̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Cambridge Animal Alphabet

Even without lungs, zebrafish help us study TB

amb206 — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 09:25:17 +0000

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Professor Lalita Ramakrishnan shares her workspace at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) with thousands of tiny stripy fish. Zebrafish have long been a favourite in domestic aquariums: they are strikingly pretty and constantly on the move. ̽��ֱ��zebrafish at the LMB, each one no bigger than your little finger, are helping Ramakrishnan and her colleagues to find novel ways of preventing and treating tuberculosis (TB). We asked her about her work.

Why are zebrafish such good models for scientists?

Around 40 years ago scientists began to realise that zebrafish, as vertebrates, could tell us a lot about human development and human diseases. This discovery represented a real breakthrough in terms of what could be achieved using zebrafish in laboratories.

There are two key reasons why zebrafish, in particular, are so valuable. Firstly, when the new fish hatches as a tiny larva, it is optically transparent for the first two weeks of its development. This transparency means that, using powerful imaging technology, we are able to observe in real time the development of the organism as it grows to maturity. In our laboratory, we exploit the optical transparency to directly look at how the tuberculosis bacteria cause disease.

̽��ֱ��second reason why zebrafish is such a good model is that a single mating can produce hundreds of eggs – and female zebrafish are capable of producing a new batch of eggs each week. So we have access to large numbers of animals for the work. On top of all this, zebrafish are relatively straight-forward to keep and easy to breed.

We can also create zebrafish with different mutations and we can then assess the impact of host genes on the course of disease. This kind of fundamental work enables us to identify, by a process of deduction and elimination, what genes do – which is essential to developing new medical interventions.

But surely zebrafish and humans have little in common – we’re not fish!

Humans and fish are much more alike than people might suppose – even though we diverged from our last common ancestor at least 300 million years ago. Most of the genes found in fish are also found in humans – and most of the genes that cause disease in fish also cause disease in humans. ̽��ֱ��human immune system, which fights off disease, is a lot like the immune system of fish.

My research is focused on tuberculosis in humans – a disease that affects millions of people worldwide. Without treatment, TB can be life threatening. We tend to associate human TB with the lungs, and of course fish don’t have lungs. TB does affect the lungs but it can affect almost all our organs. In humans, some 40% of TB infection is not in the lungs but elsewhere in the body - brain, bone, kidney, intestine, reproductive organs.

Fish are affected by a close relative of the human TB bacterium. If we can work out how TB works in fish, and how to prevent it and treat it in fish, then we’re a step closer to solving a major health problem in humans.

What is the life of a laboratory zebrafish like?

Our fish live in tanks that are kept pristine by a unit that cleans and circulates the water. We grow the food they need in the lab – it’s a kind of brine shrimp. Putting this live food into the tanks allows the fish to hunt for their food, creating a more natural environment for them. Zebrafish are sociable creatures so we keep them in groups. All our fish are on a programme of 16 hours of daylight and eight hours of night. This routine mimics, as much as possible, the natural environment in the regions of the world where they live. We make sure that they are as healthy and stress-free as possible. Happy fish are healthy fish – and the other way round!

You can identify the males from the females by the roundness of the female’s belly. When we want a new batch of eggs, we put a male and a female in a tank overnight, with the two fish separated by a transparent divider. When daylight comes, the two fish become excited and we take out the divider and they mate. When the eggs are laid, they fall through a fine grill that enables us to take them out of the tank.

All these procedures are done as carefully as possible so as not to harm the fish or eggs.

How do you use the zebrafish eggs?

In my laboratory, we’re studying TB so we need to infect some of the fish eggs, one by one, with bacteria so that we can observe what happens. This procedure is carried out under a microscope using a very fine needle that is hollow, enabling tiny amounts of bacteria to be delivered into the egg. Because zebrafish eggs are so tiny, it takes a while to learn how to do this. It requires good hand-eye coordination and a steady hand – but everyone learns to do it with time and practice.

Once the eggs are infected we put them into small dishes where we can observe them. Because the eggs and the larvae are transparent, we can observe the process by which the bacteria enters the cells – and we can watch what happens as the bacteria and immune system face off. By using fluorescence, we can colour the host (the organism affected by the disease) and the bacteria so that it’s easier to track what’s happening on a cellular level. We can, for example, observe how exactly bacteria invade and spread.

How is your work with fish helping to develop better ways of tackling TB?

At the moment, TB in the human population is treated with a long course of strong antibiotics – it often takes as long as six months to get rid of it. Strains of drug-resistant TB have developed, partly because people do not finish the courses of drugs prescribed to them.

̽��ֱ��work that my colleagues and I are doing suggests that there could be another, and perhaps more effective, approach to tackling TB. Rather than only targeting the bacteria, which are so clever in their invasive strategies, it might be better to additionally target the host and help the immune system to fight it off. We might do this by boosting or tweaking the immune system.

We now need to put to the test our ideas for helping the immune system by trying out a list of available drugs – and, in the initial stages of the research, we will be using zebrafish as models.

What’s the future for zebrafish as a model organism in research?

̽��ֱ��world of research using zebrafish is wonderfully collaborative and fast-moving. Our main partner is the Sanger Institute which is just a few miles from the LMB. We collaborate closely with the scientists there on tools and techniques – including producing the mutants in order to identify genetic pathways.

Zebrafish are still relatively new in terms of their contribution to research – but it’s difficult to overstate how important they are. Every research organism has its limitations, of course. However, there’s much, much more we can learn from zebrafish that will benefit humans in the future.

This is the last article in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet series. If you have missed the others, you can catch up on Medium here.

Inset images: A two day old transgenic zebrafish embryo (Wikimedia Commons / IchaJaroslav); Zebrafish embryos (Wikimedia Commons / Adam Amsterdam, Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, Z is for Zebrafish as we talk to eminent immunologist Professor Lalita Ramakrishnan about her research into new ways of treating tuberculosis.

If we can work out how TB works in fish, and how to prevent it and treat it in fish, then we’re a step closer to solving a major health problem in humans

Lalita Ramakrishnan

Wikimedia Commons / Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff

Danio rerio (Zebrafish)

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

How yaks and humans have lived in partnership for centuries

amb206 — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 09:38:09 +0000

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“It was already looking at me when I saw it. As it started moving down the hill towards me, I was very aware that I was alone, with the others far ahead and out of sight. I started running down the trail, and could hear its bell jangling as it came after me. Ahead was a plank bridge spanning the rushing torrents and boulders below, and I thought: ‘If it overtakes me on this, if I go over, that’s it.’ By the time I made it across to the shelter of an overhanging rock, my heart was racing and I was shaking. Like many prominent features in this sacred landscape, the rock was inscribed with a mantra, and indeed the very one I’d been reciting as I flew across that bridge.”

Few people have found themselves chased by a yak in the course of their academic research – but that’s what happened to Dr Riamsara Kuyakanon Knapp while studying for her PhD in Cambridge’s Department of Geography. She recalls: “Looking at the photo I took at the time, I can see that it’s blurry because I was trembling and gasping to catch my breath. ̽��ֱ��yak pursuing me down the trail was a female, or dzomo in the local language, and looks quite amicable in retrospect, but I wasn’t taking any chances!”

Her encounter with this female yak took place four years ago high in the Bhutan Himalaya. Yaks are powerfully built and not easily intimidated, and females are known to be protective of their young. Kuyakanon Knapp explains: “I think she was certainly on the lookout – I don’t know why she came after me, perhaps her calf was nearby, somewhere among the herd that was grazing in the rhododendron understory of the ancient evergreen forest. Grazing land in Bhutan, as elsewhere in the Himalaya, isn’t just grassy pastures but also comprises forest understory.”

Bhutan is famous for being the last Buddhist Himalayan kingdom, and is also renowned as a conservation landscape, due to its abundant forests and wildlife. Kuyakanon Knapp’s research focuses on understanding this cultural landscape, how people and environment interact to create a specific sense of “place” and, in particular, on the relationship between environmental conservation and Buddhist beliefs at multiple sites and scales. On the day of her yak encounter, Kuyakanon Knapp was on a pilgrimage trail, which passes through a remote region where the only inhabitants are monastics and herders who pasture their yaks in the high Himalaya during the summer. During the harsh winters yaks are brought down to ‘lower’ altitudes, around 3,500 metres above sea-level.

Yak herding has been part of life in the Himalayas for centuries, and yaks are uniquely adapted to their extreme environments, able to travel through and find forage in thick snow. ̽��ֱ��domesticated yak (Bos grunniens or ‘grunting ox’) provides most of the resources needed for survival in a tough environment. Its meat is a precious source of protein. Milk from female yaks is drunk raw and churned to make butter and cheese. ̽��ֱ��animal’s wiry outer wool is used to make yarn for weaving into material for tents and blankets and its under-layer of softer fibre used to make clothing that keeps out the bitter winter cold.

Nothing produced by the yak is wasted. In Tibet, coracles for ferrying across the wide, rapid rivers were made from yak hide – a material that is both light and strong – stretched over a flexible willow frame. Dried yak dung fuels the portable stoves used for cooking. Last but not least, the sturdy yak is used for traction and transport over terrain far too rough for a vehicle.

Kuyakanon Knapp says: “ ̽��ֱ��yak is an integral part of high-altitude livelihoods, particularly in Bhutan, but also throughout the Himalayas, Tibet and Central Asia. They are a much prized and beloved livestock, and yak-rearing knowledge is something people are proud of. In addition to the animals’ practical place in community livelihoods, yaks have a place in legends, songs and festivals. Deities are supplicated and propitiated so that they will safeguard the welfare of herds.” ̽��ֱ��semi-nomadic Brokpa people of eastern Bhutan have a very special yak cham or ‘yak dance’, and the high-altitude village of Ura in central Bhutan has both the yak lha propitiation ceremony, and yak choe annual festival. Researcher Dr Karma Phuntsho (formerly at Cambridge’s Department of Social Anthropology) has written evocatively about how globalisation manifests in the changing practices of a village festival.

Yak herders know their environment intimately, and this knowledge is culturally encoded, as seminal studies by Bhutanese scholars, such as Dasho Karma Ura of the Centre for Bhutan Studies in Thimphu, have shown. Building on this, conservation efforts by the Royal Government of Bhutan, the Bhutan Foundation and WWF have enlisted the help of herders to camera-trap the elusive snow leopard in order to better understand the ecology of this endangered species. ̽��ֱ��award-winning film ̽��ֱ��Yak Herder’s Son documents the friendship between a national park ranger and a young yak herder, asking the vital question of how all those who share the land – livestock, predator, herder, ranger – can live together in harmony.

For centuries, Bhutan, a Buddhist Himalayan kingdom, was effectively ‘closed’ to visitors and even today visas are hard to obtain. “As a researcher seeking permission to visit or work in Bhutan, you are likely to go through a rigorous application process. It’s very important to respect national and cultural sensibilities. Accountability and collaboration are essential, as they should be everywhere, but unfortunately this isn’t always the case. Especially in western or Euro-centric knowledge production, there is a real history of colonial extraction and appropriation that we need to be aware of and resist, as it still exists,” says Kuyakanon Knapp.

Westernised urbanites tend to romanticise life in stunningly beautiful and remote areas – and to lament the passing of traditional ways of life - but the reality of making ends meet for the average herder or farmer is far from idyllic. Like everyone else, Bhutanese farmers and villagers want to enjoy some of life’s comforts and for their children to attend school and have more choices. “Families want to have electricity in their homes, to cook rice and watch television, to have serviceable roads and cars for accessing markets and healthcare,” says Kuyakanon Knapp.

“Despite these shifts, the role of religion and religious devotion in daily life remain great, and this is what drew me to working in Bhutan, to understand a way of modernising without severing culture and tradition. It is deeply impressive to see that, on a fundamental level, most people in the countryside still value spiritual well-being above material well-being. ̽��ֱ��state is trying to ensure that this need not be a mutually exclusive choice through the Gross National Happiness (GNH) developmental framework.”

̽��ֱ��Himalayas have long been a magnet for western travellers, who have included mountaineers, naturalists and collectors. Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) holds an exceptional collection of photographs taken by Frederick and Margaret Williamson, who took advantage of a colonial posting in Sikkim to travel extensively in the region during the 1930s. ̽��ֱ��adjacent Haddon Library for archaeology and anthropology has a collection of some 62,000 publications gathered over nearly 90 years, including rare books relating to the Himalayas.

“I’ll not forget the time I went into the Haddon and first picked up Nari Rustomji’s Bhutan Venture: A Guest at the Royal Court, documenting his trip to Bhutan in the 1955. He was, in his own words, ‘the first Indian after independence’ to visit Bhutan, which ‘was then regarded, like Tibet, as the forbidden land’. Written in ink on the fly leaf was that this book was a gift to the Haddon Library from the author, via the managers of the Frederick Williamson Memorial Fund. It was a direct connection to the past, to lived experience, and to the thinking and life history of a key historical actor. Rustomji’s admiration for the Bhutanese, and his travels in Bhutan took me straight back to my fieldwork year,” says Kuyakanon Knapp.

“Later I went and looked at some of the images in the Williamson Collection, and also read Margaret Williamson’s book Memoirs of a Political Officer's Wife in Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan which includes a wonderful description of travelling on the back of a pony and then a yak in the 1930s.”

In recollections published in 1987, Williamson paints a vivid picture of the journey she undertook with her husband. “Having passed a moraine and the Tsogyu lake, we exchanged our ponies for sure-footed yaks, which were better-suited to high-altitude travelling. Mine was a nice, brown, silken-haired animal. We climbed higher and higher until we reached the foot of the glacier. On the way we passed more lakes and also saw some bharal (wild blue sheep). It was hard going even for yak over the ice, but in two and a half hours we reached the Mon-la Kar Chung pass … Gigantic crags … reared up on all sides, with the snow and ice on their knife-edged ridges glistening brilliantly in the crisp morning sunshine. Derrick [Frederick] and I stood there, utterly amazed at the sublime beauty and grandeur of the Himalayas.”

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: Z is for a transparent animal that provides a surprisingly good model for studying tuberculosis.

Have you missed the series so far? Catch up on Medium here.

Inset images: Travelling by yak in the 1930s, Tibet (©MAA N.101191.WIL, photograph taken by Frederick Williamson); Ku-Dru (Yak skin boats) in Tibet (©MAA N.103814.WIL, photograph by Frederick Williamson); ̽��ֱ��yak choe festival in the village of Ura (Riamsara Kuyakanon Knapp).

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge’s connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, Y is for Yak: an animal that is an integral part of high-altitude livelihoods throughout the Himalayas, Tibet and Central Asia.

In addition to the animals’ practical place in community livelihoods, yaks have a place in legends, songs and festivals

Riamsara Kuyakanon Knapp

©MAA, N.101188.WIL, photograph by Frederick Williamson

Yaks crossing mountain pass, Tibet - Bhutan

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What is so unusual about a sloth’s neck?

amb206 — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 09:58:52 +0000

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Xenarthra is an order of primarily South American mammals that includes sloths, ant-eaters and armadillos. Several are sufficiently endangered to be on the IUCN ‘red list’. In previous millenia, the group was far bigger. It covered many other creatures, now extinct, such as giant ground sloths estimated to have exceeded the size of a male African elephant.

As ‘exotic’ animals, xenarthrans have long fascinated westerners and became a must-have item in ‘cabinets of curiosities’ – collections gathered from a world that was opening up to exploration from the 15th century onwards. In the mid-17th century, the naturalist-physician, Georg Marcgrave, stationed in Dutch Brazil, described the armadillos that he encountered:

" ̽��ֱ��Tatu or Tatu-peba in Brazilian, Armadillo in Spanish, Encuberto in Portuguese, we Belgians call Armoured-piglet. It is a most powerful animal that lives in the ground, though also in water and soggy places. It is found in various sizes."

As a consequence of the blossoming of scientific enquiry in the 19th century, many leading zoology museums have examples of xenarthrans in their collections. Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology, for example, has a fine collection of specimens collected on expeditions to South America, from the diminutive Pink Fairy Armadillo (Chlamyphorus truncatus) to the towering giant ground sloth (Megatherium americanum) which became extinct some 10,000 years ago.

̽��ֱ��ground sloth is one of a number of relatively recently extinct large sloths, one of which Charles Darwin himself helped discover on the voyage of the Beagle. On September 18, 1832, Darwin noted in his dairy that he had dined on “Ostrich dumpling & Armadillos”. ̽��ֱ��‘ostrich’ he ate was, in fact, rhea; the abundant armadillos were a staple diet of the local gauchos.

Not long afterwards, Darwin saw for the first time fossils of shells and other animals, embedded in soft sea cliffs, including a specimen of giant ground sloth which was to be named Mylodon darwinii in his honour.

Xenarthans have been a source of fascination to Dr Robert Asher, an evolutionary biologist in the Department of Zoology, ever since he first began studying mammalian diversity as a graduate student some 20 years ago. He’s particularly interested in the evolutionary stories told by the structure of their skeletons – and the ways in which their bones act as clues to their relative position within the tree of life.

Natural history museums in Berlin, Paris and London have in their collections examples of three-toed sloths, including embryos and foetuses. These specimens enabled Dr Robert Asher and his colleague Dr Lionel Hautier (formerly a Cambridge postdoctoral fellow and now at the ̽��ֱ�� of Montpellier) to publish research on an aspect of the anatomy of sloths which sets them apart from almost every other mammal on earth.

̽��ֱ��difference lies in the arrangement of vertebrae in sloths’ spinal columns – which can be seen as clues to xenarthrans’ divergent evolutionary pathways over the past few million years.

You might think that animals with long necks would have more neck vertebrae than those with short necks. This is certainly true of some birds and reptiles. But almost every placental mammal on earth (some 5,000 species in total) has seven ‘ribless’ vertebrae in the neck – even creatures with long necks such as giraffes. ̽��ֱ��three-toed sloth deviates from this rule: many of these tree-living creatures have eight, nine or even ten cervical vertebrae.

This remarkable diversity was noticed in the 18th century and scientists continue to tease apart the mechanisms by which mammals deviate from the “rule of seven”. In 2009, Asher and colleagues set out to learn more about this intriguing quirk. Neck vertebrae are known as cervicals and the rib-bearing vertebrae below them are known as thoracics. Thoracic vertebrae have facets which allow articulation with the ribs.

Asher and colleagues looked at patterns of bone formation in mammals as they developed. They found that, in all mammals, the centrum (or middle part) of the first thoracic (number eight, counting down from the skull) turns from cartilage to bone earlier than the centra of the posterior-most cervicals. In sloths, too, the eighth vertebrae begins to develop early – but, in their case, this ribless vertebra is located in the neck and generally considered to be ‘cervical’.

“ ̽��ֱ��‘extra’ vertebrae in sloths’ necks have the same developmental characteristics as thoracic vertebrae. They are, in effect, ribcage vertebrae, masquerading as neck vertebrae. In sloths, the position of the shoulders, pelvis and ribcage are linked with one another, and compared to their common ancestor shared with other mammals, have shifted down the vertebral column to make the neck longer,” explains Asher.

“Even in sloths, the mammalian ‘rule of seven’ applies to the vertebral centra. ̽��ֱ��ossification of the centra in a long-necked sloth resembles ossification in other mammals. However, sloths can deviate from the “rule” by shifting the embryonic tissues that give rise to the limb girdles and rib cage relative to the vertebrae, adding what are essentially one or more ribcage vertebrae into the caudal end of their neck. ̽��ֱ��next question to address is why and how sloths managed this shift.”

Xenarthrans also pack some intriguing surprises when it comes to teeth. Anteaters have no teeth. Sloths have just one set of teeth to see them through life – as do all but one genus of armadillo. Armadillos in the genus Dasypus (including seven- and nine-banded species) are unlike other armadillos in having two sets of teeth during their lifespan: deciduous (or ‘milk’) teeth and permanent teeth.

Most mammals, including humans, shed their baby teeth while they are growing. Recent research by Asher and colleagues from the ̽��ֱ�� of La Plata, Argentina, into the dentition of Dasypus revealed that its permanent teeth erupt long after the animal reaches its full size. “ ̽��ֱ��equivalent scenario in a human would be losing your milk teeth, and gaining all your permanent ones, once you were fully grown and well into your 20s,” says Asher.

In this regard, Dasypus is similar to most species of endemic African mammals (Afrotheria) – a group of animals that includes elephants, manatees, tenrecs, golden moles and sengis. “Eruption of adult teeth after the attainment of full body size and sexual maturity is not unheard of in other mammals,” says Asher. “Some people reading this won’t yet have erupted their ‘wisdom’ teeth or third molars. But few groups do this as pervasively as Afrotherians and Dasypus.“

With gratitude to PhD candidate Natalie Lawrence (Department of History and Philosophy of Science) for her input on early western encounters with ‘exotic’ animals.

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: Y is for an animal that is an integral part of high-altitude livelihoods throughout the Himalayas, Tibet and Central Asia.

Have you missed the series so far? Catch up on Medium here.

Inset images: Illustration of an armadillo from Historiae Naturalis Brasilae Tatu by Georg Marcgrave; Skeleton of a giant land sloth (Museum of Zoology); Three-toed sloth - Bradypodidae - Luiaard (Martha de Jong-Lantink); Lateral view of 3D reconstruction of computerized tomography (CT) scans of skeleton in the three-toed sloth Bradypus (Hautier et al).

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge’s connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, X is for Xenarthran. A must-have item for 15th-century collectors of 'curiosities' and a source of fascination for evolutionary biologist Dr Robert Asher.

It is a most powerful animal that lives in the ground, though also in water and soggy places

Georg Marcgrave

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

A whale’s remarkable journey from Sussex to Cambridge

amb206 — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 14:21:22 +0000

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On 13 November 1865 a dead finback whale was washed up on the shingle at Norman’s Bay, close to Pevensey in Sussex. ̽��ֱ��carcass was stripped of its flesh and the skeleton moved from the beach to a nearby cricket field. An estimated 40,000 people came to see it; a small station was even built to cater for visitors arriving by rail.

In Sussex, the whale washed up at Norman’s Bay is the ‘Pevensey whale’. In Cambridge, the same creature is synonymous with the Museum of Zoology, which acquired the whale in 1866 and has displayed it almost without a break since 1896. Thought to be the largest skeleton of a finback whale on display in the world, it measures around 70 feet from nose to tail and weighs two tonnes.

̽��ֱ��whale skeleton is such a Cambridge landmark that since June 2015 it has even had its own twitter account @whale_whispers. Not surprisingly, an ambitious project to re-develop the Zoology Museum puts this iconic creature at the centre of the stories about the natural world told by displays of thousands of items – including objects collected by Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Alfred Newton.

Visitors to the newly-built museum (which will open in autumn 2016) will enter a glass hall where the whale will take pride of place. Suspended in an atrium, it will be surrounded by skeletons of five smaller whale species. A sound installation of ‘ocean songs’ performed by local groups, blended with whale calls recorded out at sea, will provide a backdrop. A display will tell the history of the whale, complete with letters about its purchase, for the first time.

To allow the museum to be rebuilt, the whale skeleton was dissembled and stored in various locations within one of Cambridge’s main teaching and research sites. A crane lifted the animal’s skull to a safe place where a weather-proof shed was built around it.

̽��ֱ��existence of the finback whale at the centre of a university museum is tribute to the farsightedness of William Henry Flower, conservator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, who rushed to the south coast to see the dead giant a few days after it was washed up.

Flower quickly wrote to John Willis Clark at Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology to suggest that he acquired it. More than a year passed, however, before the whale was transported to Cambridge. It changed hands several times and was put on display at Hastings cricket ground.

Visitors who paid to see it were treated to music played by a band standing between its jaws and, on one occasion, the sight of 68 children standing in its mouth.

A poster speculated in a fanciful vein about the whale’s origins: “It was probably brought into the world in the cold regions – the Arctic Seas – some time after the Great Flood, where it has sported about, catching ‘small fry’, and otherwise amusing itself, probably for centuries.”

In Cambridge, the whale was for more than 80 years suspended high up inside the main gallery of the original Zoology Museum. It then spent a period in storage. When, in 1996, the museum received a major make-over, it was moved to a balcony above the main museum entrance.

Bringing the finback whale skeleton into the heart of the refurbished museum will give it new prominence. ̽��ֱ��museum is scheduled to re-open in autumn 2016.

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: X is for an animal that became a must-have item in 15th-century 'cabinets of curiosities', and which has several surprising physiological traits.

Have you missed the series so far? Catch up on Medium here.

Inset images: Close-up of the skeletal finback (Museum of Zoology); Artist's impression of the finback whale's new place in the Museum of Zoology (Museum of Zoology); William Henry Flower’s letter to John Willis Clark (Museum of Zoology); ̽��ֱ��finback whale skeleton in the old Museum of Zoology (Museum of Zoology).

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge’s connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, W is for Whale: the journey of one iconic whale in particular, from a Sussex beach to pride of place in the Museum of Zoology.

It was probably brought into the world in the cold regions – the Arctic Seas – some time after the Great Flood

Poster from 1896

Museum of Zoology, Cambridge

̽��ֱ��'Pevensey whale'

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

How snake bites could help prevent heart attacks

amb206 — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 10:51:31 +0000

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Recent reports of a world shortage of anti-venom have drawn attention to the dangers of snake bite, especially in rural areas of developing countries where many people work in the fields, often without shoes to protect them.

Although most of the world’s 3,000 or more snake species are not venomous, several hundred species are. Among them is the Australian brown snake (Pseudonaja textilis). Judged to be the world’s second most venomous land snake (the most venomous is the black mamba), it thrives in the populous eastern side of the country. ̽��ֱ��brown snake only attacks humans as a last resort but, if untreated, its bite can prove fatal.

Snakes store venom in glands in their mouths and deliver it into their victims through hollow fangs. For many years, scientists thought that snakes made venom by modifying the proteins present in their spit but not elsewhere in their bodies. This argument made sense because snake spit contains substances that enable them to break down and digest their prey.

Recent research suggests a different picture: the vast majority of the proteins and enzymes found in venoms are very similar to substances found in other parts of snakes’ bodies – such as their livers and digestive organs. ̽��ֱ��genes that control the production of these substances in snakes become activated in the salivary glands where they produce venoms.

“Weaponising is the term we use to describe the way in which snakes like the Australian brown convert a protein utilised for their own biology into a toxin – without poisoning themselves. In some cases snakes hijack their own clotting mechanisms to make venom that, once injected, causes widespread consumption of clotting factors, microthrombosis in organs and systemic bleeding,” says Professor Jim Huntington, a principal investigator at Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (CIMR).

“By understanding more about the weaponised proteins, we can learn more about an essential attribute of blood, its ability to clot when needed – in humans as well as snakes.”

̽��ֱ��focus of Huntington’s lab is the development of a detailed understanding of the regulatory mechanisms that determine haemostatic balance – the balance between bleeding and thrombosis. It is expected that such information will inform the development of therapies for the prevention and treatment of diseases such as haemophilia, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, heart attack and stroke – all of which are devastating conditions.

Snake venom offers a route to a better understanding of the haemostatic system. In 2013, Huntington and colleagues published research that revealed the crystal structure of the prothrombinase complex from the venom of the brown snake. This complex is quite similar to human prothrombinase which converts prothrombin to thrombin, the final step in the blood coagulation cascade. An excess production of thrombin causes thrombosis, and insufficient production of thrombin results in bleeding.

̽��ֱ��crystal structure of brown snake venom enabled Huntington’s lab to gain new insights into the architecture and mechanism of the prothrombinase complex. Work is ongoing to determine how the snake’s prothrombinase relates to human prothrombinase and the intrinsic Xase complex (the proteins that activate coagulation factor X). Similar research from the Huntington lab has recently led to the creation of a new drug candidate for the treatment of thrombosis; ‘ichorcumab’ is currently in preclinical development as an antithrombotic agent that does not cause bleeding.

Only in the last 50 years have scientists begun to explore the potentially positive contribution of venoms to medicine. For many hundreds of years, snakes have been numbered among the most dangerous creatures on earth – to be avoided at all costs – and snake venom has long evoked fear and curiosity. Before the development of the first anti-venom at the Pasteur Institute in French Indochina in the 1890s, a bite from a venomous snake could mean death. Even today, the annual global death toll from snake bites is conservatively estimated at 20,000, and could be as high as 94,000.

PhD student James Hall (Department of History and Philosophy of Science) is looking at the serpentine narratives that unfolded during British involvement India from the later 18th century, initially under the rule of the East India Company and then under the Crown Raj from 1858. His research explores the ways in which moral attitudes to snakes informed attempts to describe and categorise them and shaped early attempts to assess the nature and effects of venom on human and other animal bodies.

Hall’s source materials are scientific books and papers, newspapers and periodicals, travelogues, and government archives from Britain and India, as well as the literature of the colonial world. A famous example of the latter is Rudyard Kipling’s short story Rikki-Tikki-Tavi from ̽��ֱ��Jungle Book (1894). It charmingly anthropomorphises the contest between good (in the character of the valiant mongoose Rikki) and evil (the deadly cobras Nag and Nagaina), with the drama taking place in the home of a middle-class British family living in India. Rikki’s bravery saves the innocent boy Teddy from a fatal snake bite.

“Snakes loomed large in the imperial imagination. Kipling’s story is typical of how snakes were typecast as villains in Victorian fiction. ̽��ֱ��cobras embody recurrent fears about the invasion of the supposedly hostile Indian environment into domestic spaces,” says Hall. “Snakes in India actually harmed very few Europeans, but when new statistical data revealed something of the extent of indigenous deaths due to snake bite, the problem became a challenge for a benevolent science as part of the rhetoric of the ‘civilising mission’.”

Humans and other primates are believed to have evolved an instinctive revulsion for snakes. This innate fear is reinforced by key narratives in the Bible, which remained a key authority on animals in the 19th century. In the creation story, the serpent wreaks havoc in the Garden of Eden by craftily tempting Eve to eat an apple from the Tree of Knowledge. Among the hundreds of pictorial representations of this story is German artist Johann König’s painting, Adam and Eve in Paradise (circa 1629), in the Fitzwilliam Museum.

“König’s snake shows some similarity to a European viper or adder. In such scenes the serpent is often seen coiled around the tree, watching on. Earlier depictions sometimes show the serpent in a more humanoid form, with a head, torso and upper limbs.

" ̽��ֱ��original physical form of the serpent in the Garden was a source of debate given that it was only afterwards cursed by God to crawl on its belly,” says Hall.

“ ̽��ֱ��poor biblical reputation of snakes contributed to their unpopularity as objects of scientific study. But there were also practical obstacles to snake science relating to the collection, transportation, and preservation of snakes. Research into the effects of venom involved carrying out technically difficult and controversial experiments.”

From the 1820s, living snakes were collected to exhibit in newly-opened zoos in Britain. They had earlier appeared in travelling menageries. Snake specimens in alcohol, snakeskins and prepared skeletons had been mainstays of natural history collections from much earlier, but the number of species increased dramatically with imperial expansion in the 19th century.

At the Zoological Society’s gardens in Regent’s Park in London, visitors had the opportunity to see venomous snakes face-to-face at the new reptile house, which opened in 1849. Thousands flocked to see the snakes, including men of science such as Charles Darwin, who took the opportunity to carry out research into animal emotions.

̽��ֱ��reptile house was conceived and marketed as an educational resource, but many people visited it for the thrill of seeing (and provoking) dangerous snakes up close, and ended up confirming their own preconceived ideas. Tragedy struck in 1852 when a keeper of reptiles, Edward Gurling, was bitten on the nose by a cobra and killed. ̽��ֱ��Zoological Society moved quickly to reassure the public of the safety of the establishment, and the keeper was described as being drunk from a night of gin drinking and acting with “rashness and indiscretion”.

“ ̽��ֱ��death of Gurling was an important moment for scientific research into venomous snakes,” says Hall. “It led to an upsurge in interest in venomous snakes and renewed efforts to find an antidote to their venom in the colonies. Correspondents wrote to ̽��ֱ��Times offering up their own treatments for snake bite guaranteed by time spent in Africa and on the subcontinent. But it would be another four decades before the first anti-venom was developed.”

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: W is for an animal that made the journey from a beach in Sussex, to pride of place in the Museum of Zoology.

Have you missed the series so far? Catch up on Medium here.

Inset images: Aboriginal painting of the prothrombinase complex (Tom Murray-Rust); Adam and Eve in Paradise by Johann König (Fitzwilliam Museum); Detail from Adam and Eve in Paradise by Johann König (Fitzwilliam Museum); Illustration of the Zoological Society’s reptile house (Illustrated London News, 2 June 1849).

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, V is for Venomous Snake: an animal that has long evoked fear and curiosity, but is revealing important clues for the development of treatments for some devastating conditions.

Weaponising is the term used describe the way in which snakes convert a substance into venom – without poisoning themselves

Jim Huntington

Museum of Zoology, Cambridge

Skull of Bitus arietans – or Puff Adder – from the family Viperidae

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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What is a unicorn’s horn made of?

amb206 — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 13:05:35 +0000

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At first glance, it might be a horse with wavy mane and swishing tail – but then you notice the long, twisted horn protruding from its forehead. Looking at this magnificent animal more closely, you see that its feet are most unlike horses’ hooves, cloven into digits almost like human feet.

No-one knows exactly what a unicorn looks like but the artist who decorated this maiolica plate (in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum: acc. no. C.86-1927) imagined a creature on a grand scale. ̽��ֱ��youthful rider, who sits astride a richly embroidered cloth, is dwarfed by the impressive size of his prancing steed.

̽��ֱ��plate was originally part of a series, made in Italy in the early 16th century, depicting Caesar’s triumphal entry into Rome after the end of the second Punic War. ̽��ֱ��scene is taken from a set of woodcuts and the letter H marks its place in the narrative. ̽��ֱ��plates are thought to have been produced by a workshop in Cafaggiolo, not far from Florence.

̽��ֱ��bold design is proof that unicorns have not always been the shy and gentle creatures that medieval bestiaries and 20^th-century children’s literature would have us believe. In fact, they were a ferocious addition to the ranks of mythical beasts in classical texts. Pliny the Elder described the unicorn thus:

“… a very fierce animal called the monoceros which has the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse; it makes a deep lowing noise, and has a single black horn, which projects from the middle of its forehead.”

From these chimerical beginnings, the unicorn took a variety of directions in terms of both appearance and symbolism. It became an emblem for Christ in the Middle Ages and was often used in heraldry from the 15th century onwards. ̽��ֱ��lion and the unicorn are the symbols of the UK with the lion representing England and the unicorn Scotland.

̽��ֱ��Fitzwilliam Museum collection abounds with unicorns. Some of the most beguiling appear in ‘books of hours’ and ‘bestiaries’. Freelance researcher, Robert Lloyd Parry, investigated just a few of them in the course of researching an exploration of signs and symbols in art for the Fitzwilliam’s website.

A Flemish Book of Hours, dating from 1526, shows the Annunciation. Mary sits in a walled garden (symbolic of her virginity) and a white unicorn rests its horn in her lap. God the Father peeps out of a burning bush behind her and, beyond the garden, Gabriel blows a hunting horn.

A 15th-century illuminated manuscript – a French translation of a 13th-century encyclopaedia – depicts a unicorn in the Garden of Eden before the Fall of Man. Lloyd Parry writes: “God the Father holds the right hands of Adam and Eve with angels and animals looking on. A stream emerges from the ground at God’s feet. ̽��ֱ��unicorn’s horn points towards its clear waters – a reference perhaps to its legendary abilities to purify water.“

A magical creature is likely to have magical powers: unicorn horn is associated with purity. Natalie Lawrence, a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge, is researching early encounters with exotic creatures – including the opportunities they presented for traders and apothecaries.

Lawrence’s work offers fresh insights into how protective and curative powers were attributed to natural substances, at a time when there was widespread fear of poisoning. ̽��ֱ��17th-century recipe for one anti-poison, ‘Banister’s Powder’, called for unicorn horn, ‘east bezoars’ and stags heart ‘bones’. Members of the nobility purchased tableware and cups with ‘unicorn horn’ bases to avoid being poisoned, and the Throne Chair of Denmark (constructed 1662-1671) is even made of ‘unicorn horn’.

Powdered medicinal ‘unicorn horn’ was usually walrus ivory, rhinoceros horn or narwhal tusk, sometimes called ‘sea unicorn’. ̽��ֱ��problem of distinguishing ‘true horn’ was commented on by the French doctor, Pierre Martin La Martinière (1634-1690), who described the difficulty of knowing ‘what Creature the right Unicorn… there being several Animals the Greeks call Monoceros, and the Latines Uni-Cornis’, from a variety of terrestrial quadrupeds and ‘serpents’, to the ‘sea-elephant’ (walrus).

Materials such as walrus ivory, when identified as such, could possess similar qualities to unicorn’s horn. One apothecary, a ‘Mr Alexander Woodson of Bristoll’, ‘a skilful Phisition’, had ‘one of these beasts teeth, which ‘he had made tryall of’ by ‘ministering medicine to his patients, and had found it as soveraigne against poyson as any Unicornes horne’.

̽��ֱ��implicit links between unicorns and these other beasts did not diminish horns’ perceived medical powers. ̽��ֱ��Danish scholar Ole Worm (1588-1655) debunked the existence of the terrestrial unicorn in a public lecture using the skull of a narwhal, but he still attested to the horn's medical potency. Worm described experiments where poisoned animals had been revived by administration of powdered ‘sea unicorn’ horn.

By the early 18th century, ‘unicorn horns’ were much less prized in collections, losing some of their status as ‘rarities’, as high-volume importation into Europe flooded the market. But the appeal of the unicorn itself, especially incarnations such as the fleet-of-foot and mercurial creature of CS Lewis’s Narnia books, has never waned.

Perhaps this is because, most famously, they have always been extremely hard to catch.

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: V is for an animal that is responsible for up to 94,000 deaths a year, but is also being used to help develop treatments for diseases such as haemophilia, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, heart attack and stroke.

Have you missed the series so far? Catch up on Medium here.

Inset images: Detail from Salutations of the Virgin, from the Carew-Poyntz Book of Hours (Fitzwilliam Museum); Detail from Virgin reading in enclosed garden, Book of Hours, by Geert Grote (Fitzwilliam Museum); Unicorns from early modern natural histories by Topsell and Johnstone; Illustration of a narwhal skull from Ole Worm's book.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge’s connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, U is for Unicorn. Despite being notoriously difficult to catch, they feature on maiolica plates, in 15th century heraldry, and in early recipes for anti-poison.

̽��ֱ��17th-century recipe for one anti-poison, ‘Banister’s Powder’, called for unicorn horn, ‘east bezoars’ and stags heart ‘bones’

Fitzwilliam Museum

Caesar's Horse from a Triumph of Caesar, 1514. Maiolica dish after Jacopo di Stefano Schiavone

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Tasmanian Devils and the transmissible cancer that threatens their extinction

amb206 — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 11:05:42 +0000

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In 1996 a wildlife photographer working in a remote part of Tasmania noticed a ‘Tassie devil’ (the affectionate name for the Tasmanian devil) with a tumour on its face. He assumed that the animal’s facial disfigurement was a one-off – but within a year he spotted another devil with a similar problem. He notified the authorities and, as increasing numbers of affected devils were seen, it was established that the animals were suffering from a wave of devastating facial tumours.

Ten years after the first tumour was spotted, scientists revealed that the lesions weren’t ordinary tumours. They were caused by a transmissible cancer – an extremely rare type of disease, in which living cancer cells are physically transmitted between animals. Only three transmissible cancers are known in nature, and these affect dogs, clams and Tasmanian devils respectively. In the case of devils, the cancer cells are thought to be transmitted by biting.

Once they have acquired the cancer, devils usually live just a matter of months. No treatment exists. As the number of sightings of afflicted animals continued to escalate, with the disease moving across the island from east to west, it became clear that the Tasmanian devil was threatened with extinction.

Dr Elizabeth Murchison, a specialist in comparative oncology and genetics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, was brought up in Tasmania. ̽��ֱ��presence of Tasmanian devils – which are the emblem of the Tasmanian state – was part of her rural childhood. Devils are scavengers and, by disposing of dead animals, they provide a useful service as the ‘garbage bins of the bush’.

Murchison studied genetics and biochemistry at the ̽��ֱ�� of Melbourne, and then studied for her PhD in molecular biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York. Her interest in solving the puzzle of the tumours began in 2006 when she came across a roadkill devil with a tumour in a wild area of Tasmania. This confronting finding triggered her desire to understand this strange disease.

Her specialism is cancer genetics; her research focuses on developing an understanding of the evolution of the DNA of transmissible cancer by tracing it backwards in time to track the steps by which a normal cell mutates to become a cancerous one.

In 2012, while working at the Sanger Institute, near Cambridge, Murchison led a collaborative group of scientists using new DNA sequencing technologies to unlock the Tasmanian devil genome, as well as the genome of the devils’ transmissible cancer. This research led to the discovery that the Tasmanian devil cancer probably emerged relatively recently in a single female Tasmanian devil. ̽��ֱ��cells derived from this cancer have continued to survive by “metastasising” through the Tasmanian devil population.

More recently, Murchison has concentrated on understanding the genetic differences between tumours occurring in different Tasmanian devils. Although tumours in all Tasmanian devils are a “clone”, derived from the same original animal, the cancer lineage has diverged and acquired new mutations during its spread through the devil population.

This work requires close collaboration with many scientists, especially those back in her native Tasmania. She says: “I wake up to emails from the other side of the world, updating me on the progress of field work back in Tasmania. We skype regularly because working closely together as an interdisciplinary team is the best way to try to understand this disease and help the devils as soon as possible.”

In addition to working on the Tasmanian devil, Murchison’s group studies canine transmissible venereal tumour (CTVT). CTVT is a sexually transmitted genital cancer, spread by the transfer of living cancer cells between dogs. In contrast to the devil cancer, which emerged relatively recently, CTVT probably emerged thousands of years ago. ̽��ֱ��disease has now spread widely and affects dogs around the world. Murchison’s group has recently sequenced the genome of CTVT, and this work has shed light on the evolution of a unique cancer.

One of the most disquieting aspects of transmissible cancers is the fact that they are, effectively, parasites. Once the devil cancer cells are introduced to a new host by means of a bite, they go undetected by the devil’s immune system and thus flourish, eventually killing the animal. By sequencing samples of DNA taken from the devil cancer from 2003 onwards, Murchison is trying to understand how this cancer evolved and changed with time. Her research makes a valuable contribution to the potential development of a vaccine or other therapy to protect devils against the disease.

Over the past decade, the Tasmanian authorities have worked hard to safeguard the future of the Tasmanian devil. An ‘insurance’ population of healthy devils has been spread among Australian parks and zoos. Most recently, a colony of unaffected devils has been established on Maria Island, a national park off the coast of eastern Tasmania.

“Research into this devastating disease in Tasmanian devils is starting to illuminate the underlying processes that caused this unusual disease and promoted its transmission. We hope that our research may also help us to understand basic processes that underlie cancer evolution more generally, including in humans. But, of course, we are motivated by the goal that our research will help to protect this unique and iconic marsupial from extinction,” said Murchison.

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: U is for an animal used in heraldry since the 15th century and in recipes for anti-poison since the 1700s.

Have you missed the series so far? Catch up on Medium here.

Inset images: Tasmanian devil with facial tumours (Elizabeth Murchison); Video clips courtesy of the Save the Tasmanian Devil Program , DPIPWE; Tasmanian devil (Joe Le Nevez).

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, T is for Tasmanian Devil and the researchers studying the transmissable cancer that threatens these marsupials with extinction.

We are motivated by the goal that our research will help to protect this unique and iconic marsupial from extinction

Elizabeth Murchison

Tasmanian Devil

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Here’s looking at ewe: Samuel Palmer and his watercolour sheep

amb206 — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 08:52:20 +0000

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̽��ֱ��artist Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) depicted sheep in numerous paintings and drawings. Most famously perhaps, six sheep feature in one of Palmer’s best known works, ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree, an exquisite water-colour in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

This gem of a picture is a reminder that sheep are part of the English landscape and were, for many years, a mainstay of the national economy. Much of the wealth of pre-industrial Britain was founded on wool. Mutton was a mainstay of the diet. Sheep manure fertilised the land. In the House of Lords, the Speaker sits on a woolsack, a symbol of prosperity.

Palmer’s sheep have an almost sculptural quality; he revels in their fatness and roundness. In ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree, as in other paintings, his sheep are clustered together and hunkered down, often under starry night skies. ̽��ֱ��little group of wooly creatures is tended by a shepherd wearing a shady hat and baggy blue trousers. He’s playing a whistle to while away the day.

As art historian William Vaughan points out, Palmer invites us look at nature again and to wonder at the bountiful generosity of its divine creator. Sheep are, of course, in the Christian tradition in which Palmer was steeped, symbolic of Christ’s followers. But Palmer is also a masterful observer of animal character in all its majesty. In ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree, he captures the unfathomable look of sheep’s faces with their Roman noses and up-sprung ears.

̽��ֱ��small painting is suffused with the golden light of late summer and brims over with plenty. ̽��ֱ��central scene is embraced by boughs laden with fruit. In the background, the fields have been harvested and sheaves of corn stand in rows ready for threshing. ̽��ֱ��composition draws the eye towards the spire of the village church which makes a focal point at the centre of the landscape. ̽��ֱ��farming cycle turns, the apples will fall and rot, but God is constant.

As an image of perfection, ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree captures the English countryside as a rural idyll – a paradise of order and fecundity with nature and mankind in blissful harmony. As Vaughan points out, Palmer’s work is grounded in a worldview described by the poet William Cowper: “God made the country and men made the town.” Palmer wasn’t painting a reality but an imagined state of rural bliss: a state half way to heaven, a ‘vision’ of how God would like things to be.

Visionary is the adjective inevitably applied to Palmer’s work. It’s the word that best describes the paintings he produced in the seven-year period when, as a young man, he lived in the Kent village of Shoreham, some 30 miles south east of London. It’s a term loaded with meaning: wrapped up in it are romanticism and those other -isms – pastoralism and spiritualism – that defined much of art and literature in the mid-19th century.

Palmer was a member of a group known as the ‘Ancients’, a loose-knit brotherhood united by their longing to return to the rural idyll of the late medieval period. To mark their rejection of modernity, the Ancients dressed in cloaks and straw hats. Whenever they could, they escaped from London to the countryside of Kent where they captured a way of life they feared was fast disappearing. Palmer’s fellow Ancients, George Richmond and Edward Calvert also sketched sheep and shepherds.

However, ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree was painted in 1830 when rural life was far from idyllic. Low wages, long hours, insecure employment and cramped cottages (often tied to employment) and long hours spelt dismal poverty. ̽��ֱ��summer before had seen a disastrous harvest followed by a cruel winter. ̽��ֱ��year 1830 witnessed the eruption of the Swing Riots, an uprising against farmers who were enclosing land, in order to raise large numbers of sheep, and introducing machinery. ̽��ֱ��loss of common land, and drop in demand for traditional tasks, threatened thousands of jobs.

̽��ֱ��Swing Riots started in east Kent, and by the end of the year had spread across the south of England. Palmer would have been well aware of the politics involved and the plight of agricultural workers. However, he was known to be a High Tory – and deeply conservative. He believed that the “fine old British peasantry” were best served by a paternalistic, hierarchical society which “gave more freedom to the poor and were not morose, sullen and blood-thirsty like the whigs”.

Palmer’s own background was relatively comfortable though he lost his mother when he was 13. He was taught to paint by his father-in-law, John Linnell, who introduced him to William Blake, the poet and painter. Blake (he, too, portrayed sheep in his paintings) became his greatest inspiration.

After his death, Palmer, in turn, inspired others – most notably Paul Nash, Eric Ravillious and Graham Sutherland. Some 140 years after Palmer placed flocks in many of his countryside scenes, the sculptor Henry Moore made delightful pen sketches of sheep grazing in the fields surrounding his studio in north Hertfordshire.

Today Palmer is best known for the bold work he produced in his ‘visionary’ period. His interpretation of natural forms continues to inform the work of artists and illustrators. In Palmer’s own lifetime, the paintings he made while living in Shoreham sold badly and his work was subject to derision by the art establishment which judged his colours crude and garish. To support his family, he returned to London where he adopted a more conventional (and commercial) style.

During Palmer’s London years, ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree lay hidden from view in his studio where it was among the works tucked away in what he called his “Curiosity Portfolio”. ̽��ֱ��painting was given its name by Palmer’s son and first biographer, AH Palmer. Rarely exhibited, due to its vulnerability to light, it proved a star exhibit in the Fitzwilliam’s recent exhibition of watercolours. “Look at those sheep!” said one visitor. “You just want to plunge your hands into their fleeces.”

Sheep crept into Palmer’s work right until the last years of his life. He died in 1881 with his friend George Richmond at his bedside. Two years earlier, Palmer had produced an exquisite etching, ̽��ֱ��Lonely Tower, to illustrate Milton’s poem ‘Il Penseroso’. Huddled under some sheltering trees, and watched over by two young shepherds, is a flock of sheep, the rhythms of their fleecy forms caught by the light of a crescent moon.

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: T is for an animal that is under threat of extinction due to a rare form of transmissible cancer.

Have you missed the series so far? Catch up on Medium here.

Inset images: ̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree, by Samuel Palmer (Fitzwilliam Museum); A Cornfield bordered by Trees, by Samuel Palmer ( ̽��ֱ��Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology); Pastoral Scene, by Samuel Palmer ( ̽��ֱ��Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology).

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, S is for Sheep and their presence in the evocative, pastoral paintings by Samuel Palmer.

Look at those sheep! You just want to plunge your hands into their fleeces.

Visitor to the Fitzwilliam Museum

Fitzwilliam Museum

̽��ֱ��Magic Apple Tree by Samuel Palmer

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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