Do people kill animals today solely for the purpose of taxidermy?

There’s some of that going on. It’s kind of sad. Why harm an animal for that?

”Adirondackwannabe” http:// yes just check out the foxes on Ebay. They say theey are from ” prime”, ” young” specimens.

@Earthgirl I love Northern NYS. One thing I don’t love: they use them to decorate their homes. I couldn’t get the link to work.

Which link? Tbe hyena or the taxidermy party?

It wouldn’t surprise me.
I think it’s atrocious and beyond wrong, it is a pathetic example of mans ego and it’s ever incessant quest for yet more “novelty.” Bah! I watched an awesome documentary last night called ” Eye of the Leopard” and over 2000 Leopards are still hunted and killed in Africa every year by big game type hunters. I’d think that this archaic “sport” would be obsolete by now.

@Earthgirl They did work. Although I’m not sure that was a good thing. :)

On the positive side, not so long ago very few people would have had any problem at all with the idea of killing an animal just for decoration. The fact that were horrified that it’s still done is, on the whole, encouraging.

@thorninmud True, always a positive.

Well I’m not a big fan of taxidermy on animals, but I always that it would be awesome to be stuffed instead of buried so I can creep the shit out of people. I would love to be standing in the living room so I could scare my grand children.

I hope not.

thorninmud THe thing is, this was an art, (and it does take an artist of a sort, to do it right) that was dying out with the excepton of Natural History Exhibits in museums. Now it seems to be coming back and I am curious what the appeal is.
Here is just one article talking about “hipster taxidermy”.

I’‘m a little uncomfortable with it, but I really didn’t ask the question to say it’s horrible and the people who do it are horrible. I want to understand what they like about it. I want to understand why it is resurging. Is it just a sort of Steampunk fascination with Victorian science and botany? Is it because we are so worried about the natural world and its preservation? If so, this is a strange way to show it. When I was young you would have been thought to be extremely weird to have a taxidermy hobby.

This is a new generation of young people who grew up with PETA protests and a general societal disapproval of killing animals for sport.

I think some of the carcasses are not killed expressly for taxidermy. It doesn’t bother me as much if it’s a deer because deer are overpopulated. Killing foxes and bears seems worse to me.

I don’t want to scare away people who like taxidermy from answering. I am honestly curious. If you are an artist who uses it, why do you use it? If you are a hobbyist, how did you get involved in it and why do you like it? If you are a hipster, well….just Why? Please explain to me.

Here’s another article

I sure as hell hope not. I mean, I eat meat, but just for taxidermy? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Almost as dumb as animals for fur coats.

Sorry, I just went off. I’m totally against animal cruelty, yet eat meat.

Or wait, would taxidermy be a form of animal cruelty?

“In the early 2000s, people started spending so much of their time in their heads, staring at computer screens, that they felt compelled to collect real, tactile objects that brought them back into the physical world—such as animals that were once alive, with soft fur or feathers, leathery hides or scaly skin, smooth horns and teeth, and even traces of decay that make a connection to the soul of nature and a long-gone past.”

What do you think of this theory?
full article here

blueberrykid That all depends on how you look at it.

This may be slightly off-topic, as it doesn’t deal with intentionally killing animals for this purpose. Mom was friends with the local university’s Ornithology professor. Whenever a bird flew into the windows and died, she would put it in a bag and store it in the freezer until she could pass it on to him.

When I was in Girl Scouts, one of the badges we were in the process of earning was on birds. We took a field trip to the college and this man showed us around the display room where stuffed birds were on display. If I recall correctly, its point was to allow students to study various bird types in different stages of development and seasons, as well as the differences in sexes. This type of learning environment is going to be more helpful than looking at sketches or photos.

@Pied_Pfeffer I have wildlife in my freezer too.
I have kept a frozen flying squirrel to prove they exist out here to unbelievers. haha
Right now I have a baby shrew and the worlds tiniest baby newly hatched lizard I found. My daughter and I are are nature nuts and so I save things to share with her.

We joke about ” Mountain Shrew.”
“Would you like some Mountain Shrew?” lol

Pied_Pfeffer That’s great that your mother helped out with the science education, lol. You wouldn’t find me picking up any dead birds and stashing them in the freezer. I remember that the biology building on my college campus had a small collection of stuffed birds and I used to like looking at them.

One of the articles I linked to mentioned that we now have all these nature shows in high definition that get up close to the living breathing animals but that people seem to want to experience the real thing in a different way. To me it seems like one would get a better education by seeing the nature show in hi-def than by looking a a dead reconstructed carcass. Of course seeing with your own eyes, up close, the scales, the feathers, the teeth has a different sort of impact and reality. Still, you aren’t usually allowed to touch it so that experience is limited too.

For years, people have hunted animals strictly for the purpose of showing them off. I think it’s totally wrong, especially when it’s a “safari hunt” just to bag a lion, tiger, etc… I’ve only ever hunted dove, quail, and deer. If I kill an animal, it’s not for sport; it’s for the meat. And I never shoot unless it’s a clean shot to kill instantly. I despise people who wound animals. If it’s not a clean shot, then don’t fucking shoot.

My real dad has a beautiful buck head on his wall, but he didn’t hunt it for that reason. He hunts for meat. It just so happened that this buck he took down had such a beautiful rack, that he decided to keep it. That’s the only time he’s ever kept one.

I’ve been to the homes of several different people who have “taxidermied” animals all over the house, and I itch to ask them if they actually ate the meat or just abused their human privilege.

I also dislike seeing dead animal heads hanging on walls; but as far as shooting for meat, I know some people who have hunted game in South Africa, and any meat that the hunting camp doesn’t want is given to the local population.

Ego trip is all I can see. It’s why I love to fish, you get to do the battle with nature, on its home turf, not yours, and if you win you can release it and no harm done. Oh yeah, after you have your picture taken with it!

Animals have long been seen as trophies. I don’t think the idea of animal rights is as spread out as one might think. Maybe it’s just not that big a deal to many people.

Taxdermonies always creep me out.

Reminds me of Hotel New Hampshire.

I’ve noticed the resurgence and the hipster connection, too (thanks, Pinterest). It’s really odd, and I have no idea what to make of it. It almost seems like a backlash thing, a reaction to previous generation’s attitudes toward animal cruelty. I really hope people aren’t killing animals just for this purpose, but hell, people still kill animals for fur coats, so it wouldn’t surprise me.

People still wear real fur? I thought everyone with a brain bought faux.

augustlan The article in Collector’s Weekly that I linked to was actually quite good.I love the photos with it that showed how different people are setting up modern day versions of the Victorian “cabinet of curiostities”. Here is the link for that article.

It goes into how Woody Allen used the French taxidermy shop Deyrolle as a setting for his his film Midnight in Paris.