A large land crab, which climbs trees and feeds on coconuts, can hardly go unnoticed. Vague reports date back to the 9th century, and include descriptions by Charles Darwin and Carolus Linnaeus.
Austrodromidia australis belongs to the Dromiidae family, commonly known as the sponge crabs. These unique creatures actually carry a well-fitting camouflage cap of living sponge or ascidian (sea squirt) over their back which they trim and keep tidy. As well as camouflaging the crab, the sponge can often taste bad, making potential predators reluctant to eat it. The sponge or other encrusting animal on the back of the Dromiid can often be larger than the crab itself.
The Broome Advertiser contacted us this week with a photo of an unusual insect taken near Cable Beach in the State's North West recently.
We asked our Terrestrial Invertebrates technical officer Brian Hanich if we should be worried....
The Western Australian Museum is committed to providing the highest standards in accessible website development and delivering the outcomes suggested in the WCAG v2.0 AA guidelines. We are also committed to deliver as many accessible outcomes as possible by 31 December 2013.
The Western Australian Museum is the repository for the State’s collection of both natural and social heritage. The Museum's collections require varying amounts of care to preserve. Some artefacts or specimens can simply be kept dry. Most of the Crustacean Collection however is wet-preserved in ethanol and stored in jars and housed in our wet store. Unluckily, not all crustaceans can fit into our jars and some larger specimens are stored in drums, which again, sadly, don’t fit in our wet store.
Continuing our series of endemic fish species, here is a species that is endemic to the south west of Western Australia and along the south coast to Victoria.
The charismatic Western Blue Groper Achoerodus gouldii (Richardson, 1843)
Today we received a gorgeous letter from Mrs Edna Giles who attended the Unveiled exhibition with the Embroiders Guild of WA. Mrs Giles sent in a copy of her own wedding photo from 1956, featuring the gown she designed and made, and that is remarkably like Catherine Middleton's gown, when she wed Prince William.
As proud Western Australians, to start off in 2013 we will be highlighting a group of very special fishes – endemic species – those found only in Western Australia. This is the first of those.
We’ve been doing a lot of work creating some interesting application with our collection data and presenting them online. Most of the work is currently under development, but there will be a public interface in the not-too-distant future (keep following this blog for more details).
But at this junction, I thought it would be appropriate to share our 10 favourite Drupal modules that we’ve been using to import and manipulate large streams of data records.
Today at the Museum we had a very special visit from a young girl who loves weddings.
Sophia (3) came to the Unveiled exhibition dressed in her bride's dress which was made by her Nanna. Sophia was visiting the exhibition with her mum, Nanna and friends, and was very excited to see the beautiful wedding gowns on display from the V&A.
Sophia 's mum told us that she loves weddings and she was able to stay up late to watch the wedding of Catherine and William.
Love means a lot of very different things to different people.
As the Museum hosts the Unveiled: 200 years of wedding glamour exhibition, we thought it would be interesting (and fun) to ask you, our visitors, what love and marriage means to you.
This blog will each week showcase some of the responses that our visitors have written on the five chalkboards around the Museum. The chalkboards ask...
In 1901 John Tunney collected an echidna specimen from the Kimberley region of Western Australia that would eventually make its way into the mammal collection of the Natural History Museum in London.
The WA Maritime Museum transformed into Antarctica for the very cool official launch of Traversing Antarctica: the Australian experience last night.
Guests were greeted by the adorable huskies from the Western Australian Sleddog Sports Association (yes – I didn’t know we had one either!?) and snow, and entertained as a block of ice became an impressive Emperor Penguin by the end of the night. Here are a few behind the scenes snaps:
The Western Australian Department of Fisheries has issued an alert after the Asian Paddle Crab, Charybdis japonica, was caught by a recreational crabber near Mosman Park on 19 October. Fishers and divers in the Swan and Canning Rivers as well as the greater Cockburn Sound area are urged to report any unusual crabs to FishWatch reporting line on 1800 815 507 or email biosecurity@fish.wa.gov.au.
