"Welcome to the Natural History Museum." "For as long as there's been people on earth, we've been studying animals." "They appear in the earliest cave paintings, are included in the stories of many religions, and have been central to the great scientific collections of the past 200 years." "And, today, animals are as important to us as they've ever been." "This time the team's exploring weird and wonderful items behind the scenes and joining a life-saving expedition to Uganda." "That's a little bit swollen." "We're meeting museum scientists who are trying to solve problems by understanding animals." "Whoa!" "That is unreal." "We're entering the world of creatures great and small, living and extinct, the weird and the wonderful, through the work of the scientists right here in the Natural History Museum - the Museum Of Life." "'I've been given the opportunity to visit the room where the rarest and the most precious books are held.'" "Look at this!" "'I want to see how, right from the outset, animals were 'knitted into the very structure of the Natural History Museum.'" "Wow, they are beautiful, aren't they?" "'These are the original sketches from the 1870s for the menagerie 'that runs throughout the building, 'ensuring that whatever you come to see, you're surrounded by animals." "'Today, the museum houses 28 million actual zoological specimens - 'the results of three centuries in collecting.'" "But, occasionally, something's given to the museum by a member of the general public." "Whilst most of these gifts tend to be fairly modest, every now and then something comes along that is really big." "These buildings in Tring, Hertfordshire, are a museum in their own right." "And in 1937, the land, the buildings and everything inside was donated to the Natural History Museum." "Wow!" "'It was the biggest zoological collection ever made by one person." "'Lionel Walter Rothschild came from an immensely wealthy banking family." "'He was passionate and eccentric." "'He began collecting insects and birds when he was seven." "'At ten, he set up his first museum in the garden shed.'" "At the age of 21, he was sent to work in the bank, which he hated so, as compensation, his father built him this place." "And Walter dedicated the rest of his life and his fortune to filling it." "The collection in Tring has been preserved intact pretty much as Walter left it in 1937." "It's a monument to a Victorian eccentric - a millionaire and a natural historian - unlike any before or since." "Walter Rothschild loved Africa - each trip provided more and more specimens for his collection." "Today, Africa still holds a lure for museum scientists but, these days, the purpose of the trips are very different." "Chris Van Tulleken joined a museum expedition to Uganda." "A staggering three quarters of Uganda's 33 million inhabitants survive on less than 2 US dollars a day." "Life for many is a constant battle for food, education and health care." "As a doctor of tropical medicine, I'm here to see how museum zoologists are helping tackle one disease that's devastating many of Africa's children." "We're on our way to a fishing village on the edge of Lake Victoria." "Now, this is a community that depends on the lake for everything." "They wash in it, they drink it, they get all their food from it, but the lake also harbours a parasite which is drastically reducing the quality of life for children." "It's retarding their growth, it's impairing their mental development, and eventually it's going to kill an awful lot of them." "The disease is schistosomiasis - sometimes known as bilharzia." "250 million people across sub-Saharan Africa are thought to have the disease already, with as many again under threat." "I'm joining museum parasitologist Dr Russell Stothard and his team." "Every three months, they visit remote communities like this, to undertake a pioneering study into the transmission and treatment of the disease." "My name is Chris." "You speak Swahili?" "little bit." "How does schistosomiasis affect this community, how is it making these kids feel?" "Well, the disease has many manifestations." "Most predominantly it causes the liver to swell and also spleens to swell." "The amounts of blood in their body goes down and they become anaemic." "In extreme cases, we see children who are stunted." "And what's the long-term effect of the disease?" "Will it have more serious consequences later in life?" "It does kill you." "It takes a long period of time to do that, so it's a chronic disease." "Just like malaria, schistosomiasis is caused by a tiny parasite that's transmitted to humans via an animal host known as a vector." "The vector, in this case though, is not a mosquito but a snail." "Yeah, just try there." "So, let's have a look." "Yeah, that looks like one." "That snail could infect up to 100 people over a period of a couple of months." "And that's the problem." "It's the kind of scale of individuals and numbers which gives this disease such a roothold in these environments." "It's quite incredible." "We're all standing here in waders, wearing gloves, protecting ourselves from this rather benign looking snail while, behind us, mums are collecting water to bathe their kids in, everyone's going to be drinking the water, everyone's washing." "That's quite right." "The parasite has evolved to live half of its life in the snail and half in the people it infects." "We can see the whole lifecycle here, can't we?" "Exactly." "So there are snails exactly like this right there, right now, shedding parasites, which are penetrating the skin of those women, who will go and then defecate in the outhouses along the riverbank and the poo then will be washed down into the lake," "to reinfect the snails who, in turn, will shed more parasites which will infect the women." "That's the cycle, isn't it?" "Exactly." "And also you see how close everything is." "It means that in an environment such as this, the transmission is very high and very intense." "The drug to treat the disease is cheep and effective, but currently the World Health Organisation believes there is no need to treat the under fives." "Children this young tend not to go in the lake." "Russell's work is set to challenge that." "There's a good example here, just by chance you see a lady, she's collected that jerry can of water." "And, you know, in this instance she's washing her clothes." "There will come a time when she wants to clean her children and she'll be using the same water in the basins to bathe those children at home." "So, I think you can see that with the jerry can collecting the water from the lake, that water contains parasites and, therefore, if someone sits in the basin that child gets exposed." "This disease is slowly killing the inhabitants of this village and millions of others across Africa." "Although these kids may look happy and healthy, it doesn't take long to realise all is not quite as it seems." "One of the symptoms of the disease is a swollen abdomen, which is easily confused with malnutrition or malaria." "Someone show me." "I'll show you mine." "That's a little bit swollen." "This is swollen, yeah." "How old are you?" "WOMAN TRANSLATES" "Nine." "Nine." "OK, so that's really interesting." "He's small, these aren't swollen tummies of malnutrition, they're getting too old for it to be malaria and his belly's still swollen, so again that's definitely schistosomiasis." "Everyone here seems really cheery and healthy and happy but, um, in fact there's a lot of problems, and this..." "Moses is going to have a lot of problems later on with his tummy." "'And Moses isn't the only one who I'm worried about.'" "Can I have a little look at your eyes?" "Look up for me!" "'This is Awal." "'His distended stomach indicates he's infected but, to be sure," "'I'm checking with this new rapid test that Russell's pioneering.'" "Awal is pale, he's got the distended abdomen." "He's probably got some malaria as well." "And this is a really very positive test' That's quite right." "It hasn't even finished yet and it's positive." "That child might have been infected as a very young child and now, at the age of nine, is showing symptoms which really people would say are unacceptable." "So this comes back to the whole point of your research, which is to treat kids much younger than him to stop getting to this stage." "'I'm so concerned about Awal's condition that we take him 'straight back to the clinic for a thorough examination.'" "Can you take a deep breath?" "And out." "Good." "And again." "So he's got a very large liver and big spleen as well - both of which are consistent with schistosomiasis." "He's also got lots of little lymph nodes, the glands in his neck are swollen, and he's got this big swollen tummy, very, very little fat on him, very little fat." "Poor little fellow." "We hope that by treating the schistosomiasis, we'll be able to relieve some of Awal's suffering quickly." "Do you want to come and get some pills?" "Come on." "Up we go, up we go." "'All across Africa, there are millions of other children just like Awal." "'He's a sobering example of the importance of Russell's work.'" "In one sense, I was lucky that we found him and we've treated him but he's probably already suffered a certain amount of damage to his overall development and perhaps to his liver." "That thing that Russell's trying to do here that's so important is we're going to start treating kids like Awal much younger, so before they reach the age of five and that will make a massive difference." "Thank you, thank you, thank you." "How do you say thank you in Uganda?" "Weebale." "Weebale." "Weebale." "'This is a success story as Russell's work is already having a positive effect.'" "We came here six months ago, which was our first survey." "And we saw schistosomiasis in the children about 50-60%." "Today, when we've done our clinic, it's about half that." "And he hopes that this local success can soon be repeated at an international level." "Schistosomiasis is an amazingly clever disease." "It's woven itself really intricately into the bond that these people have with this lake." "Now, we can't break that bond, but what we can do is treat everyone." "And what Russell and his team have shown here is the benefits of treating these guys - the under fives." "And, by showing that, we hope to be able to improve the lives of millions of children all the way across Africa." "I think that deserves a round of applause." "A century ago, the world was still waiting to be fully explored." "The public appetite for tales of adventure was only topped by an appetite for seeing the mysterious and wonderful objects that travellers brought back." "And the more outlandish the object then the greater the public interest seemed to be." "'Paul Kitchen is head of The Natural History Museum at Tring." "'One of Paul's favourite exhibits is one that must have appeared to be 'outlandish in the extreme when it was first unveiled in 1908.'" "Wow!" "Huge, isn't he?" "Go straight up?" "Yep, up through the trapdoor." "Wow, he's an incredible size, isn't he?" "He's a good size, yeah." "How much would this have weighed when he was alive?" "So these beach masters, which is what these large bulls are referred to as, they can weigh up to four tonnes when they're alive." "Four tonnes!" "It's a lot of seal, isn't it?" "Of flesh and blubber." "But you discovered something quite interesting when you were cleaning him, didn't you?" "Yeah." "We noticed an old label poking out from underneath the rock that this seal is mounted on, it's still here." "Look at that!" "So you can see..." "And we were really quite excited when we found this." ""Cast ashore in dying condition, Darwin Harbour, Falkland Islands." ""28th May 1908." ""Skinned and sent home by..."" "And then this signature is sort of slightly missing." "Yeah." "But you can make out the "A", and the "Cob."" "So we went back through our archives and we were looking for natural history records from the Falkland Islands from this period." "We found this guy Cobb." "He was a naturalist on the Falkland Islands." "He produced this book, The Natural History Of The Falkland Islands." "Wow, look at that!" "In this book we've got this image of the elephant seal." "So, that is the seal we're seeing right here." "This specimen, yeah." "The description goes on to say that the seal was washed ashore in dying condition." "The schoolchildren were frightened by it, as you would be." "It was towed across the harbour." "It was skinned by a Russian Finn." "It took him two weeks to skin this specimen and he was paid in whisky." "He was paid a bottle of whisky for his work." "You would have to be because it probably smelt so bad." "I would have thought, yeah." "Down a bottle and then get on with it." "That is incredible." "So he's paid in whisky." "What a great piece of detective work!" "To re-find something like that was really special." "Displaying vast and outlandish creatures has always been a draw for the Natural History Museum." "In 1937, the museum embarked on one of the most ambitious projects it had ever undertaken." "Desiring an exhibit that would both astound and educate, construction began on a model of the largest animal that has ever lived - the blue whale." "It really was a huge, huge feat." "The amount of resources, manpower and everything else that went into the model just before the start of the" "Second World War, I think." "If they'd left it any later, possibly the model would never have been constructed." "The mammoth task of creating a 90 ft whale had fallen to the museum's chief model maker, Percy Stammwitz." "Using photographs and scientific records, Percy and his team toiled for 18 months, building the model in situ in the newly-opened Whale Hall." "Constructed on a wooden sub-frame, covered in wire mesh and expertly sculpted in plaster of Paris, the finished model weighed in at over six tonnes." "The actual construction itself was a work of art and a great work of science." "Ironically, things that the team complained about was seasickness, because the model actually began to sway as they were applying the colour and the external characteristics so, in order to prevent the guys feeling seasick, they actually had to block the model up to stop it from moving." "Seasickness aside, the exhibit opened in December 1938 to great public acclaim." "The initial reaction from people was just complete and utter awe." "70 years later, the blue whale has lost none of its power." "Even Richard is still bewitched, acknowledging the model as the inspiration for his career." "I visited on a school trip here in 1976, and I stood pretty much in this spot and I do remember the sense of fascination and complete shock, I think." "I just couldn't quite get it into my head that something could grow so large and I had no idea that I'd ever end up working in a place like this and let alone be responsible for the model." "The blue whale is as popular as ever, and looks set to continue to amaze and inspire visitors for generations to come." "I think the popularity of the specimen has endured because of the physical size - the impact, the awe that's inspired in people." "People come back to us." "They've gone to university, become marine biologists and they often cite the Whale Hall and the blue whale model as some of their main influences." "So to have a life-size model, I think, is something we should be incredibly proud of." "Although most items on display in the Natural History Museum are the genuine article, there are one or two - like the whale and the great diplodocus - that are models." "Some are modelled because the original would be too difficult to display, while others are modelled because the original has long since gone extinct." "The first species we actually recorded disappearing was this - the dodo." "It was last seen in the 17th century." "It's now an icon that represents everything that's, well, dead as a dodo." "This image of the dodo is now fixed in the popular imagination." "Even though it's extinct, it's an image that's as well-known as animal animal alive today." "Julian Hume, a research associate as the Natural History Museum and reconstructive artist, spends his days painting extinct animals and bringing them back to life." "Hello, may I disturb you for a second?" "Very nice to meet you, how you doing?" "Very well." "Oh, sketching away, I see." "Yes, I'm drawing the head of probably the most famous painting about of probably the most famous bird in the world as well." "That, of course, is the dodo." "See, to me, that is the quintessential image of the dodo." "I'm sure, for most people, slightly goofy, a bit comedy." "'Julian has been looking through the museum archives and has discovered 'that the image of the bird we all recognise today dates back to the earliest dodo artwork.' Ah, right!" "Gosh, some of these are hilarious actually." "How old are these?" "These images here were all done when the dodo was alive." "This one around 1600-1601." "He looks ridiculous." "That was the first time the dodo was ever portrayed." "That is it." "That is amazing." "Look at this, compared to this one!" "This looks like a plucked vulture." "and then this looks very comedy." "Why were they so different?" "Well, it's a combination of bad art..." "Also they relied entirely of accounts of mariners who had actually been there." "These were artists that were trying to put together these pictures from these other people's accounts." "Even the greatest scientific minds were misled by the early paintings." "Richard Owen, the founder of the Natural History Museum, was determined to get a dodo skeleton and piece it together in a lifelike pose." "Owen got it wrong when he first put his dodo together." "He based it on that early painting." "Yeah, so using the bones he procured, he still tried to make them squish into this round, fat dodo." "And such was Owen's influence that what he said was the fact, was the truth, and it stayed with us." "But Julian has now spent decades hunting for new dodo bones." "These are more of your paintings, aren't they?" "They are." "They're beautiful." "'And as time has passed, his view of what the dodo really looked like has changed dramatically.'" "And I can see there's quite a difference between this one and that one." "I must admit that even I've changed my ideas in my lifetime." "I started out using the what was then known about the dodo, back about 20 years ago now, having reconstructed a dodo in the fat phase, it's really obese, then going along with the flow at the time." "But since then, of course, we have had so much more information." "This second one, after I've been to Mauritius, incorporated correct vegetation and the dodo's become much slimmer." "Much slimmer, much more realistic." "Indeed." "Julian's pictures could be the first glimpse for 400 years of what the dodo actually looked like." "The dodo may be forever associated with extinction, but it's certainly not the first to disappear forever." "13,000 years ago, retreating ice and the spread of ever hungry people saw the beginning of a major extinction event that engulfed thousands of species and continues today." "The first animals to be targeted were the megafauna, huge, almost fantastical creatures." "And when, in recent history, the fossils of megafauna began to emerge, people were as intrigued as they were confused." "Do you know what it is?" "Dinosaur?" "No, it's not a dinosaur." "Is this a dinosaur?" "Giant lizard kind of thing." "I think he's a meat-eater." "T-Rex?" "T-Rex?" "Big koala." "The man who can tell us what it is, is palaeontology curator Andy Currant." "This animal is called Megatherium." "Marvellous name, but all it means is big animal." "But it's better known as the giant ground sloth." "Oh!" "Wow!" "Wow!" "It's just amazing, just great." "The giant ground sloth was an animal that once roamed the grasslands of South America 10,000 years ago." "But ever since its discovery in Brazil in 1789, misunderstandings about the giant sloth have continued." "A skeleton was brought back to Madrid and put on display in the museum there." "It is mounted remarkably like a coffee table." "It doesn't look like a real animal and that, to me, is the endearing quality of this particular specimen - the way it's constructed." "Obviously it's not moving, but it looks as though it can move, and I think that's exciting." "Despite its looming presence, the giant sloth was a gentle herbivore - not really built for speed - it weighed in at over two tonnes." "Megatherium reminds me of an old man in carpet slippers." "The feet are rather distorted." "They're turned over on their side like a man with arthritis." "Megatherium was one of the first animals to disappear in the period of extinction that continues today." "I fell in love with this thing when I first saw it." "As far as I'm concerned, this is the best exhibit in the museum." "It's brilliant." "But does a great zoological collection merely preserve the remains of animals that have vanished forever?" "Or could it actually be used to stave off extinction in the first place?" "In 1945, farmers started using a new pesticide called DDT." "It was effective and it was devastating." "Large amounts of the chemical were released into the countryside before its effects on the environment and human health were fully understood." "One man - a passionate ornithologist called Derek Ratcliffe - started to investigate." "He focused on the collapse in the peregrine falcon population and, in 1966, his detective work brought him to these very trays here in the Natural History Museum." "Hi, how are you doing?" "'Today the curator of the egg collections is Douglas Russell.'" "He came to the Natural History Museum and he began to look at what the eggs looked like and their dimensions and the eggshell thickness and all the parameters around the eggs in the period before DDT was released." "And that's what this series allowed him to do." "Ratcliffe spent hours alone, studying these eggs that pre-dated the use of DDT." "His initial study just came in and started to weigh eggshells, so that he would begin to take out an eggshell, work out what the weight of that particular shell was and then take shells which he was collecting from the wild at that point, as part of the peregrine studies and" "suddenly realised, "Gosh, this shell is significantly lighter than shells that were being laid 30 years ago."" "Using this collection, Derek Ratcliffe was able to show that DDT was thinning eggshells to such an extent that they simply could not survive." "That was a pivotal moment in sort of world conservation because once Derek Ratcliffe had established that" "DDT was causing this effect on the peregrine population, other groups, other research groups, could go away in the United States and in other areas and try and determine whether the same thing was happening there." "Of course, they found that it was." "So our entire understanding of the effects of release of certain chemicals into the environment came about because Derek Ratcliffe could come into the museum and actually study what was happening in the population before the chemicals were released." "DDT was outlawed in the 1970s, and the potential extinction of the peregrines averted thanks to Derek Ratcliffe and these drawers of eggs." "Having complete and properly labelled collections is crucial if scientists are to spot trends that could eventually impact on all of us." "But keeping things in order isn't always as simple as it should be." "The Natural History Museum's collection of bird skins is the envy of the ornithological world." "There are five floors of cabinets like this here, with 1.25 million specimens in them, that's representing 95% of all known bird species." "Even some extinct ones." "So it's everything from Darwin's finches to this extraordinary peacock." "But these birds are only of any scientific value if each is labelled with the date and location of its collection." "If labels are lost - or worse faked - then the specimens are literally worthless." "So, when rumours began amongst the museum's senior ornithologists that certain specimens from a Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen might be fraudulent, it was time to investigate." "Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen was an ornithologist of high repute." "In 1954, he donated his entire collection of 20,000 bird skins to the museum." "What seemed to be one of the museum's most valuable acquisitions is now under investigation by curator Robert Prys-Jones." "Robert, show me what you've found in some of these birds here." "These are specimens of red poles, which are a quite common small bird in Europe." "These three specimens are Meinertzhagen specimens - supposedly collected in France in the 1950s." "However, it is clear from external appearance that they have been prepared in two very different styles." "These are quite well stuffed compared with this one." "This one's head is tilted further back." "The third has clearly been prepared by a different hand." "Everyone who prepares bird skins, leaves their own personal trace in the little idiosyncrasies of how they go about it." "'At first glance, these are three birds collected by Meinertzhagen." "'But with the hallmarks of two different collectors." "'Suspicions aroused, Robert took a more forensic approach.'" "Now, here is an example of an X-ray of the red pole specimens that are in the tray here." "And the three Meinertzhagen specimens correspond to the three X-rays in the top left-hand corner." "These two that you say were prepared by the same person and a different person to this one." "It's completely obvious, isn't it?" "Completely different bones, bones of the head are different." "And this has got a wooden pole." "A wooden support stick, which is quite commonly used in the making of bird skins." "But not in these ones?" "Not in these." "These are amazing." "It's so obvious." "These two are almost completely identical, aren't they?" "But when Robert looked at the X-rays of other red pole skins in the museum collections, it became clear exactly what Meinertzhagen was up to." "These two specimens here look almost identical to these specimens alongside here." "Yeah, yeah that's really clear." "Now these specimens were not collected by Meinertzhagen at all." "They were actually collected in the 1880s in Middlesex." "So a long time before Meinertzhagen." "Long time before, in a completely different place." "In southern Britain, rather than in France." "Wow!" "So you think that Meinertzhagen was actually taking old samples, old specimens and putting them in his collection and presenting them as his own." "Yes, we are confident that this was going on." "And these weren't just any old specimens." "They were birds stolen from the museum's very own collections." "Now Robert's investigation has revealed the full extent of Meinertzhagen's ornithological trickery." "This faked label says that Meinertzhagen found one of only three Grey's grasshopper birds ever to be recorded in western Europe." "In fact, it was from its native Manchuria 5,000 miles away." "He found the scarcely known Blyth's kingfisher in Burma, he claimed." "This magpie is one that Meinertzhagen stole from the museum and re-labelled as one of his own." "And he's even made up a little story about how he collected it." "He's written on the label, "On a yak, one of a pair."" "To me, this conjures up an image of him sort of in the Himalayas raising his gun to shoot this - this small bird off the back of a moving object." "So he's a dead shot with a gun, it's fantastically glamorous and completely untrue." "Meinertzhagen disguised the true origins of countless specimens." "It's now believed that up to a third of his collections are hoaxes." "This leaves, of course, a very large proportion of the Meinertzhagen collection which is almost certainly entirely genuine." "The difficulty with Meinertzhagen is detecting the good from the bad - not throwing out the baby with the bathwater." "Robert is now left with the task of re-instating the correct information on thousands of Meinertzhagen labels." "Meinertzhagen died at the grand old age of 89, still revered as a natural historian." "It's only now, 40 years later, that his mischief in the museum is finally being mended." "'Richard Sabin is curator of mammals." "'He knows the value of a well-ordered collection.'" "That is unreal!" "'Though the museum no longer collects large and endangered species, 'these Victorian specimens, 'now present opportunities that could never have been imagined by their collectors over a century ago.'" "Wow, that is really impressive!" "Yep, and this actually is the only example that we have in the museum's collection." "And one of only a few that you can find anywhere in the world." "It's a Cape lion." "And it's a form of lion from southern Africa that's been extinct since the 1860s, round about the time that the European settlers were moving in in large numbers and there was pressure put on land use, so basically the large mammals, there was no space for them." "So this sub-species of lion no longer exists in the wild or in captivity." "It's gone as far as we know, but there could be some in zoos that need to be validated genetically to make sure that they are what they say they are." "This still has a use, doesn't it?" "Absolutely." "There may be mechanisms of extinction that are locked away in the genes of those species that are no longer out there in the wild but exist in museum collections, and so it's important for us to make those accessible for scientific research." "'It's not just the specimens that are finding a new role in the 21st century." "'Richard Sabin is one of a number of museum scientists who are now being 'asked to use their expertise in a new and surprising way." "'As leaders in their field, they're increasingly being called on to give evidence in court." "'It's a job which requires confidence and a world-class grasp of the facts.'" "It could be described as the ultimate test of expertise." "I want to find out for myself what scientists go through in the hands of the law." "Could we call Liz Bonnin, please?" "Legal cases revolve around establishing facts that can swing the outcome of a case and lawyers frequently need expert witnesses to provide these facts." "I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." "And when you want a leading expert in the natural sciences, the trail often leads to the Natural History Museum." "I'm going to experience first-hand the kind of pressure scientists come under when they're called on to appear in court." "I would suggest that you are biased in this - that you looked for what you wanted to see." "But before I discover what it's like to be a scientist in the dock," "I'm meeting a man that knows all too well what that experience is like." "Oh, interesting smell!" "Yes, there's a good aroma in here." "Martin Hall is a forensic entomologist." "He studies flies and maggots found on dead bodies to help determine the victim's time of death." "As an expert witness, he's testified in some of Britain's biggest murder cases." "There's no escaping the fact that what you're saying, what you're reporting on, could implicate that person in the crime." "Clearly there's a lot of responsibility there but it's the responsibility to yourself and your science really, the responsibility of deciding the guilt or otherwise of the person in the dock is not yours." "Martin also has a warning for me." "Any claim that cannot be substantiated can be taken apart by a good cross-examining lawyer." "You have to be just totally honest." "There's no point stepping beyond a certain line because then, in fact, it's you who's in the firing line." "As my area of expertise is animal biology and conservation," "I've arranged to meet Richard Sabin, Senior Mammal Curator." "Richard, Hi, I'm Liz." "Nice to meet you." "Nice to meet you too." "How are you?" "Richard is frequently called on when animal parts are suspected of having been illegally smuggled into the country." "I would not be able to say what on earth this was because it's so delicate." "Sure, yeah." "And being so carved." "Can you tell what this is just from looking at it?" "Just from experience." "You can get an idea from things like the weight of the piece, given the size." "OK." "How it feels, how quickly it absorbs heat from your hands." "Um, the colour of the piece, although ivory and bone can be bleached to make it look much paler and much more desirable." "As a conservationist, I've decided to see what these experts go through by facing cross questioning in a fictitious ivory smuggling case." "Richard's task in this kind of case is to identify what is precious ivory and what is just bone." "One of the key features he looks for are these lines known as Schreger lines, unique to elephant ivory." "The thing to remember here is that every turn, every facet you can actually see the Schreger lines." "It's spectacular, isn't it?" "So how does ivory compare to bone?" "The main differences is with bone you have these pits on the surface, they're called Haversian pits." "The pits represent the channels the blood vessels pass through within the bone." "You won't find on the surface of any ivory object these Haversian pits." "So that's a very good thing to look for." "You can really see the pits there." "Exactly." "OK." "And you can't see any Schreger lines." "The man who'll be cross-examining me is lawyer Mark Solon." "With over 30 years experience in the courtroom, today he trains would-be expert witnesses." "When you go to court, it's an adversarial system, which is a fight." "So basically two parties fighting it out." "But, if you get over passionate about something, you can lose your cool and then you can get into arguing with the lawyer and then, of course, your credibility will go." "So you've got to be controlled in the way that you communicate that evidence." "I'm so scared." "Could you just help the court, what is ivory?" "Ivory is teeth of certain mammals, including members of the elephantidae family." "Asian elephants, African elephants and extinct mammoths." "Would you say you were quite passionate about the conservation of elephants in particular?" "I care deeply about the conservation of all wild animals." "In particular elephants." "Not particularly elephants, no." "Just any endangered species." "But that would include elephants, wouldn't it?" "That would include elephants, yes." "You describe in your report that there were 45 items, is that correct?" "There were indeed." "Did you examine all of them?" "I did." "How long did that take you?" "Each item would take probably about four or five hours." "What procedures did you conduct?" "I followed a very strict peer-reviewed protocol, which involves under..." "I'm just trying to get to what you actually did, Miss Bonnin." "I looked at each specimen with a magnifying glass." "Used a magnifying glass..." "And I also used a high-powered light source." "You just used a magnifying glass and light." "Yes." "And it took you five hours plus for each item, is that right?" "Well, I would identify, write up notes and re-identify just to be absolutely sure." "What were you looking for, then?" "I was looking for the presence or absence of Haversian canals." "Perhaps you'd explain that to the court." "Haversian canals are canals or pits that are apparent if the specimen is in fact bone." "You need a magnifying glass to see that?" "You do." "So, my client, if he picked up an object wouldn't be able to see that, would he?" "No, he would be able to see it." "You've just told us it takes five or six hours to analyse each item." "Yes, but I was doing other work..." "The client's liberty is at stake here." "Yes, I understand." "And I think that you are biased in this, that you looked for what you wanted to see." "Er, no." "My task and my area of expertise is to identify between ivory and bone." "And that's the end of the story as far as you're concerned, is it?" "It is sufficient and..." "It is sufficient in my estimation, yeah." "Sounds rather incredible, doesn't it?" "It does, we're very good at what we do." "Sorry." "LAUGHTER" "You are so good, Mark." "I swear my heart is beating through my chest." "My fear, really..." "Like, honestly, this is so hard." "I can't feel my fingertips." "And then you just stare." "Phew!" "Tell you what, that was really hard." "Working in telly, you've got to learn to think on your feet but that was a completely different type of adrenaline." "And it was only role playing." "I mean, I can't imagine myself actually doing that in a real court situation with somebody's freedom actually on the line." "It gives me a whole newfound respect for what Richard and Martin do." "And I think I'm better off getting back to my day job and leaving it to the experts." "Most museum experts come to the job for one reason." "They follow their passion." "In the end, the advancement of science owes little to fame or fortune and everything to a desire to spend a lifetime edging forward our understanding of the world." "I'm Oliver Crimmen, fish curator." "I've been working since I was 19 years old here at the museum and fishes have taken over most of my life." "We don't have every fish on the planet in the collections." "I'm sure the Victorians would have liked that but the fact is we don't know yet how many fishes there are." "We're still discovering them." "Since the very beginnings of the collections in the 18th century, the Victorians were interested in the Empire and natural resources that they might want to exploit." "Nowadays, we've got a very different focus." "We're worried about what we might be doing to the planet." "This collection, although it might have had different sort of motives behind it for some of its history, it's still continuing to provide answers to modern questions." "If we get a fresh fish, we will take a piece of the tissue and for molecular studies, we want to store the animal's DNA." "Then we'll preserve it in formalin, which stabilises the specimen and then, for long-term keeping, we'll keep it in alcohol." "It seems to work for hundreds of years we know, for ever we hope." "We have fluid preserved fishes from 1774 which are still in good condition." "You couldn't eat them now, of course, but for science they are very valuable materials even after all that time." "Hard to love?" "Certainly not for me." "Some, to our perception, seem quite ugly but of course not to another member of their own species." "As you incorporate new specimens into the collection, this feeling of continuity and your role as custodian of something that outlives you." "There is a feeling of responsibility and you can become quite pleased with the role that you play." "Try to keep ourselves odour-free, but I think sometimes after a day's work some of our fellow passengers on the train might notice the odd fishy note." "While museum scientists spend lifetimes trying to find new and exciting species, sometimes the exciting species find them." "Are you ready?" "So your end needs to come up more." "OK." "How's that feeling?" "Meet Stanley, nearly 9 ft long, 19 stone, and a face like I don't know what." "Stanley is a sturgeon and he's not just tricky to get down stairs." "Got to be careful he doesn't slide off." "He's one of the rarest and most important specimens held in the museum's fish collection." "But if you think his prehistoric looks are extraordinary, wait till you hear how he ended up in the museum in the first place." "That really is the ultimate fishy tale." "Stanley's story begins here in the mouth of Swansea Bay." "In June 2004, local fisherman Robert Davies set out as usual in his home-made boat, The Wonky, unaware that he was about to land a monster - and himself - in very deep water." "What were you actually fishing for at the time?" "Oh, skate, plaice, bass." "Mostly bottom feeders." "Anything that swims, you know." "Anything that swims." "While today's catch contained nothing more unusual than a discarded tyre, on that particular morning, Robert snared something completely unexpected." "I thought, what is that?" "Is that a dolphin?" "Is that a shark?" "I didn't really know." "There was scales all over his back." "It was like a dinosaur, really." "So, unable to actually lift a monster fish onto the deck on his own Robert tied it alongside the boat and headed back to shore." "Stanley was thought to be a very rare and valuable" "European Atlantic sturgeon, also known as the British sturgeon." "And I thought I was onto a winner." "Everyone just said, look after that it's worth a few quid, that one." "It's a prize species." "The British sturgeon is a royal fish and anyone who catches one has to offer it to the Queen first." "But when Robert received this fax from Buckingham Palace, saying that he could do as he sees fit, he, like everyone else, assumed he was free to sell his prize catch." "Robert had hit the jackpot and Stanley was destined for one of the premier fish markets in the country." "So, one o'clock the next morning, Robert and his new friend Stanley set off for Plymouth fish market." "The unusual fish attracted a top price of £650." "And Robert was obviously looking forward to getting the money." "But an eagle-eyed employee at the Plymouth Aquarium next door suddenly realised that the British sturgeon is an endangered species and it's protected by law, and that means trying to sell one is illegal." "Live on television, the sale was intercepted." "If you just look up here, this lady is a scenes of crime officer." "And this is now being treated as a crime scene." "The Atlantic sturgeon is afforded the same level of protection as things like the pandas, tigers, elephants and other rare species." "With Stanley in custody, the police began a full-scale enquiry, until Inspector Nevin Hunter received a phone call." "The fish disappeared, for want of a better phrase." "It's not something practically you can really deal with." "A 9ft long fish is not something that your average police officer is used to seizing." "For two days, the hunt for Stanley continued." "And while the press had a field day, for the police it was no laughing matter." "If it was the Atlantic sturgeon, then the financial penalty is up to £5,000 and custodial sentence to a maximum of five years imprisonment." "So, you know, that's pretty serious stuff." "But the mystery remained." "Where was the fish?" "20 miles up the coast in the Cornish town of Looe, fish merchant Tim Alsop - the man who had bought Stanley - was making room in his freezer." "A van reversed up to my door there and we got it." "It was a massive thing." "Were you wearing balaclavas?" "No, no." "Not quite that, but I remember a couple of holidaymakers coming past and they'd seen us." "And this little guy said, "Dad, look at that fish!"" "And we dragged it in quite quickly because we genuinely thought the heat was on then." "It was hot property." "Absolutely." "Tim harboured the fugitive fish for two days, but with the net tightening, it wasn't long before the game was up." "I remember one national newspaper saying that the police were closing in on Mr Alsop and his sturgeon, so I said I was going to donate it to the Natural History Museum." "Well, whilst Stanley the sturgeon was on his way to London and the" "Natural History Museum, Robert potentially was on his way to jail." "If we can get him on his belly that's better." "If the museum confirmed that Stanley really was the endangered and protected British sturgeon, then the man who caught it would be guilty of a serious crime." "It didn't fit the normal pattern for our British sturgeon." "You can look at the patterns on the scoots." "That's these patterns on here." "Yes, that's arguable evidence." "The position of the whiskers on the snout..." "Oh, yeah." "And most importantly the general shape of the snout was wrong." "With the visual identification inconclusive, Ollie and his team turned to DNA analysis." "We got a big surprise, it was an American sturgeon." "This meant that Stanley was the first American sturgeon ever recorded in British waters." "So, Stanley could actually make everybody re-evaluate the distribution of the North American sturgeon." "Totally." "And that would have implications for the conservation movement because people do want to re-introduce the sturgeon to the UK." "And this revelation also has implications for Robert, the man who caught Stanley." "As the American sturgeon is not protected in British waters," "Robert has committed no crime and is off the hook." "Many unanswered questions remain about Stanley, and while Ollie's looking forward to studying him further, he's mindful that, for Robert, who never received his money, Stanley is the one that got away." "To have caught such a big fish and made no profit out of it was initially a disappointment, but he was glad that it was going to come into the museum for science to answer all the questions that it" "raised and take its place alongside Darwin's and Cook's fishes and be available for study hereafter." "It takes an exceptional creature to really capture the public's imagination as Stanley did." "Capturing imaginations with the wonders of the natural world is a technique that's as popular today as it ever was." "The latest attempt doesn't feature an item from the collection at all." "Hello, good evening, and a very, very warm welcome to what's nothing less than the Oscars of nature photography, the Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer 2009." "The results of the Wildlife Photographer Of The Year competition are announced annually in a glittering ceremony in the museum's main hall." "Museum Of Life presenter Mark Cawardine is not only an internationally renowned zoologist, he's also a highly respected wildlife photographer, who's been a judge for the competition for the last five years." "Really nice shot, amazing for somebody under ten years old, so please put your hands together for Ilkka Rasanen." "The competition is open to professional and amateur photographers alike and every year the wining entries are reproduced by countless newspapers and magazines and draw thousands of people to an exhibition here at the museum." "I met Mark for a last look at the pictures before the exhibition opened to the public." "These pictures are incredible, aren't they?" "They are gorgeous, there's so many great ones." "I mean, as a judge, how many do you have to sift through?" "How many individual photographs?" "A lot, we had 43,135 entries this year, from 94 different countries, hundreds of different photographers." "Something like this leopard here, what would you be looking for here?" "There are so many pictures of leopards, to have a leopard shot that stops you in your tracks..." "When you're looking at one picture after another, they're all projected on a screen, it's got to be really good to actually make you think, "Wow, that really is different!"" "And this is a nice, simple photograph, but you've got gorgeous light, you've got fantastic eye contact and what really makes it is this wonderful frame all the way around the leopard." "It makes it stand out from the background." "I feel that that leopard is staring into my soul." "Now, out of all these amazing photographs, which one are you sort of jealous of?" "Which one do you sort of think, "Oh, I could have taken that, if only..."" "Well, out of the 95 here I would say 95 of them I'm jealous of, yeah." "Look at that!" "To me, it is so artistic and so imaginative and so different that it leaps out from the crowd." "People often think you've got to get it tight in the frame, but to actually pull back and get this wonderful winter wonderland around it is what makes the picture work." "When this one came up there was literally an audible gasp by all the judges." "Everybody looked and said, "This is absolutely fantastic."" "The museum is an international centre of study, but to me it's more than that." "I think it's a celebration of all that lives - the wonder of it and the fragility of it." "It's a reminder of what we've got and what we've lost." "It makes you think, and for a 21st century museum of natural history, that could be the greatest role of all." "Next time, we're searching deep into an unexplored jungle." "I tend to shy away from dangerous snakes." "To the bottom of the sea." "Oh, we've found it, we've found it!" "And, on our own doorstep." "Otherwise known to many as the tree of hell." "We're joining the teams who are hunting for the remaining species unknown to science." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk"