What is TAXIDERMY and why do scientists do it?

There are many ways of preserving, or saving, an animal’s body for study. Some animals in the Museum – like birds and mammals – are preserved by removing the soft insides of the animal’s body and preparing and stuffing the skins. This process of keeping the outside of an animal’s body and filling the insides to preserve the animal is called taxidermy.

At the Nature Museum, many taxidermied specimens are part of our collection. Collections are an essential part of a museum’s research and education functions and also serve an important role in environmental conservation. Specimens – individual pieces from a collection – can be excellent tools for connecting people to a topic of study or interest, whether they’re displayed in a museum or used in educational programming. They also allow people to have an up-close look at something that they couldn’t otherwise access. Preserving and displaying specimens in different ways can tell us different things about the lives of the plants and animals in a collection.