“If a lion could speak, we wouldn't be able to understand it”, said wittgenstein. we look at animals with the same curiosity, as if we'd lost each other's memory. a thin veil of incomprehension separates us and casts us into a deep melancholy. there they are, with their hair, feathers and scales, survivors from a fabulous world, mythical heroes of edifying stories and phantasmagorical material of our dreams. over the past two centuries, we have begun to study, classify and naturalize them, at the same time as their disappearance has begun. in museums, their remains have accumulated, the tangible form of our view of them and its history. what could be more natural? museums are the place for this. we observe the passing of time, that which precedes us and that which is yet to come.