A beautiful new addition to the #Mammals bookshelves, covering the fascinating #marsupials, #bats & #rodents (and a sadly large number of invasive species) of the Southwest Pacific islands. The species descriptions are coupled with great photos and illustrations. 🤩🦘🦇🐀 @csiropublishing.bsky.social

The deadline for these important natural history digitisation #MuseumJobs is this Monday 3rd August - so do get applying! #DiSSCoUK

Jack Ashby@jackdashby.bsky.social · 2w ago

🚨 #MUSEUMJOBS KLAXON🚨 We're looking for a Senior Digitiser and two Digitisers to work across @zoologymuseum.bsky.social & @camplantsci.bsky.social to help create biodiversity data for the researchers who need it, through #DiSSCoUK. 1. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/senior-... 2. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/digitis...

Well so they do! Every day's a school day.

Jack Ashby@jackdashby.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Another museum, another #echidna with legs pointing in the wrong direction. In life, #echidnas' hindfeet point backwards: they can flex to scratch between their shoulders, and do jazzhands with all 4 feet to drill vertically into the soil to hide. But taxidermists twist them forward so the skin rips

I'm late to the party, but @andreawulf.bsky.social's masterpiece is utterly brilliant. I knew almost nothing about Humboldt, but his impact on how we see nature in the West - both ecologically and emotionally - was nothing short of immense. But more than that, the story is brilliantly told. Read it!

This #wombat is feeding so frantically it's as if the grass is about to run out. #WombatWednesday #fieldwork #Tasmania #MammalWatching #WildOz #wombats

Aquatic #hedgehog!! 🦔🌊 #Hedgehogs are surprisingly good swimmers - their spines are hollow so they float easily. This one was swimming from rock to rock to get across the stream. #BreconBeacons #WildWales #MammalWatching

🚨 #MUSEUMJOBS KLAXON🚨 We're looking for a Senior Digitiser and two Digitisers to work across @zoologymuseum.bsky.social & @camplantsci.bsky.social to help create biodiversity data for the researchers who need it, through #DiSSCoUK. 1. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/senior-... 2. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/digitis...

🦇 If anyone wants to help us learn more about Daubenton's bats and how they are doing in the UK, have a look at our Waterway Survey: www.bats.org.uk/our-work/nat... . Sign-up and take part in this year's survey season in August :)

Jack Ashby@jackdashby.bsky.social · 2w ago

Daubenton's #bats have a distinctive flight pattern, swooping in figures-of-eight over the water's surface to swoop up bugs. (But it's still cool to have the Echo Meter bat detector to confirm the ID). 🦇🔊 #MammalWatching #WildWales #BreconBeacons

📢 Apply now to SCCS 2027 🎉 The 26th Student Conference on Conservation Science will take place between 30 March – 1 April 2027 at the University of Cambridge. Check the website for further details and to apply: www.sccs-cam.org

Student Conference on Conservation Science - Welcome

SCCS helps young conservation scientists gain experience, learn new ideas and make contacts that will be valuable for their future careers.

sccs-cam.org

Daubenton's #bats have a distinctive flight pattern, swooping in figures-of-eight over the water's surface to swoop up bugs. (But it's still cool to have the Echo Meter bat detector to confirm the ID). 🦇🔊 #MammalWatching #WildWales #BreconBeacons

So excited for our partnership led jointly by us in the University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge University Herbarium, Oxford University Museum of Natural History and Oxford University Herbaria to retrieve and share data from our collections that will make major contributions to biodiversity research

University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge@zoologymuseum.bsky.social · 3w ago

📢Major new partnership between Oxford & Cambridge museums will release over a million digitised specimen records of British plants & insects. https://ow.ly/rXlt50ZnG37 Department of Plant Sciences Cambridge, UK Research and Innovation, Museum of Natural History, University of Oxford #DiSSCoUK

Back in the same spot in Bannau Brycheiniog six months later, still searching for #otters, only this time with more leaves, less water, and more midges. 🦦🦟🏞 #MammalWatching #WildWales #BreconBeacons

Jack Ashby@jackdashby.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Happy New Year, mammal-watchers! 🦫🦌🐨🐀 I'm desperately hoping that my first mammal of 2026 will be an #otter. 🤞🦦🤞 #BreconBeacons #WildWales

How are specimen collections used by CSIRO (Australia's national science agency) researchers to help save the world? I reviewed Andrea Wild's book "Wild Collections" (@csiropublishing.bsky.social) for Archives of Natural History (@sochistnathist.bsky.social): www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/...

W onderful O blong M arsupial B urrowing A dorable T ubby #WombatWednesday #fieldwork #Tasmania #wombats #MammalWatching #WildOz #wombat

As well as it being the 200th anniversary of @zslofficial.bsky.social this year, today marks 200 years since the death of Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of the Zoological Society of London (& key colonial figure in Southeast Asia: the founder of modern Singapore). He was also born #OTD in 1781.

baculum erasure is real!!

Jack Ashby@jackdashby.bsky.social · 4mo ago

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...

Coypu nest in long burrows (the damage these burrows cause is one of the reasons they're such a problem as #InvasiveSpecies), but in the daytime, they rest on grassy "beds". It looks like there's no room in the bed for this big fella though. #MammalWatching #WildFrance #rodents

NICE big piles of #PlatypusMatters on show at #LondonZoo shop! 🤩 (@zslofficial.bsky.social we're kind enough to grant me the ZSL Award for Communicating Zoology for this book.)

Did sturgeon breed in Britain? A team (to which I made a small contribution) used 19th- & 20th-century newspaper reports, archives & museum specimens to conclude that these giant fish are indeed native British breeders. 🐟 @royalsocietypublishing.org #ROSOS royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

Did sturgeon ever breed in Britain? Evaluating historical evidence and conservation implications

Abstract. Historical archives can provide unique perspectives on past biodiversity and have the potential to reconstruct life-history cycles for lost popul

royalsocietypublishing.org

Through their live collections, museum, fellows & publications, @zslofficial.bsky.social has been one of the UK's most influential institutions in the history of natural history. This week, we're at #LondonZoo to celebrate their 200th anniversary, for @sochistnathist.bsky.social's Summer Meeting.

A very exciting parcel has arrived: my first copies of #NaturesMemory in a foreign language! 🤩 The Korean edition looks gorgeous (and has a new foreword to set a context in #Korea's relatively young natural history #museums sector). 🇰🇷🇰🇷🇰🇷

A mindful minute of a big old #coypu preening itself. Swimming mammals have to keep their fur in top condition so or stays waterproof, so they spend a lot of time scratching. Also, check out the size of those webbed feet! #MammalWatching #WildFrance #rodents

Finally got round to reading this! Loving it so far @jackdashby.bsky.social

Kangaroos heard you were talking shit about them (less than a greyhound!) and came out swinging (yes I know that is a description of size, not relative worth, but kangaroos are notoriously bad at nuance)

Jack Ashby@jackdashby.bsky.social · last yr.

255 years ago today, Europeans met #kangaroos. #OTD in 1770, Captain Cook wrote this in North #Queensland: "June 23 One of the Men saw an Animal something less than a greyhound; it was of a Mouse Colour, very slender made, and swift of Foot." This is the first European description of a #kangaroo. 🦘

My ecologist brain is trying to tell me that it is not a Good Thing to see coypu in France (these giant invasive #rodents were introduced from South America in the 19th century for their fur), but they really are cool beasts. #MammalWatching #WildFrance

A beautiful smooth #snake, off on a hunt for for lizards to swallow whole. 🐍 #WildFrance #snakes #herping

Sound ON for one of nature's great symphonies: the frog chorus. 🔊🐸🇫🇷🎶 #WildFrance #frogs

256 years ago. 🧵

Jack Ashby@jackdashby.bsky.social · last yr.

255 years ago today, Europeans met #kangaroos. #OTD in 1770, Captain Cook wrote this in North #Queensland: "June 23 One of the Men saw an Animal something less than a greyhound; it was of a Mouse Colour, very slender made, and swift of Foot." This is the first European description of a #kangaroo. 🦘

New echidna paper There are 5 subspecies of short-beaked echidnas. They look different but some of the differences between them, like reproductive behaviour, are so dramatic that I thought they may be different species. But previous genetic studies suggested that the subspecies were not real.

Staring at the river hoping that a beaver might show up, when a pine marten puts in a little visit! 🤩 #MammalWatching #WildFrance