So this is my pig head. Most people today are generally disgusted by seeing what's underneath the exterior of an animal - it's grizzly, gorey, and even a little spooky - but for me, anatomical specimens like this are akin to what a mechanic sees when they crack open the hood of their favorite make and model: they're the elegant structure of a machine - a once living, breathing, biological machine. They're illuminating, they're beautiful, and through the brilliance of evolution, they're astonishingly well designed. I never get tired of looking at anatomy, in fact, I have a reflexive enthusiasm for it that usually stretches a grin across my face whenever I see it. Through private channels I was recently invited to a facility that prepares animal specimens for research and study. The purpose of the visit was really to drop off my pig head for cleaning (via a resident dermestid beetle colony), but to my delight, there were 2 biologists already there just beginning the specimen prep of a river otter... and joy of joys, I was invited to stay and watch. Below are a few sketches of the hide removal, which was done meticulously and took about 2 hours to complete. The skin will be professionally tanned and a few organ tissue samples were taken for wildlife study. The skeleton was then roughly disarticulated and sent to the beetle room for cleaning. Overall, lovely lady otter appeared to be a very healthy young individual.
This last sketch depicts step 1 of cleaning a skull. Once most of the flesh has been removed (in larger specimens the brain must be extracted also, but since my pig was just a baby, we didn't bother with that step) the skull is placed closely under a bank of lamps, to dry out the remaining tissue and prevent the unpleasantries of decomposition. After the skull is completely dried out, it will be placed into the dermestid colony where many thousands of little mouthparts will delicately strip it bare. Stay tuned for more posts on this process!
Tremendous thanks to Judy, and to Mark, for showing me around and patiently answering a lot of questions.
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