So you have to walk across campus
and then you walk through a locked janitor's closet
and then you walk through a locked staircase
that has a cage of wire around it
and then you walk past some high powered electrical equipment
and then you walk up some stairs and down some stairs
and you get into this labyrinth-y place...
So I mentioned that our main collections room has 21,000 specimens.
Um, our museum collection actually consists of 24,500 specimens.
The other 3,500 are right here.
Probably wondering why these things are down here
and why we don't have them in a classroom or on display
or in our museum
and it's because they were moved to make room
for... an office space, 'cause they were in an office space
and we've been trying to get them out of here for about seven years now.
We have all kinds of stuff down here.
We have probably 2,500 fish
and a couple hundred lizards
and reptiles and snakes
and even some mammals in jars.
This one, this is a fetal elk.
In a jar. And we have sharks
over there. A lot of this stuff, I don't even know what we have
because it's been down here since I've been working at the museum.
Some of the things are like
the first reported case of this species found in Montana.
We had some freshwater jellyfish down here but they got moved.
Yaaaaay!
Hi, this is Hank.
And I've just realized that I'm in danger
of death.
Well, a lot of these old specimens
that were preserved in glass jars
are preserved in leaded glass jars
which if you don't know what that is,
it's a very brittle kind of glass
that hasn't lasted over like the last hundred years or so.
So like, it gets old and it becomes less sturdy.
Yes, exactly. And...
This is an old jar. - This is very old jar.
I saw it and I thought it was really cool looking
'cause it's sealed with wax
and I was like: I'm gonna pick that up!
Because.. hehe.. - 'Cause it is cool.
But I also know from talking with someone
who works at the Smithsonian
that unfortunately a museum technician
actually lost their life
when they were carrying a large round jar
that was made out of leaded glass
and it exploded in their arms.
And this person was eviscerated
with shards of leaded glass
that immediately became
- watch where you step -
immediately be-, um,
the formaldehyde and all the toxins got right,
right in there, just right in there.
And uh, unfortunately, that person...
Died. - Died.
This is the sort of thing that I feel like
would go on eBay for a lot of money.
This is the kind of thing that probably shouldn't ever be on eBay.
Because I'd wonder how they got it.
But... Yeah.
Let's put it down.
Aaagh.
Yeugh. That thing was alive.
It's not not-creepy down here.
This is an old jar. That's what I know.
It's rusting on the top.
Don't blow on anything! - Sorry.
Duude, string beans.
This is a sea slug from 1948
or that could be an arbitrary date.
And bats. - Oh, bats!
Oh they're so fuzzy! - These are the cuties.
These are pack rats.
They are from Rainbow Falls Park,
6 miles east, Rossport, Highway 17,
Ontario, Canada.
"Ontawrio", what am I
Ontawrio!
20th of June 1965.
Do they just last forever?
They can, yeah.
What do you have to do to keep them preserved,
like keep, like what maintenance do you have to do on a wet prepped specimen?
If they're done correctly, not much.
And this is actually a really old technique.
Boyle
from Boyle's law - Boyle's law Boyle?
Boyle's law Boyle was the one
who, um, figured out that distillation process
and then he realized that it was really good for preserving tissues
of all kinds of things.
Um, if you can imagine like the Mütter Museum,
they have like people in jars.
It's spelled like M - U - T - T - E - R
So this is an old technique that used to be used to preserve
human organs and that kind of things for scientific research.
You wanna get drunk and you don't have a lot of options.
Rat booze. - This is not recommended.
Although we do joke about it a lot.
Like someone's a little loopy and I ask the cutator:
Have you been drinking the alcohol specimens today, Dave?
You gettin' a little... Having a sip of the pack rat juice?
There we go.
Whoa, this one is super sealed.
There we go. Oh! Tiny jars.
Tiny jars.
There're all kinds of tiny jars in here.
That one's clean on the inside.
I found a two headed fish down here once.
What do you got there? - I have a tiny turtle.
Awww, it is really cute.
Kinda looks like a snapping turtle.
I kinda wanna bring out this baby deer but I'm afraid to pick it up.
I think there are two in here.
And you know, if you're wondering
how you get a fetal animal in this stage of development
um, a lot of them were actually cut out of the wombs of roadkill females.
Oh, this one's all dried up. Oh look at these are little minnows.
Oh, like, and it's paste at the bottom. - Ew, minnow paste.
What would the ideal situation for this stuff be?
Obviously not this.
No. Obviously not this.
Um. Ideally, I would like to put 'em in a museum, where people can see 'em.
Show 'em off? - And show 'em off.
And put fancy shining lights behind them.
Wouldn't that be fun? This'd be so cool.
That's what I wanna do.
Thanks for watching the Brain Scoop.
I'm Emily.
I'm Hank.
See ya next time. - See ya.
It still has brains on it.