Exogiini Sofoloi, APRIL FOOL!

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How many of you guessed that our alien story was an April Fool? We did give you a clue – in the doctors name – which is an anagram of April Fools. Can you tell us what is significant about the location and date we gave for her fictional discovery?

The specimen you see in the picture is preserved example of the foetus of a macaque, a type of monkey, which is found across the world from Japan to Gibraltar and North Africa. Macaques are the most widespread genus of primates after humans. This particular one was donated to the Booth Museum by London Zoo in 1981. It is a Southern Pig Tailed macaque, native to Malaysia and Borneo.

Although not really an extraterrestrial, macaques did become the first animals to return from space alive, in 1959, as part of the NASA space programme.

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences