and I answer your questions and you ask more questions

and I can answer!

Sometimes.

Cresthesia Hawkins asks:

Certain reptiles like tortoises, alligators, and some large snakes

can be taxidermied because they have skin that is think enough

that it can be treated like how you would treat

the skin of a deer when you're taxidermying it.

But for the most part, most fish don't have skin like that.

It's too thin and it doesn't retain its shape once it's dried.

You can't really skin them to begin with.

So most taxidermied fish that you see are actually

recreated models made out of plaster or plastic

or something that's going to retain its shape.

And then they'll add original fishy bits to it, like,

they'll stick on the tail or the fins,

and it'll be the same shape or the same size

as the fish that it was supposed to represent, but...

it's all recreated.

Tommy J., @EETommyJ, asks:

Michael Aranda actually wrote and composed

all of the music that you hear on The Brain Scoop

and you can go download it at Bandcamp

right now if you want.

It was a song that was informed by

electric-pop likes of Passion Pit and Vampire Weekend,

'cause that's my jam.

TeachingPatience asks:

Well, you walk in with your head held high

and an appreciation for all of the hard work

from everybody who's ever come before you.

You have to remember that you offer a unique perspective

in your job- that's why you're there-

and you also have to understand that at some point,

everybody was new and they were in the same position that you are now.

Everybody has something new to learn at some point and

you just work together.

AtomicAllena asks:

Well ladies, if you're nervous about going into a field

that's dominated by men,I guess we just have to

get more women in the field to balance out those demographics a little bit!

Don't let anybody try to fit you into a mold

or make you feel like you have to do something

just based off of your sex or gender.

That's not who you have to be.

You be the person that you wanna be!

TalesFromTerraFirma asks:

The people! The collections are fantastic, don't get me wrong.

On a day-to-day basis I see more things that totally blow my mind

than I could have ever conceived of.

The other day I looked at a book from the 1480's,

and I see new species that have never before been discovered

or explained to science or published in a book-

they're brand new. Nobody even knows what they are.

It's amazing!

But these things would just be objects if they weren't connected

to the people who are responsible for bringing them to light.

Without the people, a pot would just be a pot

and a dead animal would just be a dead animal.

I get to talk everyday with people who are incredibly passionate about what they do.

They're just as insanely excited about this as I am,

and that's really an amazing thing to be able to share,

that love of natural history. You can't-

You can't ev- You can't replace that!

NotSpideyMan asks:

Nope!

Citizen science is alive and strong, and you see it

in projects like BugGuide, which is

an online collaborative database of insect photos

submitted by people from all over the globe.

It's really amazing, because sometimes things that end up on BugGuide

are previously undocumented insect behaviors or even new species.

None of these things would have been possible

if people weren't out just documenting what's happening in their backyard.

The world is a huge place, and we need as many people as possible

to help us explore it. Sure, you might not be able

to go out into the forest and shoot everything that moves,

like you used to be able to do in the 1880's as a normal citizen,

but that was never really the ideal way to explore

the natural world in the first place.

A-mug-full-of-jellybeans asks:

I think that depends on the situation in which I were to find a dead body...

In a morgue, that's kind of a given...

In my apartment...

HotSauceAndCandyFloss asks:

I wou- You don't wanna mix those two things...

It's not so much that we don't have space for everything,

The Field Museum has over 25 million artifacts and specimens,

and we have space to store most everything here

including areas to expand into,

but we're not going to take a very large donation of something

if there's nobody here who'd studying that object.

Xan Smith, @BumbleGumBees, asks:

We're not really focused on finding one thing in particular.

It's more about having a better understanding

of the entire natural world around us,

which is kind of like looking at a giant map

of interconnected disciplines all over the museum and the world.

We're not really like Captain Ahab, searching for the White Whale,

in that respect, but we do have researchers from all over

studying this wide variety of things and subjects and material.

IAmSeekingA-GreaterPerhaps asks:

It was terrifying!

For a long time I was really mad at the universe

for not letting me know a little sooner, you know,

maybe before I had spent 3 and a half years

and tens of thousands of dollars on education

for me to realize, like, "Oh, this is really what I want to be doing."

It's kind of like, I had to spend some time trying to convince myself

that it was just a phase I was going through.

Like that one time I thought I looked good with pink hair.

So, I highly encourage anybody who feels like they're not in the right place,

they're not in the place that they want to be,

that you should really listen to yourself and pursue your instincts.

Because, I mean, a year ago I was an unpaid intern.

And now, I work in the sweetest museum in the world.

Ashley Paramore, @HealthyAddict, asks:

Gring-ding-ding-ding dinga-ringa-ding.

No, that's not at all what the fox says.

The fox goes "yip."

It goes like, "yip! Yip yip!"

That's what the fox says.