Buzz
Several months ago, progress toward the future came to a standstill after a daring weasel gnawed through the electrical wiring of the Large Hadron Collider. Despite its bravery, the weasel tragically met its end upon encountering the superconducting wires after scaling a substation fence. Admirers of the creature will be thrilled to know that its taxidermied and slightly scorched remains are set to be showcased at the Rotterdam Natural History Museum in the Netherlands.
The electrocuted weasel (scientifically a beech marten, Martes foina) is just one of the charred exhibits in the museum’s forthcoming Dead Animal Tales display, which also features a hedgehog that became stuck in a McFlurry machine. The exhibit is the creation of museum director Kees Moeliker, who has been documenting bizarre animal fatalities since 1995, when a duck collided with the museum building. The duck perished instantly; shockingly, this did not deter another duck from engaging in persistent amorous advances for 75 minutes.
This marks the second instance of a marten disrupting—and being fatally affected by—the LHC. The initial marten incident occurred in April 2016, but the body was discarded before the museum could claim it. When a similar event unfolded in November, the Cern staff were prepared and preserved the remains.
“Our goal is to demonstrate that no matter how much we alter the environment or the natural world, nature’s influence will persist,” Moeliker explained to The Guardian. “We aim to highlight striking instances. This unfortunate animal directly encountered the world’s largest machine, where physicists routinely collide particles. In my view, the situation carries a poetic quality.”
