A Visual History of Dead Animals...and A Possible Cause of Species Extinction

'Smile, you're at a weird museum!'

[This is the latest installment of our travel log from our summer trip to Italy. We will add new stories sporadically (like once every six months) until we have no stories left. Today's installment: the Natural History Museum at the University in Bologna. This one is a bit long, as I need to introduce us to Northern Italy and provide some back story.]

Italy is very much two very disparate regions connected only by inclusion in the same country borders, much like Civil War-era America. The south (commonly referred to as The Mezzogiorno, and generally considered the area south of Rome) is mainly agrarian; the north (north of Rome, oddly) is mainly industrial, with internationally famous brands such as Fiat and Ferrari headquartered there, and generally has the higher concentration of wealth. Due to the extreme heat in the south during the summer (and our desire to limit the amount of chaos in our lives; for an example of chaos, see this old story), we headed north for most of our trip.

We honestly didn't know much about most northern Italian cities, except Milan, where I have a cousin. I knew that Milan is a world-class city, with a famous Opera, as well as a center of world fashion and finance. I knew that the highest Italian soccer league (Serie A) is generally dominated by northern Italian teams, since these cities have a higher concentration of wealth and can therefore afford better players. And I knew there were major tourist cities, such as Venice and Florence, that brought more wealth to the region.

Other than that, most of the cities I knew of were for food or sports reasons reasons: Genoa, for its various salami; Parma for its hams (prosciutto) and cheeses (parmigiana); Bologna, for bologna (maybe?) and bolognese-style pasta sauce; Modena, for its balsamic vinegar; Turin, for Juventus, their soccer team, and home of Fiat.

Early in our trip, we made a quick list of cities we'd like to visit and did a quick read through in our travel guide to help us refine the list. One city that made the list was Bologna, which is home to the oldest continually-operating University in the world. We figured that a college town has to be pretty cool right? Well, when we would tell native Italians that our next stop was going to be Bologna, they would inevitably ask, 'Why?' (this happened at least 3 times I can distinctly remember, and probably closer to 10).

I'm not sure if it was lingering side-effects from my sickness in Lucca (where we had just come from) or the doubts planted by all the 'Why would you go to Bologna?" statements, but our first impression was not good. We had heard/read that the north is industrial, but we weren't really prepared for a capital C City. In Italy, all the tourist cities you visit are kind of quaint and quiet: Florence, Venice, Lucca, Assisi; even Rome doesn't feel like a City to some extent. But Bologna is a City: wide streets with lots of traffic, densely laid out, tall buildings, sketchy characters, alleys, trash on the streets, etc. When we walked out of the train station, I think we were shell-shocked.

After we settled in to our really-nice-but-run-by-some-kind-of-sketchy-people hotel, we started to wander around the city and found that it wasn't actually so unlike the rest of Italy as we initially feared. (Tangent: supposedly, Bruno Magli, the shoes guy, lived in the same building as our hotel and he paid some old woman to stand in the lobby and visually inspect, and yell at, everyone who came and went. If you know anything about old Italian women, you'll realize this may be the greatest form of security available). Of course, we found some excellent food, wine, and ice cream in the city, as well as the best falafel/gyro place we ate at in Italy. We were able to walk all over without any problems. We also found a cool photo exhibit on Gypsies (or Roma), watched a movie in Italian in the main square, saw some monuments to the Italian resistance during WWII, and found a phallic statue of Neptune (all of which I will hope to expand on at some other time - this intro is already too long and I haven't even gotten to the main point yet).

But the main attraction of Bologna was the University and its museums. You have to figure if an institution has been around for almost 1000 years, it has had to have seen some cool stuff, including the 'discovery' of the 'New World' and colonialism.

As we wandered around the University, we came across this place, which in retrospect, is one of my favorite places in all of Italy that we went to:

I believe this says something like:
The University of Studying
Museum of Zoology, Comparative Anatomy,
and Anthropology.
But you probably already figured that out.

The museum wasn't in our guide book, and we really had no idea what to expect. But Kimberly likes animals and nature, and I'm always up for an adventure, so we went in. Possibly the best decision we made all trip.

This place was both a museum and a department building for the University. But, it was empty - the offices, the museum, everywhere - and unlocked. I could have walked out of that place with a jar full of dead snakes,

I think that one in the front is trying to make a break for it.

a rhinoceros head (honestly, I have no idea what that is the skull of. A saber-tooth tiger? A Woolly Mammoth? Any help?),

and an elephant leg waste basket (in retrospect, I wish I had taken this, but it probably would have caused quite the stir at customs).

Loosely translated this sign reads 'Don't put trash in the Elephant leg.'
Apparently they don't teach reading at the University of Bologna, as the leg was full of trash.

When we first walked in, we just noticed some stuffed heads on the wall, kind of like a hunting lodge. Then we saw a whole wall of heads of various African game animals.

So well ordered and presented. But could someone dust them, please?

Then we started wandering, turned a corner, and found this:

This picture does no justice to how many cases of animals there actually were at this place.

Rows and rows and rows of animals, stuffed or preserved. And it looked like it hadn't been well-maintained.

Some animals looked like they were still decomposing.

Usually, the shell is attached to the turtle.

Some were actually decomposing, because their preserving fluids had evaporated.

This possum (opossum?) has definitely seen better days.
Someone might want to top off that embalming fluid.

There were extinct animals.

I originally thought this was a dodo, but looking at it again, it looks like a big eagle. I don't know.

Animals on the verge of extinction.

Kiwis,and most other small, flightless birds, are rare in the wild in New Zealand because of the introduction of possums and cats to the islands. And the Zoological Museum of Bologna.

Imaginary half-and-half animals.

I think they were trying to make a point about evolution with these guys, but still, kind of strange.

Re-enactments of the circle of life.

I wonder if they were found this way in the wild. That would be cool.

Weird interpretations of life in the wild.

I'm not a biologist, but I'm pretty sure boars and seals don't kiss/snuggle in the wild.
Nor, do I believe, they share the same habitat.

An ostrich egg.

That's big.

What appears to be a Unicorn corn.

A scientist may say narwhal horn, but I say Unicorn horn.
And some assorted stuffed heads.

Animals we ate on our travels.

Wild boar (or cinghale, in Italian, I think) is very tasty in sauces and in salami.

Bambi and his family.

The Lion King and his family.

These lions have no back halves. They end at that wall.

Hedwig.

Stupid Death Eaters

And this cabinet full of weird, random horns, stuffed heads, and other stuff.

In all, I think we took over 100 pictures in about an hour and a half (I've put most of them on Flickr, but tried to get rid of the ones that were really out of focus or otherwise not good). We were totally infatuated with this place and started referring to it as the Extinction Museum. In fact, we went back the next day because we didn't believe it really existed.And the really crazy thing: this wasn't even the weirdest place we found in Bologna (looking back, its actually not as weird as it was when we were there). But that's another story for another day.

[Photos here on Flickr, and here in slideshow format]