The Hunterian is a museum that houses a large collection of life science exhibits.
The curator of zoology at the Huntarian explained that there are jobs for STEM degree graduates in museums. In fact, one sixth of the people working at the Hunterian have STEM subject degrees. The national history museum in London employs 300 people with STEM subject degrees.
The “Bug Lady” then gave us a talk – she is an expert entomologist.
I didn’t know there were over 900,000 known species of insects. BUT she said that it is estimated that there are still 2-30 million species still to be described. AND she told us that there are 200 or more insects for every person on the planet.
Insects cause 2.7 million people a year to die of malaria. BUT they are useful too. Insects pollinate flowers to produce food.
These are some bees collected in the 18th century. Bees are really important pollinators.
Ever wondered if a river has clean water? Well, if stoneflies like these are there it does contain clean water.
These are bird wing butterflies – I put my thumb on the case so you could get some idea of the size.
But I don’t fancy finding any of these insects in my house!!!
The Hunterian is free to enter and anyone can visit.
I LOVE the Hunterian! I literally could spend days across each of the different locations within Glasgow University.
Anyone interested in keeping up to date with events at the museum can follow them here https://twitter.com/hunterian
It’s definitely well worth a visit.
Those butterflies are giant but really pretty
Yes – they are giant. It was such an interesting lecture. It would have been good to record and show you.
Love the butterflies
What did you think of the beetles??? They were huge – and I thought cockroaches were big!!!
The butterflies are really pretty
The colours were just amazing. You wouldn’t believe how big they were. Guess that’s why they are called bird wing 😉
Looks amazing!
It has been amazing. I am a bit jealous of you still having to go to uni. Very different from when I was there.
Amazing!
It really is isn’t it???
I can’t believe that there are 900000 known species of insects.
I know – I can’t believe they think there are so many more to name and describe!!!