The Natural History Museum in Tring, UK, is house to one of many largest ornithological collections on the planet, boasting greater than 1 million specimens together with chicken skins, skeletons, eggs and nests. “We’re most likely the most important and arguably probably the most full chicken assortment on the planet,” says Alex Bond, principal curator answerable for birds at NHM Tring. “We’ve acquired 1,000,000 specimens […] that characterize 95 per cent of avian variety throughout the planet.”

Bond and the curator staff at NHM Tring gave New Scientist a singular peek inside this huge, globally necessary assortment, explaining its function in enhancing scientists’ understanding of the evolution of avian biodiversity, which can assist defend chicken species sooner or later from challenges akin to local weather change and air pollution.

We noticed uncommon objects from the gathering, together with one among Charles Darwin’s finches, collected within the Galapagos Islands throughout his Beagle expedition. We explored the huge egg and nest assortment, seeing one among only a handful of nice auk eggs, a now-extinct flightless seabird species, and peeked contained in the anatomical assortment to see a 2000-year-old mummified falcon. New applied sciences, together with synthetic intelligence, scanning tech and chemical evaluation, could quickly assist unlock the gathering in novel and thrilling methods.

Birds: Sensible and Weird opens on the Pure Historical past Museum in London on 24 Might and runs till 5 January 2025