Although the Hong Kong Museum of History has a section dedicated to natural history, a standalone dedicated natural history museum for Hong Kong would collect current and historical records of animals, plants, geology, and more.

In this instalment of Tell Me More, HKALPO interviews:

•  Dr. Anna Goldman - Postdoctoral Researcher at The University of Hong Kong.

Dr. Goldman shares her thoughts on why establishing a natural history museum would be advantageous for Hong Kong, drawing on her experiences as the Chief Mammals Preparator at the Field Museum in Chicago, IL.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself, and your current and past work?

Hi! I have always been a curious person- even when I was a kid. I was 6 years old poking at insects and dead animals. Science was something that I was born with in my blood. My undergraduate studies were focused on insects and their taxonomy. However, when I graduated there were no jobs (that I was qualified for) in my field that didn’t involve pest control.

A job opened up at the Field Museum (in my hometown of Chicago) as a mammals preparator. I was fortunate that during my undergrad, at College of the Atlantic, I was able to volunteer with an organization that would do necropsies on beached marine mammals to determine cause of death and overall health. This experience alone made me a good candidate for the position at the museum.

A mammals preparator is someone who is responsible for the preservation of mammals for the museum’s collection. As you may imagine, mammals don’t just die ready to be stored in a museum for hundreds of years. The museum would receive donations from wildlife sanctuaries, zoos and collect road kill. These specimens would go into a -80 degree walk- in freezer and wait for me to have time to process them. This not only helped them stay fresh, but also kill most parasites or diseases they might have.

This work lead me to Hong Kong where I recently completed a PhD at the University of Hong Kong. I continue to work with mammals and insects, primarily trying to uncover the secrets of Hong Kong Chinese pangolins.

Can you describe the process of preparing a mammal for the Field Museum collection? 

Once thawed, I would record the necessary measurements, weight and collection details. Then I would skin and gut the animal, taking a sample from the liver to be preserved and then run the specimen through a colony of flesh eating beetles. There are other methods of preservation such as pickling in formalin or making a study skin. These methods would be used if the mammal was particularly rare or there was something special about the specimen. If the mammal is large- like an elephant, gorilla, etc. we could use a process call maceration where we either soak or boil the specimen in water for a long period of time until the flesh falls off.

What would be the benefits of having a natural history museum in Hong Kong? 

Being an ecologist in Hong Kong is more difficult without a natural history museum. There are no physical records of what animals or organisms were in any given space at any point in time. So we can’t look at past populations or locations of where species were or have been.

If we had a museum of natural history, we would have a depository for all the deceased animals/ birds found and could then be studied. Animals that die at Kadoorie Farm can be sampled, analyzed and openly studied for academic purposes- locally or internationally.

AFCD seizures would have a storage facility also open for study and analysis but academics who typically don’t get access to such rare specimens like pangolin scales, recently harvested ivory, exotic animals that die in transit, etc.

If Hong Kong has a museum of natural history, students and researchers for decades to come can ask questions about our local environment and use these specimens as source material to find answers. Questions we can’t even fathom today. Things like- air pollution residue on bird feathers, genetic variation of urban vs rural populations, chemical contaminants in the environment that are stored long term in carcasses, physical migratory bird records, animal population fluctuations (based on date and location of specimen collected), etc. The idea is to track change over time, even if we can’t see that change within our time. It allows us a snapshot in time, to compare with other snapshots in time.

A natural history museum in Hong Kong would also help local kids identify more with the natural world around them. It could teach them more about the wildlife that exist in their backyard with an up close experience through dioramas and taxidermy.

What types of samples do you envisage could be captured? 

My mind goes more toward passive collection, like having specimens donated from Kadoorie Farm or other rescues to start with. I do imagine Hong Kong must have its fair amount of birds colliding with windows. If there was a way to collect those and start studying them- there could be a lot of material there. Otherwise, we can start with rodent capture or simple tissue collections from wild populations.

Is Hong Kong diverse enough to have a whole museum for natural history? 

Yes- in my humble opinion. That doesn’t mean that we couldn’t take on collections from other places. There are many private collectors that could potentially donate their collections. Some institutions receive research material from other institutions if said institution doesn’t have a safe facility to house the material.

The options are limitless.

What work would be required to turn this into a reality? What kind of specialists are required? 

Sheesh. That’s an intense question. But it depends on what departments we are looking at. I would imagine Hong Kong can develop an anthropology department fairly quickly with many historic items in need of being properly conserved.

A few departments like- Botany, Anthropology, Zoology (insects, mammals, birds, reptiles, marine invertebrates), and Geology. However, it doesn’t have to be that large to start.

Oh. and loads of funding. But that being said, museum jobs are in such large demand- it would’t be difficult to find curators and collections staff to run the facility. (sheepishly raises hand)

What kind of challenges do you foresee?

Natural history museum jobs are notoriously difficult to find only because funding is so hard to come by. They are under funded and under appreciated. But major research comes out of them every year- whether it be new species to science or newly discovered information about our past.

I think it’s not well known that these institutions are actively conducting research and that they are just dusty halls of old “things”.