It started with a snail joke.

But making light of mollusks has quickly led to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s TikTok channel gaining nearly 150,000 followers since January, and the museum is partnering with the burgeoning social-media platform to bring users more educational content.

The museum received a grant, part of a $50 million commitment by TikTok to its Creative Learning Fund, designed to populate the platform with accessible, educational, short-form mobile videos.

“I’m amazed (and pleased) that so many people are enjoying the snail jokes. I hope they are educational, too, and consciousness raising, and that they help people be more aware of these often-overlooked creatures with whom we share the planet,” said the museum’s mollusks curator Tim Pearce.

Over the past five months, the museum’s TikTok following has grown to more than 8 million video views and 2 million likes.

The weekly snail jokes for #MolluskMonday are follower favorites, but the museum also posts videos featuring other staff, including scientists, with live animals and scientific specimens. Recently Matt Lamanna, the museum’s Mary R. Dawson Associate Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology, has begun to build a fan base of his own with dinosaur facts filmed from home and a visit to check on the museum’s signature dinosaur, Dippy, short for Diplodocus carnegii.

Happy ##MolluskMonday! ##Pittsburgh ##naturalhistorymuseum

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“Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s goal is to be as relevant as possible to our growing audiences,” said Sloan MacRae, director of the marketing team that creates most of the museum’s digital content. “One obvious path to relevance is access, and that means producing content that is digestible and appealing. It also means reaching audiences where they physically are, namely glued to their screens amid the pandemic.”

The Creative Learning Fund has seen TikTok partner with more than 800 creators, public figures, media publishers, educational institutions, nonprofit organizations and real users.

“While TikTok has always provided users with an outlet for creative expression and fun, wholesome, light-hearted content during these unprecedented times, we’ve seen our community gravitate toward an even more enriching experience on the platform,” said Bryan Thoensen, head of content partnerships. “We can’t wait to be inspired by the creative ways the TikTok community comes together to #LearnOnTikTok.”

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