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Some fun sights and finds over the past few months <3

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Western Conifer Seed Bug

they don’t stink if ur nice to them

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Not vulture culture, but here’s the amazing view i get when i go out <3

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those are human beings, you goddamn ghouls. not pokemon. not seashells. those are human remains and they deserve a respect you’re incapable of giving.

the human skull trade depresses the fuck out of me. those clearly aren’t medical prep, but honestly provenance doesn’t matter to these people. they just hoard human remains, not giving a shit if they were removed from graves or taken without consent. in fact, some of them *prefer* unburied/questionably provenanced remains because they like the patina they develop.

it’d be one thing if they were actually learning from these bones. it’d be one thing if this was an actual educational endeavor. but here you have it right from the horses’ mouth: they collect skulls like seashells. it’s allllll about the aesthetic.

i’m just… so completely done with oddities people.

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I just like the story behind this. On one hand, one piece of misinformation can easily be accepted as fact if it looks appealing enough. Raccoon skulls look more like what you would expect of an animal skull. Instead of the reality where wolf skulls are actually kind of ugly from the front. But this design is made unintentionally far greater because of this. These tattoos were all found under the #wolfskulltattoo tag on instagram

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Was a really cool read if anyone is interested <3

Skull Sunday 3 - Fisher

Welcome to Skull Sunday! Skull Sunday weekly Scicomm post detailing a particular animal species utilizing skulls! Today’s species is the fisher (Pekania pennanti). All pictures are taken by me unless otherwise stated.

Fishers are a species of mustelid (weasel) in the subfamily Guloninae, which also includes martens, wolverines, and tayras. Of these they are most closely related to martens.

Fishers are native to the Continental US and Canada. Within the US they are found in California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and New England through the Mid-Atlantic. In Canada they occur in most provinces and territories; the only regions they are not found in are Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, and Nunavut. Reintroduced populations are found in Southwestern Oregon, Eastern Tennessee, and Central Alberta. There is also an active reintroduction campaign in Western Washington.

Fishers display notable sexual dimorphism, even amongst other mustelids. Male fishers are larger than females in both body length and mass. The most obvious signs of sexual dimorphism are found in the skulls of fishers. Mature male fishers have very large sagittal crests and widely flaring zygomatic arches while females lack the massive crest and have narrower zygomatics. This particular skull belonged to a young adult or subadult male. The crest is present but not as large as a mature male would have.

Fishers, like most other mustelids, are carnivores. They primarily prey on hares, porcupines, squirrels, and small birds and rodents. They are known to also occasionally feed on mushrooms, beechnuts, and berries. Fishers have a dental formula of 3/2, 1/1, 4/4, 1/2. The presence of the fourth premolar distinguishes the species from the genus Mustela. This particular skull is missing the first set of lower premolars (which appears to have happened postmortem or after death) and has an impacted lower left second premolar.

Interspecific combat is known to occur in many species of mustelids, including fishers. Some specimens may display scratch or bite marks on their skulls.

Fishers are considered Least Concern by the IUCN, however some populations are regarded as Endangered. The Pacific Southwest Region population in California is federally listed as Endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The species is also listed as Endangered at a state level in Washington. Conversely, there are trapping seasons for the species in several other states where the population is more stable including Wisconsin and New York.

Thank you for tuning in to the third Skull Sunday! Check back next week for another installment with another species!

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New opossum skull to work on!! Updates on this lovely lil guy as well as the other bones i’ve been working on soon!! <3

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The last post I rbed about the for-profit body dissection without permission is a perfect example of why I'm so wary of macabre oddities and that sort of thing - I love vulture culture and taxidermy and that love comes from an appreciation for biology and anatomy and finding beauty in death because it's a completely natural thing that needs more positivity

When you venture into collecting dead things and ~spooky~ objects for shock value and "ew look it's so creepy lol isn't that weird" territory then I've personally found that a lot of the time ethics tend to get ignored - obviously ethics are different for everyone in this hobby, but there are things that everyone can agree are definitely unethical e.g literal fucking graverobbing which is unfortunately a lot more common than you'd think

Obviously I'm not saying that collecting weird oddities is automatically unethical or anything, but there's a lot of really shady shit with some oddity sellers and ethics CANNOT be ignored when you're dealing with dead things, whether it's human or animal. Personally I can't stand the thought of owning any human remains because so many human skulls on the oddity market are of indigenous people that were graverobbed by some bastard for a quick profit. It just feels so so disrespectful because that was a person and now they've been reduced to some ~creepy aesthetic~

Even things like medical specimens make me uneasy too because again, that's literally a person, and for a bunch of medical specimens, they were also graverobbed in the first place

Anyway I don't know where I'm really going with this post but uh, Graverobbing Is Bad and people need to stop selling literal fucking humans as some ~quirky home decor~

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I don’t believe this is a cat either!! for reference here’s the domestic cat jaw i have <3

hi there! do you know if these are cat bones? my friend is worried that these are her cat

Hello!!! Going off the jaw bone there I wanna say these are Raccoon bones! So yeah, not a cat! Cat mandibles tend to have a lower teeth count (idk if that describes it well) If anyone wants to double check that would be greatly appreciated :)

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It appears i’ll have to expand the shelf soon…

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can anybody help me identify this big ol jaw half?

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I don’t expect to put myself on here much since it’s for my oddities, but i’m the owner of this blog 💕

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threeband garden slug 💕

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various baby teeth

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Final c.at jaw reveal completely dried out and clean <3

07.31.21 - 08.09.21

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C.at partial jaw all cleaned up and whitened, based on the shape possibly male.

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Silverspotted Tiger Moth <3