What does a taxidermy do?

Taxidermy is the art of preserving an animal's body by mounting (on armor) or filling, for the purpose of exhibiting or studying it. Animals are often, but not always, depicted in a realistic state. The word taxidermy describes the process of preserving the animal, but the word is also used to describe the final product, which is called taxidermy supports or is simply known as taxidermy. The word taxidermy is derived from the Greek words taxis and derma.

Taxis means disposition, and derma means skin (the dermis). The word taxidermy translates to disposition of the skin. Taxidermy is a fundamental technique for preserving the remains of vertebrate animals. Essentially, it is a method of preserving elements of an animal for study or display after the animal has died.

Many people see examples of taxidermy for the first time while visiting natural history museums and marvel at the realistic results of the best Victorian and Edwardian taxidermists such as Rowland Ward or Edward Gerrard %26 Sons, but the technique encompasses much more than the diorama we see on traditional screens. in museums and stately homes. Taxidermy is the art of preserving, organizing and displaying the bodies of animals so that they can be hung on the walls of hunters or installed in natural history museums. A person who practices taxidermy is called a taxidermist.

Some taxidermists are trained professionals and others do it as a hobby, preserving the animal's skin, shaping it out of wood or wire and adding specially made glass eyes. Indian exhibits included a stuffed elephant (although that animal was actually an African elephant found in a nearby museum). Those creepy stuffed raccoons mounted in your grandparents' house were created by a taxidermist, a person who is an expert in making realistic displays with the bodies of dead animals. First place was awarded to A Fight in the Tree-Tops, by taxidermist William Temple Hornaday, which showed two male Bornean orangutans fighting over a female.

The best-known practitioner of this genre was the English taxidermist Walter Potter, whose most famous work was The Death and Burial of Cock Robin. According to Milgrom, in these categories, taxidermists try to create an animal without using any of its real parts, make an eagle with turkey feathers, for example, or create a realistic panda with bear skin or even recreate extinct species based on scientific data. This can be achieved without opening the body cavity, so the taxidermist usually does not see the internal organs or blood. The methods practiced by taxidermists have been improved over the past century, increasing taxidermic quality and decreasing toxicity.

An expert taxidermist prepared this endangered specimen as a study skin with a replacement skull, an extended wing, and a partial skeleton (including skull, wing, and foot). Instead, detailed photos and measurements of the animal are taken so that a taxidermist can create an exact replica in resin or fiberglass that can be shown instead of the real animal. Ironically, however, the same period provided museums around the world with millions of skins and mounts, carefully preserved by taxidermists, that remain an essential resource for study both now and for future generations of zoologists. In those days, competition was fierce, so conservation methods differed from taxidermist to taxidermist and were heavily guarded, some even going to the grave without revealing their secrets.