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A $100,000 Egg and A 200M Year Old Pinecone

2015-05-01 · documentary visit · Hank, Emily Graslie · 3:59 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Science & nature · mode: Documentary visit · tags: on location, guest or collab, fundraising ask

Hank, home sick from tour, shows his pre-tour behind-the-scenes visit to the Field Museum with Emily Graslie (tapeworm, giant clam, fossil pine cone, dodo, elephant bird egg) and describes her Indiegogo campaign to put the museum's hyenas in a diorama.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Nerdfighters' 'Good morning John, it's Friday'; Hank is home from tour and ill

  • ★★ Hank is home from tour and ill; he says he will put the sniffles and coughs from recording the video in right at the start. (playful) — 00:00:06

00:00:23 — Before tour Hank visited Emily Graslie at the Field Museum; The Brain Scoop's move from Missoula to Chicago

  • ★★ Just before the tour, healthy and happy, Hank visited Emily Graslie at the Field Museum in Chicago for a behind-the-scenes tour of one of the biggest natural history museums in the world. — 00:00:23
  • ★★ Hank says Emily Graslie hosts The Brain Scoop, which she and Michael Aranda created in Missoula; the Field Museum then acquired it and she moved there, which was sad. — 00:00:29 · The Brain Scoop, Missoula, Montana

00:00:45 — Behind-the-scenes tour: tapeworm, giant clam and banana for scale, jar of snakes, a prized specimen, fossil pine cone, dodo, elephant bird egg, taxidermied squirrel, the Berlin museum president's mustache

  • ★★ Emily Graslie: Emily says a tapeworm's sexual reproductive organs are all in its head, so breaking off a segment does not stop it reproducing; you have to get the head out. — 00:00:48
    • check: all of the sexual reproductive organs are located in the head — doubtful
  • ★★ Emily Graslie: Emily shows a fossilized pine cone whose organic material was all replaced by limestone, a couple hundred million years old. — 00:01:41
  • ★★ Emily Graslie: Emily shows an egg of the extinct elephant bird of Madagascar, next to an ostrich egg for scale, and says the museum's is a real one where many museums have a replica. — 00:01:59
  • ★★ Emily Graslie: Emily guesses there are fewer than half a dozen elephant bird eggs in any museum collection in the world, and asks not to be quoted on it. (hedged) — 00:02:17
  • ★ Emily Graslie: Emily shows the squirrel she taxidermied recently, from The Brain Scoop's 'How to Taxidermy a Squirrel' episode. — 00:02:28 · The Brain Scoop
  • ★ Emily Graslie: Emily says the president of the museum in Berlin is married to Charles Darwin's great-great-granddaughter and has a swoopy mustache that perfectly mimicked the horns of the buffalo behind her. (playful) — 00:02:34

00:02:57 — The empty diorama space, the hyenas in the Reptile Room, and the Indiegogo campaign to build a hyena diorama

  • ★★ Hank says that when Emily arrived at the Field Museum, one diorama space in the Hall of African Mammals was just plywood, while a case of hyenas sat in the Reptile Room; she wanted them in a diorama. — 00:02:57
  • ★★ Hank suggests the hyenas got ignored because they are not glamorous animals; Emily finds that unacceptable and Hank kind of does too. (hedged) — 00:03:22
  • ★★★ Hank says Emily and the museum are running an Indiegogo campaign to put the hyenas in a diorama in the Hall of African Mammals; it is expensive, so they offer perks. — 00:03:26 · Indiegogo

00:03:39 — Thanks to tour audiences; sign-off; Emily's Brain Scoop sign and subscribe plug

  • ★★ Hank says the tour was fantastic and thanks everyone who came out to the shows. — 00:03:39
  • ★★ Hank shows Emily holding a youtube.com/brainscoop sign and asks viewers to click on it and subscribe. — 00:03:51 · The Brain Scoop

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description asks viewers to help build the hyena diorama, linking the Indiegogo campaign. — video description · Indiegogo

Humor (significant)

  • After Emily explains that a tapeworm's reproductive organs are in its head, Hank imagines the same for people. — 00:01:01

    “Wouldn't it be weird if our reproductive organs were in our head?”

  • Hank wants a banana next to the giant clam; Emily names it 'a banana for scale' and Hank holds the clam up to the camera. — 00:01:07

    “It just looks... it just looks like a normal-sized clam when I do this.”

  • Showing the dodo specimen, Emily says they were actually this tiny. — 00:01:52

    “They made really good chicken nuggets, that's why they became extinct.”

  • Emily describes the Berlin museum president, married to a Darwin descendant, standing at a bar in front of a buffalo. — 00:02:34

    “his mustache perfectly mimicked the horns of the buffalo behind me.”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: elephant bird · Emily Graslie · Field Museum of Natural History · hyena

Also: People: Charles Darwin

Projects: The Brain Scoop

Organizations: Indiegogo

Concepts: dodo · ostrich · tapeworm

Places: Berlin · Madagascar · Missoula, Montana

Memes: banana for scale

Only in the description or credits: Michael Aranda

Also centred on Emily Graslie: Thoughts from Dead Animals · Meet the Team: The Missoula Office (And P4A and TheBrainScoop) · Caviar Brownies - The Second Annual Hungry Games

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