Preservation of whole mammal specimens

If you've got a whole, unsquashed dead creature (the sort you occasionally find mysteriously flaked out on a path), you might want to preserve it whole - rather than going through the rigmarole of divesting it of its skull. I'm talking about something small - a shrew or a mouse perhaps. We have an example of a pickled hedgehog in OJ17.

You would preserve your animal in ethanol, as taxonomic collections of fish would be made. I can provide you with some preservative (usually 70% ethanol, 10% glycerol) but you might want to find a suitable container. You wouldn't want the animal's insides to decay, so I can also offer you a syringe with which to inject the body with more preservative.

A pickled baby panda (CC image Momotarou2012)

Above is an example you probably won't have in your collection (did you know baby pandas have long tails and no markings?). It seems to be mounted on a piece of perspex to hold it straight, but you might not want to be quite so elaborate. As with fish specimens, you should really put the label in with the animal (more information in the link above).

Another technique you could try is freeze-drying. I've not got very much experience of this, but the freeze-dried shrew I made one year was apparently successful (perhaps that's a sentence that's never been written before). I'm led to understand that it's a popular method in America for people who want to preserve their deceased pets. And the advantage is that you can freeze the animal in a life-like pose. So if you want to try this, we can experiment.

(Return to the main list of mammal methods)