The LSU Museum of Natural Science appears to be an average gallery of artifacts and diorama displays at first glance.
But it’s what lies beyond the glass cases and plaques that has captured the attention of University students and researchers worldwide.
The museum was founded in 1936, when former director George Lowery assembled a few study specimens of birds in a classroom in Audubon Hall, according to the museum website. In the 1950s, the museum was moved to its current location in Murphy J. Foster Hall.
Frederick Sheldon, director of LSUMNS, said Foster Hall was originally a single-story dining hall with a high ceiling and was transformed into a two-story, multipurpose building to accommodate its new inhabitants.
The museum has since grown to one of the nation’s largest natural history museums, with more than 2.5 million specimens on site.
While some animals are on display in the museum area, the majority of the items are behind closed doors.
“This is the bird collection room,” Sheldon said as he pushed open a pair of doors in the back of the museum site.
Through the double doors, two rows of massive tan cabinets line the center of the room.
Sheldon opened the cabinet before him, exposing rows of shelves on each side. He pulled out a drawer in the center, which revealed about 15 vibrantly colored specimens.
The birds lay flat on their backs, delicately preserved for research. A single tag is tied around one ankle of each animal, detailing the specimen’s name and where and when it was located.
“We have about 187,000 specimens in our collection, and it’s still growing,” Sheldon explained. “It’s the most active bird collection in the world.”
  Video: Museum of Natural Science & Bird Collection
 
Sheldon said the University’s collection is the fourth largest in the world, and LSU ornithologists have discovered more new species of birds than any other group to date.
Since the collection began, graduate students and University faculty have routinely traveled to collect new samples.
Sheldon said in previous years birds were shot and collected, but most researchers now capture the birds using a “mist net,” a fine web hidden in trees to catch birds in flight.
“Every time we collect a bird, we record it for a song collection, treat it for lice and other parasites and take tissue samples,” Sheldon said.
The birds are later skinned, stuffed with cotton and dried before being organized into the collection. This process takes place in the research facilities in the basement of the building.
“The main purpose of the work is to answer the one major question: Why are there so many species of birds?” Sheldon said.
Sheldon said as evolutionary biologists, the group works to conduct genetic comparisons by building evolutionary trees and analyzing relationships.
Research is conducted in cellar laboratories by University faculty and students.
Lauren Oliver, biological sciences junior, voluntarily dedicates her time to the museum.
“I’ve always been interested in evolutionary biology,” she said. “I asked to work in the lab, and they said yes.”
The laboratory holds a room for preparing and drying birds, where a large table displays carving tools, bags of cotton and bloody trays.
Further back are 15 large freezers, hooked up to generators and carbon dioxide containers and packed with vials and cases of organ tissues.
“We have the world’s largest collection of wild animal tissues,” Sheldon said, opening a freezer lid. “It started in the 1970s, and people from all over the world use the tissues for research.”
Behind the freezers is the “bug closet,” where Dermestid beetles feed on the carcasses of the animals, leaving cleaned bones behind. Bones are then collected and stored.
But the beetles aren’t the only creepy crawlers in the basement.
Foster Hall is also home to the museum’s herpetology collection room, which has about 81,000 reptile specimens preserved in glass bottles.
LSUMNS also has expansive mammalogy, vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology and ichthyology (fish) collections.
Sheldon said the collections serve a variety of visitors, including students in a number of campus departments.
From biology and library science students to the average visitor, he said anyone can enjoy viewing the museum and the behind-the-scenes work.
“I would encourage students to come here just because it’s a landmark,” he said.
 
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Contact Sydni Dunn at [email protected]