[MUSIC]
[MURMUR OF A CROWD]
>>SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: I've been fascinated
by animals for as long as I can remember.
And if you're fascinated by animals, you want
to know more about them, and the great place
to know about them is, of course, museums.
Walking into a great collection like, like
this does a number of things to you.
[CLICKING]
The first of all is that you realize what
an enormous variety of animal species there
are in the world, and you know this is only
scraping the surface, anyway.
And the second thing you think, recognize
is that actually, this is the basis of all
zoological science.
If you want to research an animal, you have
to know—the first thing, first question
is: what animal is it?
And that's not as easy to answer as you might
think.
Of course, if you look at an elephant, yes,
I know it's, well, an elephant, and is either
an African or an Indian elephant.
That's easy to settle.
But if you've got a little fly, which might
be very important from a health point of view—it
might carry disease, for example— it’s
essential that you know what that is.
So where can you discover what it is?
And the place you need ultimately to go to
is a museum where they will have a specimen,
which is called a "type specimen," which was
the one which was described when they decided
that this was going to be given this scientific
name.
That is the basis of all zoological science.
So institutions like this are the very foundations
of all zoological knowledge.
The library associated with these great museums
is almost as much greatly important as the
objects themselves.
Unless you know what here it came from exactly
and when it came from exactly, you are missing
a lot of very, very important information.
And that can come, of course, not from the
object itself, but from the circumstances,
the documentation, that should accompany every
scientifically-collected specimen.
One of the huge changes in the natural world
over the past 1,000 years happened within
my lifetime, or perhaps a little earlier.
[STREET NOISE, CARS HONKING]
Suddenly, human beings started to increase
in number, and not only increase in numbers,
but increase in power in the things they can
do to the natural world, not only mechanically,
but chemically, for example.
And sometimes it's what we wish to do, and
sometimes it's a byproduct and we didn't realize
we were doing it.
So the natural world is changing, and it's
changing by becoming poorer and more damaged.
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
Now, if we want to prevent it becoming continuing
being damaged, we have to understand how it
works, and we have to understand what it is
that we're doing that may have an effect on
the natural world, and that is perhaps the
most important thing that's facing humanity
today.
If we want to preserve the richness of the
animal world, we have to know how it works,
and these are the places that tell you.
[MUSIC ENDS]
