When you walk the basement halls of a museum, you are likely to encounter weird stuff.

And so today, as a Trumpeter Swan was being prepared in the Bird Lab, a little brown bat was being placed in a freezer in the Mammal Lab, and from a casual conversation a photo op was born.

Rebecca Cheek, Link Olson, and Jessica McLaughlin compare a Trumpeter Swan and a little brown bat.

Rebecca Cheek and Jessica McLaughlin admire a large bird and a small mammal.

A little brown bat on a Trumpeter Swan wing. A good start to a new myth about migration.

There is a well-known myth about hummingbirds hitching rides on geese to migrate. We are happy to begin a new one about bats hitching rides on swans.

Interesting side note: Both of these animals were found dead in Fairbanks and brought in to the museum by good people who know the scientific value of such specimens.

Second interesting side note: English names of birds have been standardized as proper nouns and so are capitalized; this has not yet occurred for mammals. There are many yellow warblers, but there is only one Yellow Warbler. More on this practice can be found here. For the ornithologist, a bit of trivia: This goes back a long way — English names were capitalized in the first edition of the AOU Check-list in 1886.