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<p>Finding <b>peer-reviewed research</b> to back it up might be
very hard, but the "anecdotal" evidence is really dramatic. I've
had conversations with dozens of taxonomists over the course of my
career where the topic of childhood collecting came up, and I can
only recall twice meeting someone who did no collecting of any
kind as a kid. For all the rest, there was something, usually
insects, sometimes shells, and a few oddballs who collected stamps
or matchbooks, to indicate an early predilection for sorting and
organizing. Personally, I was an extreme case, as I collected
nearly everything I could. Insects, shells, stamps, matchbooks,
sure, but also things like bottle caps, seeds, comic books,
baseball and football cards, car photos, coins, tobacco and liquor
tax stamps, Star Wars paraphernalia, and more - plus LISTS of
things, including a list of every prehistoric animal I could find.
It would be fair to say I was pretty obsessive as a kid, though by
high school I started to recognize that it WAS obsessive, and by
the time I finished college had painfully weaned myself away from
everything except insects.</p>
<p>Now, I'm a Commissioner of the ICZN, I work on compiling a list
of all the genus and species names ever published in zoology, and
manage a collection of over 4 million insects. Anyone could have
seen that coming a mile away. ;-)</p>
<p>Peace,<br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314 skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html">https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html</a>
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82</pre>
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