Last week the Royal Ontario Museum added a webcam to their infamous “Bug Room”, a special chamber filled with flesh-eating insects, used by the institution’s staff to clean the bones of newly acquired specimens. For decades the special preparation area has remained off limits, part of the ROM’s hidden secrets and behind-the-scenes workings, but now as part of their new initiative to use digital technologies to deliver greater access to the museum’s resources, those with a strong stomach and a scientific curiosity can monitor the progress of the bugs online and over time, witnessing the emergence of a clean skeleton from a moving mass of crawling beetles.

You can view the webcam here (WARNING: contains graphic imagery)

Curious to know more about what the webcam is capturing I paid a visit to the museum where I was granted special access to the Bug Room and the research area it supports.

Warning: The YouTube Video below contains scenes of a graphic nature. Viewer discretion is advised.  

As I was taken through tight security doors and intricate back hallways I was surprised to find the room, not in the insect division as I had expected, but in the Ornithology department. The hollow, delicate bones of birds, along with their intricate skeletal structure make them amongst the hardest to clean and the most dependant on the beetles for their scavenger skills.

Brad Millen maintains the bird collection’s archival system, preparing new specimens for entry into the collection’s database and introducing digital initiatives that help coordinate their records with those of museums and researchers around the world.

He’s also one of the few who can handle being inside with the creepy crawlies.

“You know what my initiation was, back in 1973 when I was sixteen?” Millen tells me. “A fellow who retired here a number of years ago, in 2007, said to me ‘I’m looking for a skeleton….’. There’s ten thousand things in the Bug Room, so I’m in there for like half an hour before I finally found it. He must have been waiting for me because he had locked me in. As soon as I started pounding on the door to get back they turned off the light. “

A test to see if Millen had the nerve to work for the department, he was locked inside, in the dark, for several hours while the department staff waited outside, listening for screams of panic. They never came.

“So there was a chair in there”, Millen explains “I just sat down and had a cigarette. They didn’t hear any pounding after an hour or two so they let me out.”

His indifference to the episode convinced his superiors they had the right man for the job.

Leading up to the Bug Room itself is an antechamber, sealed with negative air pressure and armed with bug zapper lights. The door to the room itself is reinforced with galvanized metal and all ducts and utility pipes leading in and out are sealed repeatedly using metal covers and in each case the solder points had to be inspected for holes and redone if necessary. In an emergency, should the bugs escape, the antechamber can be doused with fumigants to prevent them from travelling farther.

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The door of the Bug Room bears a quote from Dante's Inferno. 

The extreme precautions speak to the potential danger the beetles inside the Bug Room represent towards the rest of the museum, where staff wage a continuous war against insect infestations from invading bugs that would gladly make a meal of both the animals on display as well as the organic materials in the artifacts themselves (tortoise shells used in ancient jewelry for example). It also says a great deal about the high value the museum places on using insects as a natural solution towards cleaning their specimens over tools and chemicals. Before a skeleton can be placed into a collection they must make sure there isn’t a scrap of food left on it for rogue insects to find. Ironically, it’s the beetles themselves that offer the best protection against themselves in the museum proper.

The Bug Room’s latest occupants include a golden eagle that was found dead by the side of the road in 1992. When animals of interest like the eagle are found dead in the wild, they can be retrieved by the museum and placed for cold storage until needed for processing. For the launch of the new webcam, they felt the eagle would make for the most interesting view.

Stepping into the Bug Room is a quick process. The door opens, you jump through before it slams behind you to prevent as few escapees as possible. There is no specific spot or container for the bugs, they have free roam and can be found crawling over any and all surfaces. There really is no safe spot to take a step, no place to find comfort. No barriers or buffer zones, you’re in their lair, invading their territory.

Amongst the population are four different species of Dermestid beetles, also known as “skin beetles”. Chosen for their specialty in working on dry animals they first lay their eggs into a carcass and then it’s the larvae that do most of the work in consuming the organic matter. As they reach the last stage of their life, they grow wings and fly, allowing them to travel to find the next carcass to repeat the process. Maintaining the population is simple, the staff merely have to keep supplying the room with food and the beetles will continue to thrive.

Dermestidae "Skin" beetles 

I expected a significant odour, but found none. The floor of the room is scattered with boxes, most containing the bones of swans already cleaned and now covered in newspaper. The scent in the air was mainly that of damp newspaper and cardboard, similar to the smell you might encounter in a backyard shed or garage on a humid summer day. If you were to be led into the room blindfolded, you’d have no idea as to the grisly scenes surrounding you.

Before placing animals into the room the staff carefully dry them out, clean them of any fecal matter or blood, and remove valuable parts such as feathers. By the time they are given to the insects to work on, there’ s little fluid left to give off a smell, its merely dry organic matter for the beetles to break down as only they can.

Over the years the beetles have trained their keepers to accommodate them. They prefer the floor, just as they are used to in the wild, and like most insects will scurry away from the light, so staff have to keep the room dark. A surprising development, they also show a preference for bird meat over all others and will ignore boxes containing other animals in order to focus on the latest avian entry. Staff from other sections of the museum have learned to add some bird matter to their boxes in order to encourage the beetles to work on their fish, deer, and snakes, all other animals I saw while inside the room during my visit.

While death always brings with it its own unique chill and shudder, the horror of the Bug Room isn’t anything close to what the idea might suggest. The beetles themselves are small grain-sized pellets that move in masses, but without any squirming. Seeing a swarm of insects is nothing new, nor is it to see them inside a domestic place, but yes, catching a glimpse of the eagle’s gnarled, yellow feet protruding from the busy mass, the vertebrae of the snake coiled and empty, revealing the miniature population running around inside? Neither a view you want to have lingering in your memory.

Leaving the Bug Room brings with it its own uncertainty. I had to heavily stomp my feet and subject myself to inspection as we peered into pockets, under collars, and inside shoes to make sure that none of the insects, especially those that can fly, had hitched a ride. I spent the rest of the day swatting at phantom bites and itches and the night dreaming that a new colony of the crawlies was developing somewhere in my home, under a sink or in a messy closet somewhere.

Most of the animals processed through the Bug Room are done so for the purpose of study rather than exhibition. Every day the ROM plays host to a number of scientists and researchers who take advantage of the museum’s ability to deliver immediate access to tens of thousands of species all within one room. After leaving the Bug Room, each bone will be engraved with a unique serial number and the entire skeleton will be placed within a special storage box and entered into the museum’s digital archive.

The egg of a Tinamou

 

From the bird research collection, a Tinamou specimen. 

Most of the research today is devoted towards DNA testing and one project underway is exploring the evolutionary division between flightless birds and their flying brethren. The Tinamou is at the centre of this study, considered to a be a bird that is indeterminate between the two groups and so a clue as to how flightless birds evolved.

Museums play a key role in helping all of use, scientists, researchers, students, and visitors, gain a clear view of the bigger picture of our world and the issues that demand our attention. The Bug Room and its skin beetles are one important part of that.