The Perfect Specimen
LightNews LightNews
banner
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
The Perfect Specimen
@perfect-specimen.bsky.social
160 followers 15 following 120 posts
A lighthearted look at natural history via objects in the NHM London collections, hung loosely on a different adjective every episode. Podcast available on Spotify, Apple and YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6w4ihPqk5_LOTuw-VhlaqEn1CctPqWGB
Posts Replies Media Videos
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
Somehow failed to take pics of any of the specimens for this one so please enjoy this unlucky fox instead…
A red fox with one back paw stuck in a letterbox half way up a large back door to someone’s house. How it got like this no one knows…
November 23, 2025 at 5:09 PM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
And just look at these gorgeous tinamou eggs and spooky Monotropa! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotro...
Eggs in a basket. There are 4 rows each of 4 eggs. Top row is turquoise, second is grey, third is spring green, fourth is chocolate brown. All are shiny like porcelain.
November 9, 2025 at 5:15 PM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
Forgot to share the extra pics for this one!
Close up of the face of a Halloween crab. The claws and lower half of the face are white, the top of the carapace is a lovely dark red. The crab is preserved in a jar of alcohol Jar of Halloween three or four crabs. The claws, legs and lower half of the carapace are white, the top of the carapace is a lovely dark red. The crabs are preserved in a jar of alcohol Josh in a skeleton onesie with his face painted like a skeleton. It is disturbing. Natalie in a black top wearing (like an apron) a planet earth painted blue with green continents as they were in the Cretaceous. Upside down glow in the dark dinosaurs with x for eyes are stuck to the landmasses. Her headband is a brown comet with orange tissue paper flames. Both the earth and the comet (and Natalie lol) have googly eyes
November 9, 2025 at 5:10 PM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
And here's the great paper @nhcooper123.bsky.social mentioned on the three wattled bellbird (Snow 1977): www.jstor.org/stable/40852... complete with this amazing figure...
Line drawing from a paper that shows bellbird mating dsiplays. Panel A shows a male bellbird calling at the end of a branch and a female looking on from closer to the trunk of the tree. Panel B shows the male shaking his wattles and indicates he has now moved inside the female so she is now closer to the end of the tree branch and he is closer to the trunk. Panel C shows the female right at the end of the branch and the male crowding her and shouting into her ear.
October 24, 2025 at 10:55 AM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
Who ❤️ data? Our 36 specimens (31 animal, 5 plant) so far represent 8/31 (25%) animal and 2/14 (14%) plant phyla/divisions. Chordata/mammals are winning (but many of these appeared in OVERRATED). @joshlukedavis.com and @nhcooper123.bsky.social have done OK so far but there's more diversity to cover!
Barchart showing distribution of specimens across animal phyla. Chordata = 15, Arthropoda = 8, Mollusca = 3, Annelida, Cnidaria, Echinodermata, Nemertea and Onychophora = 1. Chordata is coloured to show that we have most mammals (7) then fishes/reptiles (3), then birds/tunicates (1). Bar chart showing that 4 plant specimens were angiosperms and 1 was a bryophyte
October 7, 2025 at 1:37 PM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
Forgot to share the crisp menus we mentioned in RELIABLE. Found in Walthamstow here: prettydecentbeer.co
Crisp list set menus. Surf and Turf: scampi fries, bacon fries, skips. Ploughman’s: pickled onion monster munch, cheese quavers, ready salted hoops. Kids menu: Pom bears, skips, scampi fries Crisp List. - Something to Start: peanuts - Full bodied: Pairs well with dark beers and west coast IPAs. Bacon fries, Scampi fries. - Mineral: All rounders, will complement most beers. Pom bears, big hoops. - Zippy: stands up to a big fruit sour. Discos salt and vinegar, pickled onion monster munch. - Funky: pairs perfectly with a NEIPA. Trust us. Skips, quavers.
September 24, 2025 at 6:04 PM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
Last chance to ask us any questions about the last 9 episodes of Perfect Specimen as we’re recording the Q&A tomorrow!
Taxidermy wildcat posed lying down and baring its teeth as if meowing angrily, in front is a dead looking red squirrel
September 16, 2025 at 7:57 AM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
We love these commemorative space monkey patches ❤️
Patches with images of space monkey Gordo and another of Able and Miss Baker.
August 17, 2025 at 1:53 PM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
Here’s the lovely praying mantis ootheca. Complete with tiny baby mantis skins.
Round brown ball pinned to a white background. On the top are loose bits of material. Looks like a tiny Alien egg…
August 13, 2025 at 10:15 AM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
Our attempts to describe *Anomalocaris* didn't really do it justice so here's an image.
[Credit: By Junnn11 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?...
A reconstruction of Anomalocaris, colour reddish. It's a segemented animal, a bit like an armoured squid. It has swimming flaps running along its body, large compound eyes, and a single pair of segmented, frontal appendages that look like long weird shrimp
August 13, 2025 at 10:06 AM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
Amazing image showing baby ichthyosaurs inside a female in a fossil. Image by Ryosuke Motani at UC Davis.
Two images of the same fossil, the top panel shows the fossil itself. It's the torso of an ichthyosaur with a very small baby ichythosaur clearly peeking out of the centre. The bottom panel is the same image with the baby ichythosaur coloured in yellow, the paddle of the ichthyosaur in blue and the ribs in green.
July 14, 2025 at 5:00 PM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
And the beautiful jewel beetle dress Josh mentioned is described here: www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/11188... Here’s the Sargent painting of it with Ellen Terry playing Lady Macbeth.
A white woman with long red hair raising a crown in both hands above her head. She is wearing a floor length beautiful gown, all green, with long trailing sleeves. Some parts are green and shine like gems. These are the beetles.
July 4, 2025 at 10:02 PM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
Join us next time for EXUBERANT... And remember if you have any Qs please send them in or comment wherever you've been listening. We'll have a special Q&A episode later in the series!
Elton John Carpool meme (Elton John dressed in a massive prink feather boa, with pink glasses and feather headdress, sat next to his manager dressed in black.
June 15, 2025 at 2:01 PM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
These can get up to 12m long. Here’s my favourite image of someone on a massive one…
A huge pyrosome under water with a diver riding it for scale.
June 14, 2025 at 11:40 AM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
Here’s the pyrosome (which Josh refers to as a hairy sock).
Rectangular jar in portrait orientation. Inside is clear fluid and what looks like a white furry sock A close up of the white hairy sock where it is clear that it is made up of many small parts with hairs all stuck together Even closer up photo showing individual zooids
June 14, 2025 at 11:38 AM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
This is a dugong not a manatee but shows the extremely weird snouts of adult Sirenia that we mention in the podcast. Zebra butt in the background for scale lol.
Skull of a dugong. It is a very weird shaped skull with the snout and mouth pointing down at a 90 degree angle allowing the animal to graze on the bottom while still looking forwards. Skull is in a collections area so in the background there are some obvious striped legs of a zebra.
June 2, 2025 at 1:53 PM
perfect-specimen.bsky.social
Close up of the hairs on the baleen plate
Black object on a white background. The black object is made of compressed thick hairs which are separate at the edges but still stuck together in the centre.
June 2, 2025 at 1:50 PM