Domesticated Animals on Exhibit at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 1900–1928

Abstract

In 1905 the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University began planning for a new domesticated animals exhibition in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of its founder Louis Agassiz. The resulting displays of variation and heredity in poultry, pigeons, rabbits, mice, and guinea pigs proved surprisingly popular to museumgoers. Some of these specimens still exist in the museum’s storage facilities, namely a series of poultry donated by the biologist Charles B. Davenport and an elaborate set of guinea pigs from the experimental evolutionist William E. Castle. Situating these domesticated animal displays within academic and popular cultures of poultry fancying, animal breeding, and evolutionary science reveals how a nineteenth-century museum known for its ties to anti-evolutionary principles attempted to modernize its public exhibits.