Science blog

To replace the Leonardo da Vinci items that are usually in our Treasures gallery, but are now in the stand-alone "A Mind in Motion" exhibition, our Manuscripts and Incunabula curators have selected some less well-known but very interesting items dealing with the connection between art and science in the Renaissance. On the pure art side are some works by Albrecht Dürer and Michelangelo, but this post is about three volumes of Renaissance science. They sum up the way that humanists during the Renaissance sought to synthesise the existing knowledge of medieval Europeans with rediscovered Classical texts, many of which had been lost in Europe but preserved by Arabic scholars, and further advances that had been made in the Arabic world.

Depiction of edelweiss from the Codex Bellunensis.

The first item, shelfmark Add MS 41623, is the "Codex Bellunensis", a bound manuscript of herbal material in Latin with some Italian notes. Much of the content is based on De Materia Medica by Pedanius Dioscorides, a famous Greek physician of the first century CE. De Materia Medica was the single most important herbal text in Europe from its writing until the nineteenth century. "Bellunensis" refers to the town of Belluno in Italy, north of Venice, where the manuscript may have been created. The page to which the manuscript is opened in the display shows what is thought to be the first artistic representation of edelweiss, used to treat abdominal and respiratory diseases. The other herbs shown on this spread are valerian, an early sedative, eupatorium, and agrimony. The whole manuscript can be read free online .

The second item, shelfmark Royal MS 12 G VII, is a fifteenth-century Latin copy of Kitab al-Manazir, or "Optics", and another short work, by the great Arab scientist Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, known in Renaissance Europe as Alhazen. The pages on display deal with binocular vision and how the visual axes of the eyes intersect. The book was the first to empirically demonstrate that sight occurs when light reflected from an object enters the eye. Many early classical thinkers had believed that vision worked by the eye emitting some kind of "ray of sight". The book also includes "Alhazen's problem", a geometrical problem involving finding the point on a spherical mirror that a light ray from a given location must strike to be reflected to a second given location. This would not be completely solved algebraically until 1965. The copy on display comes from the Royal Manuscripts collection, a collection of manuscripts and printed books donated by King George II to the British Museum (not to be confused with the King's Library collection housed in the centre of the building, which was donated later by George IV).

Illustration from the Phaenomena

The third of these items, shelfmark Add MS 15819,  is a manuscript copy of the Phaenomena by Aratus of Soli, a Greek poet of the early third century BCE. This is a long poem with one section describing the constellations of the stars, and a shorter second section on weather forecasting based on observations of the heavenly bodies and animal behaviour. You can read a public domain English prose translation of the poem at the Theoi Project, although we have two copies of the most recent English translation by Douglas Kidd in our collections. Our copy is a manuscript of the Latin translation of the poem by the Roman general Germanicus Julius Caesar, the nephew of the emperor Tiberius and father of Caligula. Our manuscript dates from the fifteenth century and once belonged to, and was probably written for, Francesco Sassetti, a senior manager in the Medici Bank.

Posted by Philip Eagle, with thanks to Eleanor Jackson, Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts, and Karen Limper-Herz, Lead Curator Incunabula and Sixteenth-Century Books.

In the final episode of “Treasures of the British Library” series (tonight at 9pm on Sky Arts) we explored the ancestry of trumpeter Alison Balsom. Alison is descended from the 18^th century clergyman and polymath Stephen Hales (1677-1761) and she was keen to find out more about this remarkable man.

The first item I showed Alison was Hales’ seminal work “Vegetable Staticks” or to give it its full title “Vegetable Staticks: or an account of some statical experiments on the sap in vegetables: being an essay towards a natural history of vegetation”. Alas, it was not an age of punchy titles. Hales was interested in understanding how plants give off and take up water and in this book he outlines the many meticulous experiments that seek to understand these processes. Hales even invented the ‘pneumatic trough’ (see below) and used this to collect gases given off by plants. He didn’t however analyse the composition of this gas, since at that time air was understood to be a pure element. It was not until many years later that Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier discovered oxygen was a component of air, making use of Hales’ pneumatic trough to collect, analyse and separate gases.

Stephen Hales' pneumatic trough. From Vegetable Staticks p260

Some of Hales’ conclusions were remarkably prescient outlining the process of photosynthesis many years before its chemical basis was elucidated. One key quote draws parallels between the function of the leaves of plants with animals' lungs.

From Vegetable Staticks. p326

Two pages later Hales also postulates that light might be a form of energy which is needed by the plant to survive.

From Vegetable Staticks. p327

Alison and I then went on to look at Hales’ “A Description of Ventilators”. One of Hale’s social projects was the invention of ventilating systems for ships and prisons where overcrowding meant that stale air and unhygienic conditions were rife. Hales’ invention was essentially a giant set of bellows which removed the noxious air. The ventilator was initially used to dry grain for preservation but was eventually rolled out to ships, hospitals and prisons where it saved many lives.

Stephen Hales. A Description Of Ventilators

Last but not least we came to Reverend Hales’ “A Friendly Admonition to Drinkers of Gin, Brandy and Other Spirituous liquors” which was published anonymously in 1751. Hales was a strong supporter of the Gin Acts of the early 18^th century where gin sales were subject to high taxes in an effort to reduce consumption. In the tract he outlines the many physiological consequences of consuming as he called them, “most intoxicating and baneful spirits”. Readers are warned that liquors ‘frequently cause those Obstructions and Stoppages in the Liver, which occasion the Jaundice, Dropsy and many other fatal diseases” and “impair the mind as much as the body”.  However the message was as much moral as it was medical with Hales condemning drunkards and the great sin of drinking throughout.

Stephen Hales' A Friendly Admonition... Title page and p25

Although Hales trained as a clergyman and did not have any formal scientific training his achievements rival many of the well-known scientists of the day. Despite this Hales does not tend to feature alongside famous scientists in the history books so we were pleased to be able to shed some light on this interesting character as part of the Treasures of the British Library series.

Katie Howe

With thanks to Tanya Kirk and Duncan Heyes for help sourcing Stephen Hales material from the British Library collections.

On the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s death, Katie Howe explores her scientific legacy.

Perhaps best known as ‘the lady with the lamp’ Florence Nightingale was also an accomplished scientist and social reformer.

In 1854, with Britain in the midst of the Crimean conflict, Nightingale was appointed to lead a party of nurses to a military hospital in Scutari (in modern day Istanbul). When she arrived she discovered a lack of coordination between hospitals and no standardised or consistent reporting of mortality rates and causes of death. Nightingale set to work gathering extensive information on all aspects of hospital care.

After returning from the Crimea, Nightingale used her new found celebrity status and personal connections to enlist the help of the eminent Victorian epidemiologist and statistician William Farr in analysing the vast quantities of data she had collected.

Their correspondence, which is held at the British Library, reveals a respectful professional relationship, with Farr often signing off,

“I have the honour to be your very faithful servant.”

In May 1857, when Nightingale sent Farr the death rates calculated from her Crimean war data, he replied,

“Dear Miss Nightingale. I have read with much profit your admirable observations. It is like light shining in a dark place. You must when you have completed your task - give some preliminary explanation - for the sake of the ignorant reader.” (Add MS 43398 f.10)

Add MS 43398 f.10

So Florence Nightingale was not only the literal ‘lady with the lamp’, but her statistical work also illuminated worrying trends in army mortality rates.

After receiving further data from Nightingale in November the same year, Farr wrote:

“This speech is the best that was ever written on diagrams or on the Army.”  (Add MS 43398 f.37)

Add MS 43398 f.37

As a result of this productive collaboration with Farr, Nightingale learned that the majority of deaths in the Crimean War were not due to battle wounds but to preventable diseases like typhus and cholera.

To get this important message across to high-ranking government officials who had no statistical training, Nightingale knew she needed a powerful visual message. She represented the cause of death in a revolutionary new way. Rather than using a table or list as was common at the time she created this striking rose diagram. 

Each of the 12 wedges represents a month of the year and changes in the wedges’ colour reveal changes over time. At a glance it was easy to see the deaths from epidemic diseases (blue) far outweighed deaths from battlefield wounds (red) and deaths from other causes such as accidents or frostbite (black).  After sanitary reforms such as the introduction of basic sanitation, hand washing and ventilation, deaths dropped dramatically. Compare the right rose (April 1854-March 1855) with left rose (April 1855-March 1856).

Florence Nightingale’s Rose diagram “Notes on matters, affecting the health, efficiency and hospital administration of the British Army. London, 1858”. C.194.b.297

Her rose diagram was so easy to understand it was widely republished. Ultimately this striking visualisation and the accompanying report convinced the government that deaths were preventable if sanitation reforms were implemented in military hospitals. Nightingale’s work provided a catalyst for change, driving better and cleaner hospitals and the establishment of a new army statistics department to improve healthcare.

Do you need to explore molecular gastronomy or research the food industry or trends in the beverage business? Are you concerned with global food security, safety  and supply? Are genetically modified foods a threat to our health and ecosystems or a benefit of biological research? What are the markets for different types of food and what is the impact of European regulation on these markets? These questions and many more can be explored by undertaking research at the British Library.

Image from Flickr

Our science reading rooms contain a strong food technology collection including books, journals, both print and electronic  plus discovery tools such as the Food Science and Technology Abstracts (FSTA) database.

Electronic resources for research: our full set of databases are listed here and are accessible to registered readers on-site.

Accessing a world of knowledge: reader registration and pre-registration is quick and easy as outlined on our web site.

Explore the scope and depth of the British Library collections: digital books include topics such as “Developing food products for consumers with specific dietary needs" edited by Steve Osborn, Wayne Morley, Oxford, Woodhead Publishing, 2016, touching on the health aspects and books on wider cultural issues include examples such as “On the Town in New York : The Landmark History of Eating, Drinking, and Entertainments from the American Revolution to the Food Revolution" by Michael Batterberry and  Ariane Batterberry, 2016.

Image from Flickr

Inter-disciplinary and multi-format collections: apart from the multidisciplinary links to the business, humanities and cultural aspects of food, the science collections cover packaging, preservation, agricultural production, food processing, microbiology, engineering and nutrition.

We hold the publications of the major food sector organisation such as the Institute of Food Science and Technology’s  (IFST)  “International Journal of Food Science and Technology" and the European Federation of Food Science and Technology’s (EFFST) journal entitled “Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies”.

The British Library  offers a wide variety of formats and resources including the oral history food collections which have recently been made available online. These cover the history of food production from the start of the 20^th Century and are a fantastic resource for food researchers and historians.

Image from Wikimedia

Our collection of historical patents are also a rich resource for understanding food technology and innovation. We offer amongst many other patent databases, the British granted patent specifications database, a  document store that contains pdf copies of British patents from 1617-1899, and PDF copies of granted British patents from 1st January 2007. Although this database is searchable only by patent number, the reference staff can help with subject access using print patent indexes and up to five specifications per week can be downloaded for personal research. See the Business and IP Centre website for more information.

Image from Flickr

Sources of research in food standards and regulations can be found at the British Library where we collect these UK national publications, e.g. UK Food Standards Agency  and international publications of key organisations such as the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations in our social science reading rooms.

Whet your appetite by visiting the British Library’s collections of food related resources, including recipes, it’s history, science and nutritional benefits.   

Paul Allchin

Science Content Specialist

From Brian Cox and his past life as a pop star to Albert Einstein’s career as a patent clerk, PhD placement student Eleanor Sherwood delves into the more unknown pursuits and occupations of well-known scientists. 

Brian Cox 

©Vconnare at English Wikipedia

 

Brian Cox is an Advanced Fellow of Particle Physics at the University of Manchester and also conducts research at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.  Although a well-known face in the media, presenting popular TV shows such as The Wonders of the Solar System and The Wonders of the Universe¹, Professor Cox has had previous brushes with fame as a member of two separate bands.  Between 1986 and 1992, Cox was a keyboard player in hard rock band Dare and, during the completion of his Physics PhD, Cox also played the keyboard in the more well-known pop rock/dance group D:Ream^2,3.  The band’s best-known single ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ was performed live on Top of the Pops in 1994 and was featured heavily in Labour’s 1997 election campaign³. 

Read Brian Cox’s PhD thesis here via the British Library's online e-theses service, EThOS.

Albert Einstein

© Ferdinand Schmutzer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist born in Germany.  He is probably one of the most famous scientists of modern times and his most well-known work, the general theory of relativity, forms the basis of modern physics.  However, after graduating from the Swiss Polytechnic School in Zurich in 1900⁴, Einstein struggled to find a job in academia and so found work as a clerk in the Swiss Federal Patent Office in Bern. He worked here throughout his ‘miracle year’ of 1905, where he was awarded his PhD and also published four groundbreaking papers, and only left in 1909 to accept the post of ‘Professor Extraordinarius’ in theoretical physics at the University of Zurich⁵.

Read some of Einstein's many books at the British Library, ranging from explanations of the Theory of Relativity to autobiographical writings. 

William Herschel

Friedrich William Herschel was born in Hannover yet moved to Bath, England at age 19.  An accomplished astronomer, Herschel is credited with the discovery of Uranus, the confirmation of the theory that nebulae were composed of stars rather than a luminous fluid, as was the opposing theory, and a theory of stellar evolution⁶. However, Herschel was only a professional astronomer from the age of 43; until this time, William Herschel taught, performed and composed music and was employed for some time as the organist of a chapel in Bath.

Alexander Graham Bell

By Moffett Studio, via Wikimedia Commons

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh to a family of elocutionists.  Although he is most notably credited with the invention of the telephone,Bell contributed to many other inventions including metal detectors and early aircraft⁷, and was also a professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at Boston University⁸.  However, as well as his scientific endeavours, Bell was a teacher of his father’s ‘Visible Speech’ system at a number of institutions for deaf or deaf-mute students.  He also opened his own ‘School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech’; a notable student being Helen Keller, with whom he worked and was friends for over 30 years⁹.

Polly Matzinger

Polly Matzinger is an American immunologist and has held research posts at The University of  
Cambridge, The Basel Institute for Immunology and most recently at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in Maryland¹⁰.  She is most well-known for her work on ‘The Danger Model’, a theory explaining how immune cells can sense when the body is under attack and thus when to mount an immune response.  Leading up to her scientific career however, Matzinger undertook a number of ‘unconventional’ career paths.  Among many jobs, Matzinger worked as a jazz musician, problem dog trainer and even a playboy ‘bunny’, however it was her job as a cocktail waitress and an evening serving two university professors which led to her being persuaded to pursue a career in science¹¹. 

Read Matzinger's 1994 review on the Danger Theory published in Annual Reviews of Immunology at the British Library - available to order as a hard copy here from the British Library collections.

Alan Turing

Author unknown, via Wikimedia Commons

Alan Turing was a British computer scientist, cryptanalyst, logician and mathematician, and is widely regarded to be the father of modern computing and artificial intelligence.  Turing is also credited with the design and development of the ‘Bombe’- an electromechanical device which was used during World War II to decipher Enigma-encrypted messages from the German military.  Aside from this, Turing was a talented long distance runner and used to frequently run the 40 miles from his work station at Bletchley Park to London for meetings.  Turing even tried out for the 1948 British Olympics marathon team and, despite being injured at the time, finished with a time only 12 minutes slower than winning time for that year¹².

Read all about the life of Alan Turing in the book by Robert Hodges: 'Alan Turing: The Enigma'. Available to order here from the British Library collections

Here we reveal the answers of our Lewis Carroll-inspired brainteasers. (The questions feature in a previous blog post)

MAZE

Can you find a route from the outside of the maze to the centre?

DOUBLETS

For each pair of words, can you find a series of words which link them, changing just one letter each time? All links must be real words.

Drive PIG into STY – PIG/WIG/WAG/WAY/SAY/STY

Make WHEAT into BREAD – WHEAT/CHEAT/CHEAP/CHEEP/CREEP/CREED/BREED/BREAD

Raise FOUR to FIVE – FOUR/FOUL/FOOL/FOOT/FORT/FORE/FIRE/FIVE

Prove GRASS to be GREEN – GRASS/CRASS/CRESS/TRESS/TREES/FREES/FREED/GREED/GREEN

Change OAT to RYE – OAT/RAT/ROT/ROE/RYE

Cover EYE with LID – EYE/DYE/DIE/DID/LID

Raise ONE to TWO – ONE/OWE/EWE/EYE/DYE/DOE/TOE/TOO/TWO

Crown TIGER with ROSES – TIGER/TILER/TILES/TIDES/RIDES/RISES/ROSES

DOUBLE ACROSTIC POEM

Each couplet in this poem clues an 8-letter word. If you find all 8 words, their first letters will spell out a word, and their last letters will spell out another word.

They’ll jump off a cliff from a great height, for fun

In a computer game from 1991

LEMMINGS

Just the right tipple for a long run

To match your own chemical composition

ISOTONIC

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) © National Portrait Gallery, London

Kids won’t touch it - they prefer jam

Sounds like it’s near Lewisham

BROCCOLI

Practise makes perfect, that’s what they say

Regarding the vehicle that takes you away

REHEARSE

Brenda with three Es is feeling pretty

Confused about this northern city

ABERDEEN

Caesar’s troubled by its bite

Maybe a candlelit dinner tonight?

ROMANTIC

It’s almost like there’ll be bows and knots

At the time of year you give presents lots

YULETIDE

First letters spell out: LIBRARY

Last letters spell out: SCIENCE

AMBIGRAMS

Can you devise a rotation ambigram for the word FISH? Or a reflection ambigram for BIRD?

Rotation ambigram for the word FISH (from bigforrap.wordpress.com): Reflection ambigram or the word BIRD  (from ambigramme.com):

OVERLAPPING SQUARES

Can you draw this shape made from three interlaced squares, using one continuous line, without going over any parts of the line twice, without intersecting the line you’ve already drawn, and without taking your pen off the paper?

A DINNER PARTY

At a dinner party, the host invites his father’s brother-in-law, his brother’s father-in-law, his father-in-law’s brother, and his brother-in-law’s father. What’s the smallest number of guests there could be?

Males are denoted by upper case and females are denoted by lower case letters. The host is C and his guest is E. His father's brother-in-law is B or C. His brother's father-in-law is C. His father-in-law's brother is C. His brother-in-law's father is C. Therefore the smallest number of guests is 1, C.

ANAGRAMS 

Can you unscramble these sentences to form relevant phrases?

HELP V. KEEN TRIO OF DAFTNESS - FESTIVAL OF THE SPOKEN NERD

“LESS TOKEN GREENERY”, SHE SANG - GEEK SONGSTRESS HELEN ARNEY

SEE ME OUT, TV’S MISTER EXPLODER MAN - EXPERIMENTS MAESTRO STEVE MOULD

BRB, I HIRE TRASHY LIT - THE BRITISH LIBRARY

I WANTED DEAN IN CD’S SURREAL NOVEL - ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

AM AUS, AND ATTEMPT ARITHMETIC PRANK - STAND-UP MATHEMATICIAN MATT PARKER

With thanks to Katie Steckles (@stecks) for compiling these puzzles. Katie Steckles is a mathematician based in Manchester, who gives talks and workshops on maths. She finished her PhD in 2011, and since then has talked about maths in schools, at science festivals, on BBC radio, at music festivals, as part of theatre shows and on the internet. She enjoys doing and writing puzzles, solving the Rubik's cube and baking things shaped like maths.These puzzles furst featured in the Alices Advemtures in Numberland event featuring geek comedy trio Festval of the Spoken Nerd

Applications for collaborative PhD research around the British Library’s science collections are now open to UK universities and other HEIs

The British Library is looking for university partners to co-supervise collaborative PhD research projects that will open up unexplored aspects of its science collections.  Funding is available from the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships programme, through which the Library works with UK universities or other eligible Higher Education Institutes around strategic research themes.

Our current CDP opportunities include a project to examine the culture and evolution of scientific research, drawing on scientists’ personal archives, and another project to develop digital tools for the investigation of scientific knowledge in the 17^th and 18^th centuries:

The Working Life of Scientists: Exploring the Culture of Scientific Research through Personal Archives

This project will involve a detailed mapping of the key personal relationships of 20th century British scientists to shed light on the nature, communication and reception of scientific research. It will draw on the Library’s Contemporary Archives and Manuscripts collections, which include personal archives and correspondence from the fields of computer science and programming, cybernetics and artificial intelligence, as well as evolutionary, developmental and molecular biology. As well as being situated within social and cultural history, particularly the history of science and the history of ideas, this cross-disciplinary project is applicable to research in areas such as social anthropology, sociology and social network analysis. It will open up a nuanced understanding of the BL’s collection of the personal archives of twentieth century British scientists. It will enable us to better exploit these valuable collections to research audiences across a number of disciplines.

Hans Sloane’s Books: Evaluating an Enlightenment Library

This Digital Humanities projectwill evaluate the library of Hans Sloane (1660-1753): physician, collector and posthumous ‘founding father’ of the British Museum. For over sixty years, Hans Sloane was a dominant figure on London’s intellectual and social landscape. At the heart of his vast collections stood a library of 45,000 books, which – alongside his voluminous correspondence and thousands of prints, drawings, specimens and artefacts – bears witness to his central position in a globalised network of scientific discovery. The CDP project will apply digital techniques to exploit the raw data on over 32,000 items in the Sloane Printed Books Catalogue, and will break new ground by developing digital tools to cross reference, contextualise and analyse the data. This will forge fresh insights into how medical and scientific knowledge was gathered and disseminated in the pre-Linnaean period, with relevance to the history of science, medicine and collecting.

Moving beyond our science collections, there is also a third CDP opportunity for a project on ‘Digital Publishing and the Reader’. This will investigate the changing nature of publishing in digital environments to consider how new communication technologies should be recorded or collected as part of a national collection of British written culture.

Applications are invited from academics to develop any of these research themes with a view to co-supervising a PhD project with the British Library from October 2016. Our HEI partners receive and administer the funds for a full PhD studentship from the AHRC and, in collaboration with the Library, oversee the research and training of the student. We provide the student with staff-level access to our collections, expertise and facilities, as well as financial support for research-related costs of up to £1,000 a year.

View further details and application guidelines.

To apply, send the application form to [email protected] by 27 November 2015.

Alice Kirke investigates the facts behind the fiction of the British Library’s Animal Tales exhibition.

The Animal Tales exhibition at the British Library explores what our portrayal of animals within literature tells us about ourselves. The natural environment and its inhabitants have inspired generations of writers, but how do some of our favourite, anthropomorphised fictional creatures compare to their real-life counterparts? I set out to discover what the science says about the creatures lurking among the pages.

Cats: aloof and independent?

Valued for their companionship, skill in hunting vermin, and role in numerous ‘funny cat videos’ on YouTube, the domestic cat was first classified as ‘Felis catus’ by the Swedish botanist and zoologist Carolus Linnaeus in 1758. The exhibition features French philosopher Michel de Montaigne’s Essays,[1] in which he famously asked ‘When I am playing with my cat, how do I know she is not playing with me?’ People have kept cats as pets for thousands of years. Though they are commonly thought to have first been domesticated by the Ancient Egyptians, who considered them to be sacred, there is evidence of earlier domestication dating from around 9,500 years ago.[2] There are many theories and misconceptions about the behaviour of these enigmatic pets. As predators, cats are very focussed on their environment leading to the common misreading of their behaviour as aloof, and although they are seen as ‘independent’ they are in fact social animals. Cat communication includes a variety of vocalizations as well types of cat-specific body language.[3]

Snakes: slithering and sinister?

A 17th century depiction of Lamia from Edward Topsell's The History of Four-Footed Beasts L.R.301.cc.3.

Snakes have a sinister reputation in literature and culture. In ancient Greek mythology Lamia, the mistress of Zeus was transformed into a terrifying serpentine demon by Zeus’ jealous wife Hera. In Keats’ poem Lamia[4], displayed in the exhibition, the protagonist appears in her beautiful human form before being transformed back into a serpent at her wedding feast. To an extent, this was a comment on science itself; knowledge of the natural world destroyed its beauty.

 Snakes are perhaps so often portrayed as evil in literature because some species are dangerous to humans, but snakes are diverse creatures- there are over 3,000 species of snake in the world, with at least one type of snake on every continent except Antarctica. There is debate among evolutionary psychologists over whether the fear of snakes is innate. Since those with a phobia of snakes would be more likely to stay away from them and avoid the dangers of being bitten, they had a better chance of surviving and passing on their genes. Recent research suggests that although the fear of snakes is a learned behaviour, people do have a knack for spotting them; when shown images of snakes surrounded by objects of a similar colour babies and young children detected snakes faster than other objects.  

Spiders: creepy crawlies?

Frequent scare stories in the UK press about invasions of deadly spiders prey on a common fear of arachnids. There are over 40,000 different species worldwide, and although the vast majority are venomous most are not dangerous to humans. Arachnologists, experts who study spiders emphasise their diversity in terms of their appearance, habitats and behaviour.

Due to their wide range of behaviours, they have become symbolic of various attributes, including patience, cruelty and creativity in art and mythology.  The character of Anansi, a spider who often acts and appears as a man in West African and Caribbean folklore, has taken on a variety of different traits over time. Anansi Company,[5] featured in the exhibition, is a modern version of tales about Anansi and his friends which are central to Caribbean culture.

Crow: cruel or cunning?

The Crow and the Pitcher, illustrated by Milo Winter in 1919

In common English, corvids including crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays and magpies, are all known as ‘the crow family’.  Ted Hughes’ Crow draws on mythology surrounding the much maligned creature, which is often connected with death.[6] In Irish mythology, crows are associated with Morrigan, the goddess of war and death, and the collective name for a group of crows is a ‘murder’. However, they have also been linked with prophesy, cunning and intelligence. In one of Aesop’s fables, a thirsty crow spied a pitcher containing a small amount of water, which was out of reach of its bill. The crow began dropping pebbles into the pitcher one by one, thereby raising the level of water and enabling it to drink. A 2009 study published in Current Biology which replicated Aesop's fable, found that four captive rooks used stones to raise the level of water in a container, allowing a floating worm to move into reach, showing that the goal-directed behaviour of Aseop’s crow is reflected in actual corvid behaviour. European magpies have demonstrated self-awareness in mirror tests, and crows and rooks have been shown to have the ability to make and use tools, previously regarded as a skill specific to humans and a few other higher mammals. This scientific research suggests that crows are one of the most intelligent animals in the world.

Animal Tales showcases many more familiar yet enigmatic creatures. The wealth of material in the Library collections can be used to trace animals in literature as well as the latest scientific research about their characteristics- come and see the exhibition and follow up with some research into your favourite fictional beasts!