Come into Whanganui Regional Museum and to your left, glass doors open into a gallery crammed with stuffed animals from all around the world.
An initial reaction might be one of horror. Or horrified fascination. A range of emotions are elicited by the sight of beautiful creatures killed, stuffed and mounted for display, the sad and sometimes disturbing traditions of a natural history collection in a museum.
Some, like the passenger pigeon, or the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger), which have been in the museum collection for well over 100 years, were captured when they were already becoming rare. Killing these animals for public and private collections hastened the extinction of their species.
Other animals in the exhibition, such as the ring-tailed lemur, snow leopard, polar bear and Bengal tiger, are now threatened species.
Despite the discomfort experienced by some viewers when they see these specimens, they remain important for science and education.
While good museum practice no longer involves hunting and killing endangered animals, we are able to learn things from the objects we retain.
Our museum collection holds thousands of zoological objects, including historically and scientifically significant specimens. The Teeth, Talons & Taxidermy exhibition showcases some of these, grouped by geographical region.
The thylacine was a carnivorous marsupial. The last known living individual died in captivity in 1936. Its scientific name, Thylacinus cynocephalus, means "dog-headed pouched dog".
Like other marsupial mammals, it carried its young in a pouch that, unusually, opened towards the back legs. The thylacine preferred to eat other marsupials such as small rodents and birds, but was credited with attacks on poultry and sheep.
One famous photograph of a thylacine eating a chicken was later found to be a taxidermied specimen with a dead chicken in its mouth.
Land companies and governments paid bounties for dead thylacines from 1830 to the early 20th century. It also faced competition for food from introduced wild dogs, loss of habitat and disease. Museums are now the only place you can see a thylacine, and the one currently on display here is one of only 101 known specimens. Some of these have been used to provide DNA to researchers.
One of the most pathetic sights in the exhibition is a tiger skin rug, made from the skin of a Bengal tiger shot in India by Arthur Challone Nixon in the 1930s. The head has been fixed with its mouth open, showing its natural teeth.
Though the tiger's eyes are glass, it seems as though it is looking at the viewer. Tigers have often been hunted for trophies, as this one was. The tiger is still threatened by large-scale poaching, and also by habitat loss.
While many of the specimens in this exhibition may provoke feelings of sadness, viewing them gives us an opportunity to learn about conservation and find inspiration to protect living animals and their habitats.
Margie Beautrais. Photo / Whanganui Regional Museum
- Margie Beautrais is the Team Leader Education & Life-long Learning at Whanganui Regional Museum.
