die Toten Fischotter

Hello I am River, aka Fischy (they/them) Michigan, USA zoologist/illustrator  (Main blog) body, a, a:hover { cursor:url(https://40.media.tumblr.com/fd699bd7e0c39f21679b82505aff9e8e/tumblr_inline_nz2337dmqC1rru9x7_75sq.png), auto }

[twulfs]

19/31 💀

[drafthearse]

wax model horse heads, University Museum Utrecht. [x] [x] [x]

[janedoemayb]

@segmentedleg

[beardless-bearded-vulture]

Fox found frozen in ice (x)

[png2003]

Picture taken by myself while on a walk. Did some minor color grading on it.

[parrotsinart]

Mascarene Parrot by Nick Bibby

The Mascarene parrot is an extinct parrot from the Mascarene island.

[endlingmusings]

In 1924, a mother Sumatran rhinoceros is shot and killed in the Pegu Range of present-day Myanmar, while her young calf is captured alive and sent to the Yangon Zoo (then known as the Rangoon Zoo). Following his death shortly thereafter, his body is reunited with that of his mother at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Today, the over 100-year-old pair remain on display, tucked away in a corner of the museum's Hall of Asian Mammals. The aged placard that accompanies their taxidermied remains not only minces words on the tragedy of their collection, but leaves out that the pair represent the critically endangered, if not already extinct, northern subspecies of Sumatran rhinoceros, Dicerorhinus sumatrensis lasiotis.

[ The taxidermied remains of a female Northern Sumatran rhinoceros and her calf, photographed by myself, endlingmusings. ]

[beardless-bearded-vulture]

Shoutout to bird dioramas with chicks, big fan of seeing the elegant adult birds right next to their scruffy yelling babies

[pacificremains]

Tiny lizard/amphibian club! L to R: juvenile green tree frog, western skink, baby bearded dragon, and baby anole. On the left are the horns of a Jackson's chameleon for scale. All natural deaths.

[beardless-bearded-vulture]

North american diorama at the natural history museum in Oslo! The bear was HUGE

[roriferis]

Today I went to the science museum. It was basically empty. You might think of course it was, it's a natural history museum, shouldn't you be doing things specific to Florence? Buddy this museum has had the same badly-taxidermied hippo for three hundred years, and for a hundred years before that a different museum had it. Multiple European scholars with varying levels of hippo expertise have tried to improve it over the centuries. You can't see stuff like that just anywhere. The description mostly just talks about everything that's wrong with the hippo, and how the current curators have worked to preserve the different layers of alterations and attempted fixes, while also stabilizing the specimen:

Its unnatural position and unappealing details make us suppose that its taxidermists have never seen it live. For example, although it is a digitigrade animal, the position of its feet was prepared like that of a plantigrade. [...] Two different approaches thus coexisted for over two centuries: a seventeenth-century one "cabinet of curiosities" like and a late eighteenth century one, with a naturalistic aim. [...] Therefore, a restoration, completed in 2012, was necessary which highlighted the two different approaches of preparation, allowing to enhance its original appearance, but also preserving the beautiful wax modeling reconstruction of the details of the head.

Here we have, in part, a history of "exotic" European zoological inquiry in microcosm. Everybody's all oh let's go see the important church, or the other important church, even though the line is an hour long, and no one wants to look at the fucked up hippo with me.

Also, I want to be clear: this was a great museum and I think more people should go and would have a great time there even without knowing or caring much about the history of science (or even being as easily amused by taxidermy as I am). Their current exhibit juxtaposes actual historical taxidermy with modern art of fantastical medieval-esque imagined creatures. And their collection of wax anatomical models is fascinating (and quite famous). They have a lovely mineral collection, too.

Also if you like me are easily lost, and you get confused about how to leave, you can just follow the wheelchair-accessible path because it's the only one you can find that leads to the exit! And then you get to see a surprise giraffe in a corner by the elevator, away from all of the other taxidermy. Why not!

[beardless-bearded-vulture]

Amazing horse shouldermount by Artistry Untamed. I think it's one of the best non-museum horse taxidermy I've seen so far!

[beardless-bearded-vulture]

My favorite part of the exhibit: the very last quagga! The mare died on the 12th of august in 1883 in the zoo in Amsterdam, without anyone realising she was an endling. There are only 23 taxidermy specimens of quaggas, and a lot of them aren't on display due to their fragility

This is one of the two taxidermy quaggas in the collection of Naturalis, and has recently been restored

Link to a short video on the instagram page of Naturalis about the restoration, where you can see some of the damage that had to be restored

[drawnsnake]

Bone collecting

(Edit: I drew a bird because they are usually legal&safe to collect where I live. If you are in the USA, be mindful of the MBTA and bird flu.)

[weepingveil]

[pacificremains]

I'm fairly sure this coyote survived being shot in the muzzle. There's a small entry wound and a huge exit wound that took out several teeth. Both are well healed. Coyotes are made of extra lives I swear. And people suck.

[snototter]

A white-backed vulture (Gyps africanus) sits on a hippo skull in Maasai Mara National Park, Kenya

by praveen pandian

[totefischy]

a beautiful Swainson’s Thrush, sadly killed by a window strike. i left it to rest under some pines.