More California Academy of Science! You thought we were done? Not even close.
In addition to Claude the albino alligator the academy has Methuselah. She is, uh, beautiful on the inside I’m sure. Here is a video of Methuselah.
https://www.calacademy.org/explore-science/meet-methuselah-celebrating-a-longtime-academy-icon
One of the best aquariums I’ve ever seen was the Philippine Coral Reef. Cricket has gone on a ton of scuba dives and he said it was spot-on. I spent a real long time sitting downstairs staring at the fish, probably too long. I do not regret creeping people out.
There were great smaller tanks behind the giant tank and I saw an animal I thought I would never get the opportunity to see. Appropriately, I freaked out.
It was a flamboyant cuttlefish.
Here is a video of the flamboyant cuttlefish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51jB8YljliM
Do you appreciate how amazing this is? Do you see that with the stripey-stripeys? It helps to know he is very wee, like the length of my thumb pad. I made a short gif based on a video I took of my wee sweetie.
Since this is a natural history museum they do have a small area of taxidermied animals. It’s pretty small but it has all sub-Saharan animals which is my jam. They had a lot of antelope and a bushbaby and a steinbok. One of the most surprising things was how close you could get to the stuffed giraffes. Every time I’ve seen a giraffe it has been far away. I got to get right up next to one and I never realized that I can walk right under it and the top of my head would not come close to grazing the bottom of the giraffe’s belly. I’m five foot six so that’s pretty high. And that’s just the bottom of the stomach. There’s a ton more midsection above that and only after that the neck starts. The giraffe is massive. At the end of the short dead animal area was a penguin exhibit, live penguins. But because the California Academy of Science is smart as hell the penguins are behind a thick plate of glass because penguins STINK. They stink so hard because, you know, they eat fish all day and then they poop and there you have it. Vibrant, nuanced. But the CAS has installed plate glass which is glorious.
Now here comes the coolest part of the Behind the Scenes tour. We got to go to the specimen rooms. Specimen rooms, in case you don’t know are rooms filled with jars and drawers of nearly organized dead things, a.k.a. my dream place. Here’s an article with all the examples.
I only saw the wet specimens and dry specimens. The wet specimens are natural elements in jars filled with ethanol. That prevents the specimens from decomposing. I mean, none of them look good, but they’re still vaguely shaped how they’re supposed to be shaped. The ethanol strips them of all their color so all the animals are gray or brown or black. You can see a picture of wet specimens in the article above, it’s the room filled with amber-colored jars. I didn’t take too many pictures in there but I did take three of significance. One, a big jar full of vampire bats. Suuuuuper dead bats.
A fact I found amusing was when the academy started the jars weren’t big enough so some of the specimens are clearly in former mayonnaise jars.
Here’s the most important pic of the day. In one of the jars was an anglerfish. I had resigned myself to never seeing an anglerfish due to the fact that they live at the bottom of the ocean and when they get to the surface they die because their bladders cannot handle the lack of pressure. Now I was being presented by one, in its entirety, directly in front of me. Aaaaaand for a change of pace, I freaked out. Cricket took a photo of me. The reason my hands are all curled up is because I am making every effort to not grab the jar of anglerfish and run away forever.
I know it’s really dark in the jar so I put that photo in the upper left for reference. You can kind of see her lower jaw in there. I know it’s a lady fish because anglerfish have a very unique way of procreating. Because it’s very hard for one anglerfish to find another, when a male finds a female he latches on to her underbelly (he’s very small compared to the female). Eventually his mouth parts fuse to her body and her blood flow goes through him, but whenever she needs sperm there he is, a parasitic testicle. You could see her fishing lure on her forehead. I loved her. Some of her transparent scales had fallen off so when the jar was moved it was like she was in a snow globe with glitter. I asked the tour guide why it was like that and he said, “She’s fabulous.”
One last photo from the Academy: some scary baby birds.
Here’s another pic that really captures the weirdness.
Coming up next: Ceramics and live beasties. Two things I am very fond of.