Making Nature: How we see Animals

Strange exhibition at the Wellcome Collection looking at how we think, feel and value animals.

It wasn’t until the 18th century that we started to seek a scientific explanation of the animal world and there was a really good section on Linnaeus and his work to classify and name all the species and he was the first person to define humans as animals. It claimed that how he defined a hierarchy of species has influenced our thinking ever since.

The middle room looked at how we display and look at animals. I must admit to being slightly freaked by the examples of taxidermy hidden round the display. There was a sweet fox asleep under a display case! There were good sections  on zoos and natural history museums, how they have changed and how their design has influenced our thinking. I was also very interested in cases on William Hornaday, a taxidermist for the Smithsonian who realised that in collecting some of the last bison for the museum he was contributing to them becoming extinct and he became an early conservationist.

The last section looked at how man has changed animals through controlled breeding and genetic modification. I was amused to see dog breeding included in this as my father had been very active in a breed. At least we never had a stuffed dogs head on the wall, like an artefact here, although we did have a dog skeleton! I was interested in the items from the Centre for Post Natural History formed in 2008 to collect examples of species altered by humans, alcoholic white rat anyone?!

Closes on 21 May 2017.

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