Neeksthenico

[neeksthenico]

Could anyone help me find out when these 2 bottles are from? And what might be in them?

[neeksthenico]

Could anyone help me find out when these 2 bottles are from? And what might be in them?

[carrionhearted]

how did you gain all of your knowledge on identifying bones? i really want to learn more about different types of animal bones, so do you have any book/website/video recommendations?

Ok so hear me out on this, I know the utterance of this cursed website’s name usually entails doom: but, Reddit. The bone collecting community over there is pretty active and VERY knowledgeable (r/ bonecollecting, r/ vultureculture, and r/ boneID)— not just in terms of identification, but also tips processing, cleaning, and even preserving stuff.

For someone like me who finds textbooks hard to learn from, the person-to-person dialogue going on over there is REALLY nice.

I find the best way to get good at bone identification is by finding and studying the bones yourself— Buuuuuut if you don’t live around much wildlife, a good alternative is to live vicariously through strangers on the bone subreddits. Turn it into a game, scroll through the submissions and use what you know to try and identify the bones pictured— and if you can’t pinpoint it, someone in the comments has probably given the answer. You pick up on the patterns real quick— and the environment is very learner-friendly! It’s also great for familiarizing yourself with bones you wouldn’t otherwise encounter, species from different continents and such.

This site is very useful for identifying finds of your own: https://boneidentification.com/

OsteoID Bone Identification

http://www.boneid.net/ is also useful once you’re familiar with the basics, it’s good for double-checking specifics once you have a guess.

Our extensive and easy-to-use database will help you identify bones from many common species regardless of your academic training.

[museoftheprophet]

I tried searching but didn't find anything possibly because tumblr is a site run by 3 racoons :( could you possibly say what you do after you find a bone, to clean it?

Gladly!!!

When cleaning bones you just found: It depends on how old the bones are!

If you find anything that’s still a bit fleshy, you always wanna use gloves while handling it— avoid touching your face, and wash your hands thoroughly with soap afterwards. Simple safety measures like that pretty much suffice. You’ll wanna learn about hands-off decomp methods to get rid of the remaining tissue, like maceration or caged above-ground burial. Nature is wonderful at cleaning the flesh off of bones for you, bugs are your friends! Anything processed from fresh-ish will be VERY greasy once you get to the bare bones, so once you reach that stage, you’ll want to toss them in a dish soap bath with GENEROUS amounts of de-greasing dish soap for a few days up to a few weeks (depends on how greasy the bones are). (It’s important to make sure they are 100% fleshless, because the dish soap will kill off a lot of the lovely bacteria needed to decompose the tissues, and it’ll be real hard to remove the flesh without that). How do you know if your bone is done de-greasing? Check in on it— dry it out fully, and make sure it doesn’t feel oily, doesn’t look saturated in yellow, and doesn’t carry an odour. You can always toss it back in the dish soap bath if it needs more time. After de-greasing, a 24-48 hour hydrogen peroxide bath is an optional step you can take to get the bones extra white and disinfect even further!

If you find bones that are already fleshless and evidently old— there’s not much to worry about at all in terms of germs. Most bacteria that’s harmful to us would be carried in bodily-fluids, once it’s only dry bones left, they’re not much more dangerous to touch than like… a rock. A warm water & dish soap bath is still a good idea, to get rid of any stealthy grease hiding beneath the surface— since grease is often what leaves bones with that signature “dead thing” smell, and makes em all yellow and oily feeling. Also take the opportunity to scrub yer bones, get all that dirt off! Again, hydrogen peroxide is optional, I don’t use it personally because I prefer the natural look of dirt-stained bones :3

Whatever you do do NOT use bleach and do NOT boil a dead thing to remove the flesh. Bleach is too harsh and it will compromise the structural integrity of the bone itself, making it all crumbly and flaky and sad. Boiling a dead thing— while it may make the flesh removal process easier— will essentially bake the grease into the bones forever and ever and they’ll be left permanently yellow and oily.

Good luck on your ventures, and stay safe!!!

[carrionhearted]

i plan on putting together a little kit for bone collecting, do you have any suggestions of tools/things i should include in it?

YES I DO!!! Here’s a basic rundown of what’s in my bone hunting bag:

plastic bags of various sizes (compostable ones are great if you can find em). You never know what you’re gonna stumble across/ need to haul back home, so bring an array!

Multiple pairs of rubber gloves, just in case!

A simple hunting knife *and or* a small pair of scissors. (Often used for harvesting fresh bits like paws or claws or wings) (Plus, If something is mummified or slightly fleshy, I prefer to take care of it then and there. Makes transportation way easier)

Hand Sanitizer… I’m bad at remembering to wear gloves.

A small jar *and or* a pocket-sized compartment box. (for teensy fragile bones/ owl pellets/ bugs/ bug wings that’d get all crunched up in a bag, or need to be kept seperate) One of these things:

Wet wipes, optional, I just bring them sometimes because I dig like a maniac and have mud hands afterwards. And for when I forget the gloves step. Don’t forget the gloves step.

Twine, also optional, It just comes in handy sometimes.

A seperate pouch for feathers! I keep a pouch that I can tie to myself, since feathers get all crunched up and bent when put in a bag with other things.

A water bottle, always bring water to stay hydrated, especially if you’re out in the middle of the woods!

This isn’t a tool necessarily, but I HIGHLY recommend having google maps on your phone. It has saved my ass on many occasions, it’s surprisingly useful for navigating yourself out of a forest you’re lost in. Useful for getting familiar with a forest’s layout beforehand too! Shoutout google maps!

[neeksthenico]

make a cookie

butter

sugar

other sugar

vanilla

chocolate

egg

flour

baking powder

Voting ended onAug 19, 2025

[neeksthenico]

Rawr :p