Smithsonian Voices

From the Smithsonian Museums

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Check Out These Wondrous Objects on Display Before They Return to the Museum’s Collection

From whale earwax to a shimmering ammonite shell, the “Objects of Wonder” exhibition spotlights some of the museum’s most intriguing specimens

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1.1 Billion Objects and Counting: Inside the Effort to Tally Natural History Specimens Around the Globe

A blue bird with white and grey spots lies against a white background.

Celebrate the Holiday Season with the Museum’s Stunning Collection of Blue Specimens

A shelf of brown boxes with white bones peeking out of the top has small black beetles crawling all over them.

Meet the Smithsonian’s Spookiest Staffers: Flesh-Eating Beetles

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A Bounty of Butterflies Arrives at the Smithsonian

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Meet the Scientist Who Knows the Buzz About the Northern Giant Hornet

A flower with bright pink petals and a yellow interior blooms on the surface of a water near several green and brown lily pads.

New Smithsonian Exhibition Explores the Intersection of People and Nature

Close-up of a black and yellow hornet preserved on a pin

What Mummified Shrews and Giant Hornets Reveal About Biodiversity

The periodical cicada species, Magicicada septendecim, will erupt from the ground this spring in the mid-Atlantic region. The last time the species from Brood X appeared for their cyclical mating cycle was in 2004. (ARS Information Staff, USDA)

What to Expect When the Cicadas Emerge This Spring

The parasitoid samurai wasp, Trissolcus japonicus, is one of many microscopic wasps being studied and sometimes used as biocontrol agents in the fight against invasive species. (Elijah Talamas, USDA)

How Tiny Wasps Became Agricultural Defenders

The National Museum of Natural History’s entomology collection has many Asian giant hornets. Recently, the collection grew with new specimens from an eradicated nest in Washington State. (Matthew Buffington, USDA-ARS)

Family Members Follow Original Asian Giant Hornet to Smithsonian

Collections at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History that are similar to objects in the show “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” (Smithsonian)

Six Avatar-Themed Items in the Smithsonian Collections

The Asian Giant Hornet, Vespa mandarinia, can grow up to two inches long and is a species not native to North America. The National Insect Collection, co-curated by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), houses one of the first specimens collected in North America (Michael Gates, USDA).

Notorious Asian Giant Hornet Finds Home in Smithsonian

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This Fall at the Museum: Fossils, Fossils and More Fossils!

Check Out These Wondrous Objects on Display Before They Return to the Museum’s Collection

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