Name that rhino: Museum asks public to join in after dismantling huge animal skeleton

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Public given chance to name "charismatic" rhino as skull and shoulders are removed, orang-utan has suit fitted

A one-horned Indian rhinoceros which is the largest single specimen in the exotic collection of the Grant Museum of Zoology, in London, will be named by a lucky Twitter user when it returns from a “serious” stint of conservation work, having joined the collection in 1910.

The popular University College London hall of the wild paid £14 for the rhino to be mounted onto iron frames along with a seal, bear and mysterious zebra more than a century ago. But the iron of the specimen is slowly corroding, causing curators to invite the public to see the skeleton being dismantled yesterday ahead of its temporary departure.

“It all started to happen with the rhino being taken apart by an expert conservator,” said Learning and Access Officer Dean Veall, who tweeted pictures of the rhino’s shoulder blade being removed before a delicate operation to strap in its pelvis, take off its skull and move the animal into a hammock for transport.

“You might call it health tourism,” added Jack Ashby, the museum’s manager.

“A number of our more charismatic specimens have been given names. There’s Barry the echidna, Flo the buffalo, Elkie the giant deer, Troy the quoll, Derek the dugong, Patrick the giant starfish and Percy the pangolin, for example. But the rhino is currently nameless.

“We’d like to give our Twitter followers the chance to name the rhino. If you have a suitable name - we don’t actually know the gender, but I tend to consider all dead animals as boys - then please do suggest it.

“All of this work will allow us to safeguard our irreplaceable collection for the long-term future and continue to use it every day for teaching, research and public engagement.”

Thirty-nine of the museum’s largest inhabitants are being tended to as part of a major project, Bone Idols: Preserving our Iconic Skeletons.

“Some need intensive cleaning to remove the damaging pollutants and particulates that have built up over up to 180 years on open display,” said Ashby.

“Some also need repairs to certain body parts. Some, like the rhino and quagga [zebra], need to be totally disassembled, cleaned, and then repositioned on new skeleton-friendly metal frames, with all their joints correctly matching up.”

Ashby originally suggested the procedure could take “a couple of days”, and the rhino was pictured in its box before 5pm on Tuesday. Yoda, a baby orang-utan, was also fitted into a suit of conservation materials for his move.

Fans can follow the project by using the hashtag #BoneIdols. Tweet to @GrantMuseum and use the hashtag #NameTheRhino by 9am on November 17 to be in with a chance of naming the specimen and winning a copy of a new book, The Naming of the Shrew: A Curious History of Latin Names, which the museum is giving away five copies of.

“The person who suggests the name that we select for the rhino will win a copy, and so will four runners-up who made laudable suggestions but didn’t make the final cut,” said Ashby.

“Think carefully – after this conservation work, the specimen should last for hundreds of years.”

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Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk//science-and-nature/dinosaurs-and-fossils/art506064-name-that-rhino-museum-asks-public-to-join-in-after-dismantling-huge-animal-skeleton