Sir David Attenborough on Museum Collections - 360

[MUSIC]

[The American Museum of Natural History logo appears on top of a scene of the Museum's empty main rotunda, with the Apatasaurus and Allosaurus fossils facing each other as if in battle. The angle changes and the camera is now directly below the Allosaurus.]

[MURMUR OF A CROWD]

[The video shows a timelapse of people in the hall. On screen, the text "American Museum of Natural History, New York City" appears.]

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: I've been fascinated by animals for as long as I can remember. And if you're fascinated by animals, you want to know more about them, and the great place to know about them is, of course, museums.

[The rotunda fades into Sir David Attenborough, sitting in a row of shelves that extends to the front and back. Various jars and boxes of specimens sit on the shelves.]

ATTENBOROUGH: Walking into a great collection like, like this does a number of things to you.

[CLICKING]

[Text on screen types out "Sir David Attenborough in the collections of the American Museum of Natural History."]

ATTENBOROUGH: The first of all is that you realize—

[On screen, identifiers pop up next to specific specimens. Clockwise from Sir David Attenborough: "Shrimp eels, Ophichthus gomesii"'; "American Badger, Taxidea taxus"; "Anemone models, Actiniaria"; "Quartz"; "Butterflies, Rhopalocera"; "Petrified Wood"; "Coelacanth; Latimeria chalumnae"; "Ammonite, Ammonoidea"; "Pigeon, Columba livia"; "Flying squirrel, Glaucomys sp.".]

ATTENBOROUGH: —what an enormous variety of animal species there are in the world, and you know this is only scraping the surface, anyway. And the second thing you think, recognize is that actually, this is the basis of all zoological science. If you want to research an animal, you have to know—the first thing, first question is: what animal is it? And that's not as easy to answer as you might think.

[The camera fades into the African Elephants display in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals at the Museum. Text reads, "Akeley Hall of African Mammals".]

ATTENBOROUGH: Of course, if you look at an elephant, yes, I know it's, well, an elephant, and is either an African or an Indian elephant. That's easy to settle. But if you've got a little fly,

[CLICKING]

[The camera fades into a collections space with white cabinets lining the walls. Some of these cabinets are open to reveals wooden collections boxes inside, containing many tiny flies. Text reads, "Division of Invertebrate Zoology".]

ATTENBOROUGH: which might be very important from a health point of view—

[Three inset, zoomed-in photographs of some of the flies appear, with labels above each (from left to right): "Musca autumnalis"; "Calliphoridae"; "Bombyliidae".]

ATTENBOROUGH: it might carry disease, for example— it's essential that you know what that is. So where can you discover what it is?

[The camera fades back into the same scene of David Attenborough speaking inside the collection shelves.]

ATTENBOROUGH: And the place you need ultimately to go to is a museum where they will have a specimen, which is called a "type specimen," which was the one which was described when they decided that this was going to be given this scientific name. That is the basis of all zoological science.

[The camera fades into a room filled with mammoth skulls, mastodon skulls, and other fossils from elephant-like animals.]

[CLICKING]

[Text reads "Fossil Proboscideans, Division of Paleontology"]

ATTENBOROUGH: So institutions like this are the very foundations of all zoological knowledge.

[The camera fades into another room with compacters on the wall, with a selection of books, photographs, models, and drawings spread out in front of the camera.]

[CLICKING]

[Text reads, "Research Library".]

ATTENBOROUGH: The library associated with these great museums is almost as much greatly important as the objects themselves.

[Labels appear over some of the objects, clockwise: "Field notebook", "Field photos", "Birds of Paradise Illustration", "Rare Folios", "Archival Staff Photo", "Diorama Planning Sketches", "The Mammals of Australia".]

[The camera fades back to Sir David Attenborough in the collections.]

ATTENBOROUGH: Unless you know where it came from exactly and when it came from exactly, you are missing a lot of very, very important information.

[The camera fades and is surrounded by collections jars and a turtle skull, with labels visible.]

ATTENBOROUGH: And that can come, of course, not from the object itself, but from the circumstances, the documentation, that should accompany every scientifically-collected specimen.

[The camera fades back to Sir David Attenborough in the collections.]

ATTENBOROUGH: One of the huge changes in the natural world over the past 1,000 years happened within my lifetime, or perhaps a little earlier.

[STREET NOISE, CARS HONKING]

[The camera slides to a timelapse of a New York street scene, as traffic and people rush by.]

ATTENBOROUGH: Suddenly, human beings started to increase in number, and not only increase in numbers, but increase in power in the things they can do to the natural world, not only mechanically, but chemically, for example.

[The camera returns to Sir David Attenborough.]

ATTENBOROUGH: And sometimes it's what we wish to do, and sometimes it's a byproduct and we didn't realize we were doing it.

[The colors blow out to reveal a timelapse of a forest scene, with leaf litter on the ground, a big log, towering trees, and a small sapling.]

[BIRDS CHIRPING]

ATTENBOROUGH: So the natural world is changing, and it's changing by becoming poorer and more damaged.

[The camera returns to Sir David Attenborough.]

ATTENBOROUGH: Now, if we want to prevent it becoming continuing being damaged, we have to understand how it works, and we have to understand what it is that we're doing that may have an effect on the natural world, and that is perhaps the most important thing that's facing humanity today. If we want to preserve the richness of the animal world, we have to know how it works, and these are the places that tell you.

[The camera fades to the exterior of the American Museum of Natural History.]

[Credits roll.

PRODUCER

Lee Stevens

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Eugenia Levenson

VR/360 DIRECTOR

Jason Drakeford

CAMERA

AMNH/L. Stevens, E. Chapman, and L. Rifkind

Jason Drakeford

MUSIC

"Carnival of the Animals – 9) The Cuckoo in the Woods"

by Camille Saint-Saens (PD) / Warner Chappell Production Music

"Taking Care of the Wounded" by Amadeus Indetzki (GEMA)

/ Warner Chappell Production Music

SPECIAL THANKS

Barbara Brown

Christine Johnson

Courtney Richenbacher

David Kizirian

Eileen Westwig

Lauren Vonnhame

Lindsay Jurgielewicz

Lisa Breslof

Mai Reitmeyer

Radford Arrindell

Rebecca Morgan

Ruth O'Leary

Thomas Baione

© American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY]

[MUSIC ENDS]