Some of these Smithsonian secrets might just blow your mind
See them in our behind-the-scenes look at a storage site usually open to only select visitors
The Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center houses nearly 150 million items. Its haul includes giant worms preserved in alcohol.
Stephen Voss
Meteorites that are billions of years old. Alienlike worms. A blue whale’s massive jaw bones. These are just some of the millions of marvels at the Smithsonian Institution.
Most are part of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History collection, a trove of nearly 150 million objects. It includes a spectacular array of preserved life forms, rocks and cultural artifacts from around the world.
Few people have ever seen this vast collection of astonishing objects. The museum in Washington, D.C., only displays a small share of the items. Most sit tucked away in huge storage pods at the Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center (MSC). This site in Suitland, Md., is not open to the public.
But Science News was able to get a behind-the-scenes peek.
Lining MSC’s hushed halls are rows of cream-colored cabinets and kilometers (miles) of shelving. Scientists led us through long corridors, pointing out prime treasures along the way. We saw and touched an abundance of specimens that captivate the mind and eyes. Some items even had odors — like a freeze-dried crabeater seal. It smelled like burnt soy sauce.
But MSC is not just a giant storage unit. It’s a place scientists visit to do research and answer big questions about our planet. Forget the idea that museums are old and dusty, says Kirk Johnson. He’s the director of the National Museum of Natural History. Museums, he argues, are “vastly more vibrant and more important” than most people realize.
A protected collection
MSC opened in 1983 when the Smithsonian needed more space for items in its already overcrowded natural history museum. Each of the center’s five storage pods is about the size of a football field. And they’re nearly three stories tall. A sixth pod is in the works.
Their key goal: Protect the specimens.
MSC carefully controls the temperature and humidity inside each pod. It also shields these storage areas against pests.
Security guards patrol the premises 24/7. Along the way, they watch for power outages, floods, flames and explosions. Huge freezers need power to keep tissues and DNA samples ultracold. Dried specimens can be damaged by fire and water. And wet items in alcohol-filled jars are at risk of drying out — or blowing up.
MSC’s stash is part of a “forever” collection. They’re available to study today and in the future. Scientists are now, for instance, analyzing African elephant DNA stored here. The elephant that this genetic material comes from is thought to belong to a population that has long evaded humans.
Past work on bird eggs collected decades ago helped reveal that the insecticide DDT had built up in their shells and thinned them. This nearly drove some species — including the bald eagle — to extinction. Evidence of DDT’s harm to wildlife helped lead the United States to ban the chemical in 1972.
“There’s a cloud of knowledge about the planet that exists only because we have collections in museums,” Johnson says.
Scientists who work here are passionate about the knowledge stored in MSC’s pods. As we moved from one area to another, staff members would race to show us “just one more thing!” A coil of feathered money, for instance, that was once used on the Santa Cruz Islands in the South Pacific.
Items stowed at the MSC or on display at the museum represent everything that we know about the planet, says Rebecca Johnson. She’s the museum’s chief scientist (and unrelated to Kirk). “This is the record of the world,” she says.
In an age of AI, it can be difficult to tell truth from fiction. But MSC’s treasures let us see and touch and smell and study our planet’s reality. “People still want to know what is real,” Rebecca Johnson says. “This is the place where we have the real thing.”
Let’s go on a field trip
Our private MSC tour introduced us to a colossal cache of objects. We saw items that dazzled and brought chills. We wanted to photograph everything. In a place that’s home to millions of objects, how do you pick what to feature?
We chose items with an eye to what stood out in size or peculiarity. We also focused on those with intriguing backstories. We could fill entire books with photos and the histories of these items. Instead, we’ll highlight our favorites.
Most likely to haunt your dreams
The Antarctic scale worm
This giant worm (Eulagisca gigantea, center) has true horror-movie potential. It has mouth parts that can extend out and retract in, as well as a toothed jaw. But don’t worry. These worms typically live on the sea floor. So you’ll likely never encounter a live one. This specimen is part of MSC’s wet collection — stuff preserved in fluid.
Most likely to make you feel very small
The jaw bones of a blue whale
Here, Michael McGowen stands inside the massive lower jaw bones of a blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus). McGowen cares for MSC’s marine mammal specimens. The whale whose jaws he’s posing with was an adult female that once lived off the coast of Antarctica.
Weighing 2 metric tons and measuring nearly 7 meters (23 feet) long, the jaws are the largest bones in the collection. Blue whale jaws, in fact, are the largest bones of any animal ever. McGowen studies the evolution and genetics of whales and other cetaceans. He loves coming to this Whale Bone Repository — a building big enough to house airplanes. “I’m always in awe,” he says.
Most likely to keep calm and carry on
A North Atlantic right whale
This bizarre-looking backbone belongs to a North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis). Named Tips, this 14-meter (46-foot) brute appears to have survived a collision with a ship. Squiggles of bone protrude from one section of his vertebrae — a sign of injured tissue that didn’t heal cleanly.
Tips died in 2010, possibly from being caught in fishing gear. Getting tangled in gear or struck by ships are two major threats to right whales. Fewer than 400 individuals of this endangered species remain.
Biggest buzzkill
The world’s largest mosquito collection
There are some 2 million mosquitoes in MSC’s collection. It’s the most diverse bunch of these bloodsuckers in the world.
The Uranotaenia sapphirina mosquitoes seen here may not be much of a nuisance — to humans, at least. They’re among just a handful of modern mosquito species that feed on cold-blooded creatures. Their victims include earthworms and leeches, says Yvonne-Marie Linton. She cares for MSC’s insect specimens.
Best dressed
The pink fairy armadillo
In life, this pink fairy armadillo (Chlamyphorus truncatus, left) would have been a fashion designer’s dream. It boasts both a lovely pale pink shell and whitish fur. The shell gets its hue from blood vessels and may help the smallest armadillo species control its body temperature.
Check out those oversized claws, used for burrowing. They grow even bigger in the greater fairy armadillo (Calyptophractus retusus, middle). And they get bigger still in the giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus, claws shown on right).
Biggest stinker
The tongue orchid
This massive plant is part of the Smithsonian Gardens Orchid Collection. It’s one of the largest orchid species on Earth. Bulbophyllum fletcherianum has leaves that can stretch nearly 2 meters (6.5 feet). But it’s known for more than epic leafage.
Its blooms give off the foul stench of rotting flesh. That scent attracts insects, such as blow flies or carrion beetles. Those insects are looking to lay eggs in dead and decaying animals. But when the tongue orchid’s smell draws them in, they help the plant by pollinating it.
Most likely to be mistaken for a mushroom
A Dracula orchid
The Dracula orchid gets its name from its blood-red coloring and long, pointy structures. The plant (Dracula chimaera ‘Pacifica’) grows in Ecuador and Colombia. To fungus gnats, the orchid’s blooms have the alluring odor of mushrooms. Those flowers kind of look like mushrooms, too. Fine ribs decorate their central, pouchlike petals. This feature mimics the gills on a mushroom.
Most likely to make you take a closer look
The wet collection
Resting in row upon row of jars, some 25 million MSC specimens sit preserved in fluid. Included among them are sand dollars, shrimp, coral, slipper lobsters and octopuses. Together, they take up roughly 72 kilometers (45 miles) of shelving. That’s more than four times as long as trails to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Most of these jars are filled with ethanol, nearly 2 million liters (530,000 gallons) in total. This alcohol evaporates over time. So all of the jars need to be topped off to keep their specimens from drying out.
Most likely to strip the flesh from your bones
The hide beetle
Flesh-eating beetles might sound terrifying. But they feast on the dead, not the living. And it’s the baby beetles — or larvae — that do most of the meat-eating, anyway, explains Inger Toraason. So this hide beetle (Dermestes maculatus) on his hand poses no danger of chowing down. In fact, this insect — and thousands of its buddies — are closer to Toraason’s coworkers than specimens.
Toraason takes care of bone specimens at MSC. Flesh-eating beetles help clean animal bones for him. They eat tissue off specimens being prepped for the museum’s collections. It’s a big job. The beetles cleaned 429 skeletons in 2025 alone. They can strip a hummingbird’s bones in less than a day. A whale skull might take months.
Beetle-cleaned bones then go through several more steps to be preserved. Toraason picks off any remaining flesh by hand. Then he soaks the bones in a cleaning solution. You can see an example of this with the skeleton of a little owl (Athene noctua, inset).
If Toraason and his coworkers didn’t have beetles on their side, they could simply let flesh rot away in water. But that’s a long process. And it leaves behind just a pile of bones. With the hide beetles, the team gets an intact skeleton at the end. The beetles are “our little unsung heroes of the museum,” he says.
Finest feathers
Bird-of-paradise headdress ornaments
These vibrant ornaments were once used in headdresses by people in what is now Papua New Guinea. Made from Raggiana birds-of-paradise (Paradisaea raggiana), they’re meant to move, says Joshua Bell. At MSC, he curates cultural artifacts from around the world.
Men and sometimes women wore these ornaments while dancing in ritual performances, Bell says. Glinting light and rapid motion would have blurred the red feathers. It would appear almost as if the dancers were transforming into birds themselves.
Most likely to ghost you
Henry the elephant
Every year, some 4 million people walk past Henry, a towering stuffed elephant in the natural history museum in Washington, D.C. Few realize the elephant’s skull (shown) is stored at MSC.
This African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) was roughly 4 meters tall (13 feet) and weighed 11 metric tons. He’s the largest elephant in any museum. He may have belonged to a group of “ghost” elephants in Angola that gained renown for avoiding humans.
