Cabinets of Curiosities

Grant Museum of Zoology at University College London

Among our neighborhood attractions is this curious museum, filled with skeletons, taxidermy specimens, and creatures floating in preservative. Founded by UCL's first professor of zoology, Grant was an early supporter of evolution and a mentor to the young Charles Darwin. The one-room museum is crammed full of cabinets, holding the bones of a dodo bird, antlers of the prehistoric giant Irish deer, and, dare I write, a walrus penis bone (lower right). Via a contribution, you can adopt one of the specimens, so proper little nameplates pop up next to scorpions, wombats, elephant hearts, and anaconda vertebrae. The museum poses provocative questions about conservation: Is it morally correct to spend billions on trying to cure the common cold but almost nothing on curing face lice, which threaten to wipe out Tasmanian devils? Indeed.