What is Ethical Taxidermy?
At Second Life Taxidermy we firmly believe that, 'ethical' taxidermy should be defined as cruelty-free, meaning that no animals suffer for the craft.
Zache and I are ethical taxidermists who are passionate about animals and huge supporters of animal welfare, we have catered for animals in life and death for as long as I can remember, we do not, nor ever will knowingly support harmful methods of obtaining fur, our drive is to restore the beauty of the departed and provide insight into all of the cool and quirky little things that makes the body tick.
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But what exactly does Ethical Taxidermy mean?
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In short, the word 'Ethical' is a broad term referring to what is deemed morally acceptable, it's definition can mean something entirely different to each individual depending on personal views, what one person may consider ethical may be considered inethical to the next.
To give an example, one person may believe that ethical includes only animals of natural death, which immediately rules out road casualties and window strikes -- another may define ethical as pain-free, which rules out illness related passing or a cat captures, not to mention the anonyminity of antiques that have lost their stories with generations of rehoming, it's a very grey label that gives little indication of where a specimen comes from.
So what's your code of ethics?
For us ethical simply means 'Cruelty Free' meaning that the furs/bones we work with haven't been obtained via harmful methods, it is very important to us that animals don't suffer for our craft.. this however covers a variety of sources!
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The majority of animals we work with are road casualties and animals that have passed away of natural causes within the pet community, some are found already deceased in nature. We work with animals that are dispatched and discarded humanely as a means of pest/population control, such as grey squirrels, and rabbits, and specimens that are raised in regulated facilities with welfare in mind, and dispatched humanely for their derivatives, such as rodents and rabbits raised for wholeprey and reptile foods, antique projects may be taken on from time to time.
What happens to the rest of the animal, once the hide is processed? We try to make use of every part of the animal where possible, skulls and bones are processed individually for display or articulation, any un-used fur scraps make up curiosity displays, meat scraps are dried out to provide a filler diet for our clean-up crew (beetle colony) and the remainder of meat, if fresh and uncontaminated, is prepared and donated to be used as food for animals if it can’t be consumed by our own mini-zoo here at home. When pets come in for preservation, they are generally laid to rest or cremated at their families request.
