Tim Pearce is head of the section of molluscs at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US, where he has worked since 2002. Pearce has helped the Carnegie Museum to create a hugely successful TikTok channel, going viral with his Snail Jokes and fun facts and helping the museum to reach a wider audience through this social media channel. Since launching in 2020, the TikTok channel now has 376.1K followers, with Tim’s videos garnering thousands of likes.
During the pandemic, when many museums pivoted to providing online content, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History used its TikTok account to share jokes, glimpses behind the scenes and ideas for activities to do at home. It proved popular and grew a substantial following, much of which is thanks to Pearce and his weekly snail jokes. One video showing Pearce telling a Michelle Obama snail pun, which was only the fifth one the museum had posted to the new channel, gathered 2 million views.
The #MolluskMonday hashtag now has plenty of regular followers on Instagram and TikTok, looking for their fix of snail-based jokes and puns.
At the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pearce is responsible for caring for a huge research collection of snails and clams. He conducts malacological research on land snails and promotes the use of the research collection, which is around 1.8 million specimens. Before joining the team at the Carnegie Museum, he was assistant curator of molluscs at the Delaware Museum of Natural History from 1997–2001.
Pearce studied for both a master’s degree in biology and a PhD at the University of Michigan, before completing post-doctoral work on Madagascar’s land snails at SUNY–Stony Brook. He also holds a master’s degree in palaeontology from the University of California–Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in marine biology from Evergreen State College.