Apparently the Iraqis aren't the only people who have to worry about museum looting.

When van Leeuwen's home was raided in March this year, officers were taken aback, discovering "in all corners of his house and in an outside shed and several large chest freezers, thousands of zoological specimens, including skulls, skeletons, skins and complete animal specimens in alcohol".

I used to know a guy who worked at the Australian Museum in Sydney. He told me how they had a collection of clapped out stuffed animal specimens they would take around to show at schools. Occasionally, if bored enough, they'd go out to the staff carpark and play cricket with them - an ancient Sugar Glider would serve as the bat.

Apropos of that: for a while at the museum they had a live crocodile in a small tank. They started to notice that whenever someone walked past the tank, the croc would go into a frenzy. They had no idea why it was doing this, until someone caught the janitor savagely poking the crocodile with his broom handle. It seems this guy would spend a few minutes engaged in this hobby every time his rounds took him past the tank, for no other reason than because, apparently, he really hated crocodiles.