Page 182 - The Secret Museum

them by swimmers wearing the suit. Before the suits were banned by FINA

(Fédération Internationale de Natation, the body responsible for administering
competition in aquatic sports) in 2010 (they were not to be seen at the London
Olympics), only two of the existing world records pre-dated their invention.

However, an ichthyologist – a fish expert – at Harvard said that, while the
swimsuits may help a swimmer to go faster, this is because the suit changes the
human body’s posture, making it more hydrodynamic, rather than because the fabric
itself decreases the drag. He says the denticle design works for sharks but doesn’t
have the same benefits for humans as our bodies are less flexible. There is more to

be learnt if we want to catch up with nature.

James and Ollie add fish to the collection all the time. The public donate some,
and the curators acquire others – they’d just returned from fishing in Burma when I
met them. Ollie has tasted a lot of bizarre fish but his favourite is fresh mackerel,
straight out of the sea: ‘Whip it into a pan, flash fry and there you go.’ Some fish
come into the museum via unusual routes. When Archie came into the collection, she
had fish trapped inside her mantle from when she was caught in the fishing net, and
those fish were added to the collection, too.

Each time a new fish arrives, the curators take a small amount of tissue for a DNA

sample. Ollie explained: ‘We’d never have dreamt 20 years ago we would be
looking through museum collections for DNA, but it’s important now, and in the
future we don’t know what will be useful.’ The fish is injected with a preservative
called formalin (formaldehyde solution), which after a few days is replaced by a
solution of 70 per cent alcohol, then the specimen is bottled, databased, labelled and
added to the collection. This has been going on since the museum began, the first
‘database’ consisting of handwritten ledgers.

Every natural history museum in the world has a scientific collection, and only a

tiny fraction of their collections is ever on display. The natural history museums in
London, Paris and Washington have the largest collections overall. If a researcher
needs to study a species over several centuries, or across a wide geographic area,
they can come here, to the library of species at the museum. It’s a lot cheaper than
flying to every area of the world in which a species lives, and a lot safer than
heading off to research a fish that lives in a war zone.