Up the Hill - Bare Bones
As I entered the Environmental Science Center of the Yale Peabody Museum, I couldn’t help but notice the tidiness. The ESC is a beautiful building with clean lines. There is barely any dust or grime — except, I found, in a special basement room. There, a tank of beetles devours the flesh of animal carcasses, preparing the bones for their spotless museum tenure.
So far, beetles have cleaned the carcasses of over 24,000 birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals for the permanent collection. However, when specimens (gathered from road-kill, zoos, and research sites) first arrive on...
