Chicago (CBS) – You’ve heard of lions and tigers and bears, but what about bugs and bones and snakes?
CBS News Chicago’s Marie Saavedra was very brave and took a tour of the collections that visitors don’t normally see at the Field Museum of Natural History, and gets a behind-the-scenes look at things that are a little creepy, but can be very are beautiful.
The museum’s arthropod collections include about 5 million attached insects and other bugs, according to Jim Louderman, a collections assistant in the field’s insect division.
The very deceased moths, beetles, butterflies and more tell stories, help researchers, help the planet.
“We can collect things today from the same places they were collected 50 or 100 years ago to see what differences there are in insect populations and species diversity,” Louderman said.
Some butterflies in the collection are 125 to 150 years old.
The museum also has two beetles collected by naturalist Charles Darwin, along with some of the heaviest beetles in the world, weighing up to 4 ounces – or ¼ pound.
“They’re good to eat. They have more protein than an 8- to 10-ounce steak. They have no fat or cholesterol,” Louderman said. “When you cook them, the insides solidify into a texture identical to lobster.”
The cutest bug in the collection may be Rosie, a pink-toed and very docile tarantula with a bit of wanderlust.
“She got away once and walked around the museum once. I should probably do the top again,” Louderman said.
Meanwhile, the museum’s collection of amphibians and reptiles is one of the six largest herpetological collections in the US, with more than 300,000 specimens.
Sara Ruane, curator of herpetology at the Field Museum, is a walking encyclopedia of all reptiles.
Her favorite snake is a spider-tailed horned Viper, with an appendage on its tail that looks like a spider.
“Birds think, oh there’s something to eat there,” she said. “They fly into it, and they try to grab it and eat it, and the snake swings around and bites them and eats them instead.”
Saavedra was forced to remember that the snakes in the museum are “no longer with us,” spending the afterlife in jars.
Yet a boomslang in the museum almost looks alive in the museum.
“One thing about these specimens is, once they are preserved, they can last for hundreds of years and be used by scientists now and long, long into the future,” Ruane said.
Like other exhibits in the museum, their collection of fossil vertebrates includes holotypes – samples that provide reference points for scientists.
“It’s a bit like a dinosaur warehouse,” said Bill Simpson, manager of fossil vertebrate collections.
Among other things, Simpson is an expert on the museum’s famous Tyrannosaurus Rex Fossil “Sue,” which has more bones than you can see. Some extras are housed in drawers in the museum. They are what is known as float, a piece of fossilized bone hollowed out of surrounding rock, essentially “floating” on the surface of the ground until discovered by paleontologists, leading them to the rest of a fossilized skeleton .
Reproductions of Sue’s bones are used for research.
“We spent $85,000 on silicone rubber to shape every bone in Sue’s body, and then we made epoxy casts,” Simpson said — including a cast of Sue’s skull. “The actual skull is difficult to study 13 feet up in the air.”
If you think Simpson has the best job in the world, he agrees. In fact, all of the museum’s guides said they couldn’t love their job anymore.
The next time you wander through the field museum, remember that visitors only see less than 1% of everything in their collections.
The field museum is known all over the world. The collections are also libraries that send materials to scientists around the world.
If you live in Illinois, you can visit the museum for free on Wednesdays. You just need to provide proof of residency. Log on to FieldMuseum.org for more information.
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