About two years ago, I wrote a short post on the parallels between Magizoology in the wizarding world and Zoology in real life. I wrote it after visiting the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in London of “The Making of Harry Potter”, aka Harry Potter World. Little did I know that the Natural History Museum in London would eventually run an exhibition dedicated to the same concept, so as you can imagine, I was beyond excited to see it.

Now, let me just clarify something - yes, I love the wizarding world and the Harry Potter books. I also really liked Fantastic Beasts since it’s essentially a culmination of some of my favourite things ever - magical systems in fantasy literature and zoology. However, I am not blind to the series’ biasses and am a big advocate for intersectional feminism. Therefore, I completely disagree with Rowling’s exclusionary views on trans women. I can only hope that she will one day come to see the flaws in her own advocacy and the harm that she may have caused thousands of trans women who would have, no doubt, felt as disappointed in her as I have.

I appreciate that some people may not agree with my bringing this up in this post. I have had my fair share of “leave politics/social issues out of science” comments. If this is something that you would comment, let me just remind you that this is an absurd and unrealistic notion. In addition, I would like to highlight that this is my blog and I will bring up whatever political or social issues I like. If you don’t like this, tough.

With that being said, let’s get back to the purpose of the post. In my initial post, I tried to hypothesise Rowling's inspiration for some of the creatures she described in the “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” book. I also talked about the similarities between the struggles faced by magizoologists in the wizarding world and zoologists in the real world when it comes to wildlife conservation i.e. the education of the general public, society’s demonisation of certain animals, etc.

I was glad to see that some of the same parallel’s were made in the exhibition and that they used the exhibition as an opportunity to bring to our attention many real-life conservation efforts and their challenges. For instance, protecting “dangerous beasts” can be very difficult and the exhibition uses the comparison between the situation faced by the magical creature Zouwu in the Wizarding World and the real-life Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) as an example. Caspian tigers are a subspecies that became extinct in the 1970s due to overhunting as cities and farmland expanded. Having these big predators around became a danger to the local peoples in Central Asia.

The human conflict faced by the Caspian tigers is also described as applicable to dragons in the Wizarding World but also throughout literature. Dragons in the Wizarding World are so dangerous that they are confined to special hidden reservation areas. The magizoologist Newt Scamander actually describes the famous Hungarian Horntail dragon as the most dangerous of the ten dragons. In fact, that is the exact magical species that Harry Potter faces in the Triwizard Tournament in the “Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire” book instalment.

Dragons are, by far, my favourite mythical creatures. Like me, millions of people worldwide are fascinated with the closest real-life creatures we have to dragons - dinosaurs and extinct and extant reptiles. With that in mind, it isn’t surprising that a pachycephalosaur species from the Late Cretaceous was named Dracorex hogwartsia (dragon king of Hogwarts) as a homage to the fictitious witchcraft school. In reality, D. hogwartsia was a far cry from the enormous Hungarian Horntail of the wizarding world. Whereas the Horntail was known to occasionally eat humans, D. hogwartsia was a herbivore of about 4m in length and 1.2m in height.

Speaking of the danger factor, the conservation of snakes is another challenging area. Humans aren’t usually the most sympathetic when it comes to these majestic creatures. Literature has also not been the kindest on them - at best they are associated with wisdom and at worst, with “evil”. In the Harry Potter books and films, we are introduced to a couple of snakes or snake-like beasts, such as Nagini (a female Maledictus) and the enormous Basilisk. In real life, reticulated pythons are known to reach incredible sizes.

An example we can see at the museum is the Indian Rock Python (Python molurus) - these non-venomous snakes can get to 6.7m in length (22 feet) and can constrict and feed on antelopes. Most of us will already know a very famous fictitious Indian Rock Python in Kaa, the snake from the Jungle Book.

The exhibition includes many incredible real-life animals with some pretty amazing abilities and survival techniques. I couldn’t possibly cover them all in one post and do them justice, so I’ll be focusing on - yes, you guessed it - reptiles and amphibians!

Let’s start with a favourite of mine, the Mexican Burrowing Toad (Rhinophrynus dorsalis). As its name suggests, this Central American species spends a lot of its time hidden in underground burrows. Which helps them shield themselves from dehydration during dry seasons. During wet seasons, they will emerge to feed and also to mate. Researching them can be a challenging job since it can be difficult to find them. Luckily, the males have a very specific mating call that sounds very much like a loud wailing which helps locate them.

Another incredible specimen displayed at the exhibition is the Paradise Flying Snake (Chrysopelea paradise), a South-East Asian species that glides from tree to tree to avoid predators by flattening its ribs and expanding its body. Look up videos on youtube, it’s a fascinating behaviour.

Lastly, an amazing collaborative relationship - the Colombian lesserblack tarantula (Xenesthis immanis) and the Dotted humming frog (Chiasmocleis royi). These two can be found hiding in borrows in the north-western South American rainforests together! We still have a lot to learn about the collaborative behaviour between these two species. It’s possible that the frog’s toxic skin prevents it from becoming the spider’s prey and the spider may benefit from the frog preying on smaller insects that could potentially feed on the spider’s eggs. This is also mutually beneficial for the frog, since the spider may serve as a deterrent to its predators. In fact, the relationship between small frogs and big spiders isn’t exclusive to these two. I remember reading a great post by TetZoo on microhylid frogs and large spiders back when the TetZoo blog was still at Scientific American (click here to read it).

The exhibition was really well put together, as you would expect of the NHM. I thoroughly enjoyed the comparisons to real-life creatures and their “amazing abilities”. It was also great to see kids engaging with the content and completing the little quizzes available. We can only hope that fantasy can be used to aid conservation efforts and the education of the general public.