DMNS Dioramas - death to the little ones
A mother and her baby (joey), collected and displayed. One of the sad things about scientific collections is that young mammals and birds are also collected. In the famous wildlife dioramas at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, there are numerous examples of young animals being collected. It's important to note that most if not all of these young animals were collected decades ago, when the sentiment regarding the collection of young was not negative. I wonder about the actions and conversations of these collectors of yore. Did they go out looking for young to trap or shoot? Did they wake up in the morning with a "to do" list that included the collection of young wildlife? Did they collect orphaned young as a humane alternative to predation or starvation? Whatever the case, the result is that there are young - some very young - mammals and birds in the dioramas. It's not my intent to chastise these collectors from the 1940s-1970s, but rather to note that colle...