Museums house thousands of animal specimens that are ancient, extinct, newly discovered and have yet to be studied. New York's American Museum of Natural History has 33 million specimens inside, while the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. has a whopping 145 million holdings.
While most animals collected by these institutions have been obtained legally, euthanized painlessly and researched with respect, some researchers often wonder whether there could be a better way of doing this kind of work. Two new, contrasting papers in the journal Plos Biology have ignited the debate once more.
How are museum specimens collected, and is there a more ethical way to do so? How can technology help implement that change?
Making a Case For Compassionate Collection
In an editorial for the journal Plos Biology, Allie Q. Byrne, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, urges experts in the field of natural history to consider whether there's a more ethical way to curate natural history collections than having to euthanize and store entire dead animals.
