Nature's Small Wonders Pack a Vibrant Punch!

By Catherine Babikian

Take a look around Mammal or Hageboeck Hall of Birds and you’ll find a cornucopia of fascinating animals, from little sparrows and finches to impressive walruses and bison.  Although these halls are home to plenty of animals, even more reside in museum storage.  The Museum of Natural History has far more animals in its possession than it has room for display – the attic of Macbride Hall is teeming with beautiful animals from all over the world.

Many of these animals were collected by William Temple Hornaday and given to the museum after his death.  A zoologist and graduate of Iowa State University, Hornaday traveled far and wide to collect animals – the deserts and beaches of Australia and the jungles of New Zealand and Malaysia among them.  His birds are splashed with bright blues, deep crimson reds, and hints of green and purple, a real change from the grays and whites of Iowa birds.  Hornaday might not have thought of it this way, but he was collecting colors and patterns as much as he was collecting birds.

 

In 1886, at the height of westward expansion, Hornaday began to collect buffalo from Montana: he expected that buffalo would be extinct by 1900, and wanted to collect specimens for future generations.  The impending extinction of the buffalo pained him, and he became an ardent conservationist.  He was friends with Teddy Roosevelt – Roosevelt once gave Hornaday a jaguar skull he’d shot, which the museum has in its collections – and together they formed the American Bison Society. 

For Hornaday, museums weren’t just places to deposit old things; they were places for the future to learn about the past, even if the past was long gone.  Although buffalo are not extinct today, Hornaday collected them so that we would still know our past – the Museum of Natural History does the same thing. Although not every animal in the museum’s collections is on display, it still reminds us of another place, or another time. 

My favorite birds are a set of hummingbirds collected by Hornaday – we don’t know where they’re from, but they sure are beautiful! Sometimes you don’t have to be a walrus or a bison – or even a giant sloth named Rusty – to be breathtaking.  Sometimes the smallest things are worth the most notice.  Hornaday surely knew it.

-Written by MNH Volunteer Catherine Babikian