Coming soon, country's first taxidermy centre at SGNP

[Guest guest]

>India will soon have the first-ever taxidermy centre in Mumbai's

>Sanjay Gandhi National Park - a workshop where carcasses of wild

>animals from across the country's zoos and sanctuaries would be sent

>for preservation and display.

 

 

This is very difficult to believe, for several reasons.

 

First of all, India is littered wherever tigers used to live

with stuffed tiger's heads mounted on display, along with the heads

of everything with horns that ever passed for wild and could be shot

by British officers or U.s. trophy hunters before trophy hunting was

banned.

 

Second, India also has many natural history museums filled

with stuffed bird specimens, & sometimes the stuffed carcasses of

other species.

 

Third, these legions of stuffed stiffs must be maintained.

Without routine maintenance, taxidermic mounts do what is natural &

decompose.

 

Fourth, stuffed examples of reptiles are commonly offered

for sale to tourists in India -- illegally, but commonly enough to

indicate that there are probably at least as many practicing

taxidermists in India as gents who know how to land a flying carpet

without upsetting anyone's beer.

 

Fifth, sending the carcass of any wild animal from a zoo or

sanctuary across India to Mumbai would probably result in the carcass

arriving without teeth, tusks, claws, hide, feathers, & bones.

Often these parts disappear even before the zoos or sanctuaries even

complete their post mortems.

 

There is some educational value in studying a stuffed mount,

but usually more can be discerned about the mentality of those who

exhibit the dead than about the nature of the living species.

 

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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