an afternoon at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle

A sunny Sunday afternoon last week at the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution, with a special exhibit on great apes. We had not been back there for ages, since the kids were kids enough!, and it was a most pleasant afternoon, as was strolling in the vicinity afterwards. Made all the more pleasant in retrospect after the bloodbath last night in the streets of Paris. May we endure against barbarity.

Insect collection [live]

The Museum d’Histoire Naturelle has launched a large survey of pollen gathering insects all over France and asks volunteers to contribute their observations according to a rather simple protocol. (Well, not that simple: I tried to upload my series of pictures of the lilac tree at the back of my garden and failed…) I do not know how representative the data thus gathered will be nor how the biologists in charge of the study are going to use it but this is a neat idea nonetheless…