VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese scientists have been quietly implementing the project on setting up a national museum of nature in Vietnam.

Nature museum is not only considered as a very important national work, but also serves as the fundamental scientific basis – the place which can most effectively provide the knowledge on the special characteristics, natural resources and natural potentials of a country.

The US has Smithsonian Museum, Austria has Vienna Museum of Nature, Japan and the Netherlands both also have their own nature museums.

Vietnamese scientists also dream of having such a museum in Vietnam.

“When a teacher talks about the cold climate and snow, he would be able to lead his third-grade students to a room where they can see snow with their eyes. If students want to know more about earthquake, they would be led to a room where they can feel how a 3 Richter scale earthquake feels,” said Dr Pham Van Luc, Director of the Vietnam Museum of Nature when describing the museum model.

The Vietnamese leading specimen manipulators

The reporters arrived in the specimen manufacturing division of the national museum when a moonfish weighing 112 kilos was brought there from Quynh Luu district of the central province of Nghe An. The young specialists of the division were seen casting a plaster fish specimen.

“This is a part of the specimen treatment process followed by our museum. This would require much more time and exertion than the current popular method of stuffing cotton to create specimen,” said Tran Van Sang, an officer.

“We have to follow the set procedures in order to obtain the specimen that can satisfy the international standards,” Sang explained.

In the past, scientists only had to separate the skin from the animals’ bodies and then soaked the skin into chemical substances. After that, they carried out a surgery and then restored the shapes of animals by stuffing cotton.

Sang said that this method showed a lot of problems. Firstly, this does not allow the specimen to exist for a long time in the context of Vietnam’s climate with high humidity.

Secondly, when creating specimens, it is always very difficult for manipulators to create the most typical postures of animals which can most effectively show the characteristics and appearance of the animal species.

“In many cases, big errors were created during the building up of specimens,” Sang said.

Sang and his colleagues once followed some training courses under the guidance of foreign specialists and now they can undertake the works very well.

Pointing to the specimens in the room, Duc Trung, who dealt with the moonfish, said that here at the museum, the scientists would not use cotton wool, but bubble foam, which not only can allow specimens to resist the climate conditions, but also help easily manipulate the specimens’ postures.

A national museum of nature must preserve standard biological specimens of the country. Therefore, standard specimen patterns need to be created, so that new specimen can be generated form the patterns while no need to use the original specimen.

“When a scientist discovers a new animal species, he would be able to come to the nature museum and compare the ones they find with the specimens on display at the museum,” Dr Pham Van Luc explained, emphasizing that this is the scientific significance of a nature museum.

SGTT