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Kees Moeliker | |
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Born | Cornelis W. Moeliker 1960 (age 63–64) |
Known for | Research and TED Talk about observing homosexual necrophilia in a mallard duck |
Awards | Ig Nobel Prize for Biology (2003) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Zoology, ornithology |
Institutions | Director of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam. |
Website | moeliker |
Cornelis W. "Kees" Moeliker (born 9 October 1960) is a Dutch biologist and director of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam. [1] [2] He is also European Bureau Chief of the Annals of Improbable Research . [3]
Moeliker's father worked for forty years as a technical illustrator for the (subsequently superseded) Dutch post office. [4] Kees himself was provided with education at the Pieter Caland School in Rotterdam. [5] During this time he used to wander across the nature reserves in the Rotterdam area. [5] On one of his walks, in 1973, he made the first ever recorded observation in the area of an Egyptian Nile goose (Alopochen aegyptiacus). [5]
He went on to study biology and geography at a teacher training institution in Delft. [6] He graduated with a research project on the winter-season feeding ecology of the Long eared owl (Asio otus). The research later provided the basis for a section in his 1989 compilation, "Owls" ("Uilen"). [7] Moeliker also collaborated on the research led by the high-profile Biology/Ornithology Professor Kees Heij, undertaken at the Free University (Amsterdam) into the population ecology of the House Sparrow (Passer domesticus) in Rotterdam. [8]
Before he joined the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, Moeliker worked as an assistant-butcher, an English teacher in Istanbul, a nature guide in Costa Rica and a biology teacher at several high schools. [3] He joined the museum, initially as an educational assistant, in 1989. From 1999 to 2015 he was the museum's curator and head of communications. Since 1 December 2015 he has been the museum's director.
In 1991, together with Kees Heij, he discovered a Boano monarch (Monarcha boanensis), a bird that had been thought extinct, on the island of Boano, in the Indonesian province of Maluku. [9] A subsequent Moeliker rediscovery, in 2001, involved the Waigeo brush-turkey (Aepypodius bruijnii) he identified in Waigeo Island, West Papua. [5] With Erwin J.O. Kompanje, Moeliker identified and described a subspecies of Long-tongued nectar bat (Macroglossus minimus booensis), of which the known habitat is restricted to the little Island of Boo in the east of Indonesia. [10]
Amongst his work for the Natural History Museum Rotterdam, Moeliker preserved the Domino Day 2005 sparrow, a house sparrow that was shot and killed by a hunter after it knocked down a large domino display in Leeuwarden. The bird was stuffed and is now mounted on a box of dominos. [11] [12]
Moeliker has written three books: De eendenman (which translates to The Duck Guy) in 2009; [15] De Bilnaad van de Teek, which translates to The Butt Crack of the Tick, in 2012; [16] and De kikker kamasutra (which translates to The Frog Kamasutra) in 2024. [17] De Bilnaad van de Teek was voted "best science book of the year" by the newspaper de Volkskrant that year. [18]
He won the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize for biology for his study of homosexual necrophilia in male mallards. [19] [20]
He was nominated in 2013 for the Edgar Doncker Prize in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the Rotterdam Natural History Museum and to conservation more generally. [2] [21]
After Moeliker won his Ig Nobel Prize, he earned the nickname of "The Duck Guy". He appears annually at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony in Boston, Massachusetts, and is a regular performer on the Ig Nobel Prize's tours of the United Kingdom. [3] On one tour, on 11 March 2014, a mini-opera based on his study entitled The Homosexual Necrophiliac Duck Opera was premiered at Imperial College London. It was composed by Daniel Gillingwater, with Moeliker performing a duck call. [22] A Dead Duck Day is held on 5 June every year, "to commemorate the first anniversary of the sudden and dramatic death (on 5 June 1995) of the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) that entered the scientific literature as the first victim of homosexual necrophilia in this species." [13] [14]
On 6 October 2014, he made a guest appearance on BBC Radio 4 comedy The Museum of Curiosity and donated a single pubic louse to the museum. [12] During the programme the presenter John Lloyd observed that Kees Moeliker did not have an English-language Wikipedia page but only a Dutch-language one. Lloyd went on to state: "We're going to make one about you for the English Wikipedia". Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia, who was also a guest on the programme, replied that that was unnecessary because Wikipedians listen to the show and he predicted that an English-language page for Kees Moeliker would be created before the airing of the programme had finished. Approximately 8 minutes later, and 7 minutes before the programme finished being aired, the first version of this page had been submitted. [12]
The Ig Nobel Prize is a satirical prize awarded annually since 1991 to celebrate ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. Its aim is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The name of the award is a pun on the Nobel Prize, which it parodies, and on the word "ignoble".
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the "New Meuse" inland shipping channel, dug to connect to the Meuse at first and now to the Rhine.
Erasmus University Rotterdam is a public research university located in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The university is named after Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, a 15th-century Christian humanist and theologian.
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The domino sparrow was a house sparrow that was shot and killed by a hunter from the company Duke Faunabeheer in the Frisian Expo Centre in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, during preparations for Domino Day on 14 November 2005. With only four days to go until Domino Day 2005, the bird flew into the building and landed on several domino bricks, eventually causing 23,000 of them to fall. Because of the protective gaps that were placed between groups of dominoes, the damage was limited. Faunabeheer was hired to remove the unwanted intruder from the centre. After trying to capture the sparrow with nets and sticks, the company decided to shoot the bird.
Eduard Alexander van Beinum was a Dutch conductor.
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The Natuurhistorisch Museum Rotterdam is a natural history museum located in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
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Hubertus Bernardus "Huub" Bals was the first director and creator of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), formerly named Film International. IFFR started small in the Calypso cinema and film theatre 't Venster in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 1972, with only 4500 visitors and 31 films. In the forthcoming years the film festival expanded gradually under the watchful cinephile eye of Bals to 150.000 visitors and multiple cinemas in 1988 – Bals' last festival – and developed into an annual film event of great international importance, with already more than 350.000 visitors in 2010. Thanks to Bals many new film countries and continents have been introduced to The Netherlands, among which Russia, China, Taiwan, Africa and Latin-America.
'The masters of the cinema of tomorrow are from the Third World.'
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