In this episode Rosa steps away from feathered objects to consider how museum collections and archives should be thought of as living ecosystems. She discusses how webbing clothes moths are understood as ‘pests’ and some of the strategies curators are trying to employ to manage them: including sexual confusion and the introduction of parasitoid wasps.

• Pitt Rivers Museum
• Oxford University Natural History Museum
• National Trust launches pest-control trial combining wasps and moth pheromones
• The Lion’s Historian by Sandra Swart

Credits:

• Recorded: 28 May 2025
• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host
• Rosa Dyer, script writer, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke, bed music
• Other sound effects from Bill Hayes - I Know an Old Lady (Archie Bleyer, Internet Archive)
• Learn more about the team here.

Support the podcast via:

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/

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The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

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In this episode Rosa focuses on the Oxford Dodo, attempting to trace the life history of a bird whose only trace is a fragile head and foot in the Oxford University of Natural History. She unpacks some of the competing routes the bird might have taken – from being hunted and shipped from Mauritius to being kept in an urban menagerie. She also follows the afterlife of the museum object itself once again raising questions about the interconnections between power, possession, and knowledge.

• Pitt Rivers Museum
• Oxford University Natural History Museum
• Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
• The Tradescants
• Murder most fowl: Oxford dodo 'shot in the back of the head'

Credits:

• Recorded: 16 January 2024
• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host
• Rosa Dyer, script writer, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke, bed music
• Other sound effects from Alice in wonderland Soundtrack, Epidemic Sound, Pixabay
• Learn more about the team here.

Support the podcast via:

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Rosa traces a Munduruku feather cap from Brazil to the museum case and discuss how tapirage was a process used to turned green parrots feathers a blazing yellow by using frog toxins, dyes and time. Beauty and pain sit side by side as we weigh Indigenous innovation, care and the cost to animals.

• Pitt Rivers Museum

Credits:

• Recorded: 9 November 2023 Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer, editor and co-host
• Rosa Dyer, script writer, narrator and co-host
• Rebecca Shen, episode artwork and logo
• Gordon Clarke, bed music
• Other sound effects from BBC Sound Effects, Pixabay, Epidemic Sound
• Learn more about the team here.

Support the podcast via:

• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/TheAnimalTurn
• Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theanimalturn
• Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

The Animal Highlight is a spinoff and sister podcast to the award winning show, the Animal Turn Podcast.

Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.