Press Releases

Supported by players of the People’s Postcode Lottery and Western Power Distribution (WPD), the exhibition invites visitors to walk inside the amazing ‘Wriggloo’ and see life from a worm’s point of view. Wriggle down and explore an earthworm’s habitat and see what animals live alongside them, including our wormery housing live garden and compost worms).

Discover some of the most weird and wonderful worms, such as the bone-eating snot flower which lives on whale carcasses at the bottom of the sea and the Bobbit Worm, a 3.4 m worm which is able to slice a fish in half! See if you can find the ragworms living inside the shells of our hermit crabs, in our aquarium tank.

Find out what museum scientists do to extend our knowledge of these fascinating animals behind the scenes.  Using our virtual slide microscope, visitors can enlarge images of various worms from the museum’s collections or draw specimens on our tracing table.

From Fossils to Fantasy is an area in the display which looks at worms in popular culture such as books and films. This includes a model of the fossil worm named after Lemmy (from rock band Motörhead) and a worm named after Reggae star Bob Marley! You can even work out what kind of worm you’d be with our interactive game!

Explore the sizes of different worms, from little ragworms to huge bootlace worms over 30m long and follow our bootlace worm rope from other galleries into Wriggle!

To coincide with the exhibition, scientists at National Museum Cardiff will also coordinate and host the 12^th International Polychaete Conference in Cardiff this summer. In August 2016, around 200 researchers, practitioners, environmental consultants, and students from all over the world will arrive in Cardiff for an exciting conference week discussing a range of topics associated with this important and wonderful group of invertebrates.

Katie Mortimer-Jones, Senior Curator: Marine Invertebrates in the Natural Sciences department, said

“Wriggle is an exciting and visual exhibition which families will really enjoy.  The exhibition looks at all types of worms – earthworms, leeches, sea-worms, and allies from your back garden to the nearest seashore, and beyond - highlighting the important and diverse worm collections we have here in the museum. It’s a really hands on, interactive exhibition where you can, either crawl into the Wriggloo or use microscopes and magnifies to see these wonderful worms up close! Seeing live animals alongside magnificent specimens, this exhibition will surely open your eyes to a world of worms that you never imagined exhisted”.

“This exhibition and activity programme is made possible thanks to the generous support from players of the People’s Postcode Lottery and WPD and we’re very grateful for their support.”

“We have some great events lined up to coincide with the exhibition including our Worm Charming World Record Attempt at St Fagans National History Museum on 23 July. Join us as we attempt to attract a record number of worms to the surface.”

WPD’s Karen Welch said: “We are pleased to support this exciting and unusual project and we hope that over the coming months young and old visitors will all have fun and enjoy it.”

Entry to the Museum itself is free, thanks to the support of the Welsh Government.

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales operates seven museums across Wales including National Museum Cardiff, St Fagans National History Museum, the National Roman Legion Museum, Big Pit National Coal Museum, the National Wool Museum, the National Slate Museum and the National Waterfront Museum.

ENDS

For more information and photographs please contact Lleucu Cooke on (029) 2057 3175 / lleucu.cooke@museumwales.ac.uk.

National Museum Cardiff’s exhibition and activity programme has been supported by players of the People’s Postcode Lottery.