blog! Too exciting and interesting not to share!
14 May 2008
On Sunday evening 11 May 2008 Te Papa closed Whales|Tohorā. Over 140,000 people had visited the exhibition.
During the morning several killer whales, or orca, played by the fountain in Oriental Bay – much to the delight and amazement of several of the Whales exhibition team members. We like to think it was a sign!
For Te Papa staff and iwi partners who had contributed to the exhibition the closing was a sad and moving event. We gave the exhibition a poroporoaki (farewell) and blessed the taonga in preparation for the tour to the first international venue in Washington DC.
We reflected on what had been achieved and the impact we believe the exhibition has had on so many people. The exhibition’s whakatauki, or proverb, sums it up:
This week Te Papa staff start taking down the exhibition and getting it packed up and ready to travel to the United States. It will open later this year at the National Geographic Museum in Washington D.C.
9 May 2008
The whale has now been completed dissected and the organs such as intestine, kidneys and heart, are being preserved in a formalin solution. the bones are being flensed (stripped of muscle). The stomach content revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
Dr Joy Reidenberg is now in the process of investigating respiratory tract. Above you can see the lungs and Dr Reidenberg is holding up the laryngeal sac which is different to other animals in that it sits off to the side instead in the middle.
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