Dan

As the HMNS Curator of Vertebrate Zoology, Dr. Dan is known as ‘the guy with the most backbone’ in the museum! He curates four permanent exhibits at the museum, where he was worked as a full-time staff member since 1999. He has described 10 new species to date, and is very active in local (hmns.org/houstonwildlife) and international (Southeast Asia and Latin America) wildlife research, especially with gamebirds. Afflicted with the inability to ‘shake the nature bug’, when he’s not at work in the museum, one of his favorite things to do is scouting and exploring the great outdoors with his family.

From the Curator: Aquatic Turtles of McGovern Lake

|

I’ve been doing aquatic bird surveys at McGovern Lake in Hermann Park for over a decade, but that will have to be a blog topic for the future!  Every now and then my son comes with me, and he’s pretty much a reptile-magnet.   We now have documented the following four species of freshwater turtles at […]

How Did We Get These Specimens? The Case of the Edward’s Pheasant

|

One of the most common questions I’m asked as Curator of Vertebrate Zoology is “Where and how do you get your specimens?” The standard answer is that they died of natural causes or from medical complications in captivity or at a wildlife rehabilitation facility, which is how we get the bulk of our specimens. However, […]

Tyger Tyger Burning Bright: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

|

Written in 1794, William Blake’s poem “The Tyger” remarks on the ferocity of this large Felid. When my museum colleagues asked me to hammer out this piece, the first thing that ran through my mind was rejoicing at the opportunity to misspell the name of the tiger (Panthera tigris), as Blake did in what is […]

Update On Waugh bridge bat colony hit by Hurricane Harvey associated flooding

|

  By Tim McSweeny and Dan Brooks, Ph.D. Last year Houston was devastated by Hurricane Harvey, with flooding covering streets, bayous and communities throughout Houston after the storm deposited about three feet of rain.  One of the many parts of the city affected by the storm was the colony of Free-tailed bats living under the […]

2016 African Hall Updates

|

Dan Brooks, Ph.D. HMNS Curator of Vertebrate Zoology     The Frensley/Graham Hall of African Wildlife, built 2002-04 was a new variation of a common traditional theme at HMNS, in that we wanted to portray more than just the Serengeti ecosystem.  Prior versions of the hall focused on the Serengeti, which while a very important […]

Return to Paraguay: Conserving the Taguá, a Living Fossil

|

In 1972, mammalogist Ralph Wetzel and colleagues were studying armadillo ectoparasites in the Paraguayan Chaco when they came upon a peccary (what we call javelina in Texas) that didn’t look like those already known to science. The result was Catagonus wagneri – the Chacoan peccary, known only from a fossil discovered in 1930 by Argentinian […]

Camera trap captures video of kinkajou in South America

|

Tom Williams, my father-in-law, is a retired oil prospector who has a fascination with all things science and engineering. As such, he always gets me gifts for birthdays and holidays that he thinks will benefit me in my work (scientific texts, gadgets, etc). Last May, he gave me a fairly high-tech game trail camera with […]