There were a lot of owl specimens on display at the museum. Primarily, I enjoyed it for the ability to compare the sizes between the species I haven’t seen in person yet.

Also, while I prefer animals to be alive, these allow me to get much closer than would typically be possible.

With that said, taxidermy seems to have come a very long way over the years.

This Great Horned Owl hunting a skunk was a beautiful twilight diarama that almost looks alive. I took about a dozen pictures of it even though they all came out the same. It was an amazing work, and again, I’d prefer my owls and skunks alive, but this was beautiful for preserved specimens.

Here’s just the owl itself:

While this display scores a 10/10, others were a bit less accurate to what I hope they looked like when they were alive. Let’s review the others and see how others have done in their attempts to preserve these animals.

Note: Didn’t realize just how many there were here until now! My fingers are tired! 😵‍💫

  • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
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    3 months ago

    Ookpik Toy

    Inuktitut word for Snowy Owl.

    Contains no owl and is cute, so 10/10!

    Check out that Wikipedia link for the history. It’s only a few decades old, but has an interesting history.

    • quinacridone@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      I honestly thought I was looking at one of the ‘less accurate’ attempts at taxidermy while scrolling… 🤣

      • anon6789@lemmy.worldOP
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        3 months ago

        After some of them, I wouldn’t blame you!

        It was the last thing I saw walking through the museum and as I walked up I kept thinking to myself “please don’t be real!”

        Now, as something fake, I think it is quite cute. Strange how that works…