Taxidermy is known as the art of preparing, stuffing and mounting the skin or body of an animal. For some people, it is celebrating the natural world, and for others, it’s seen as cruelty and violation. Are they real animals or not? Are they killed for it to be done or do the animals die of a natural cause?
The Animal Welfare Society recently received an email from a young lady who lives in Durbanville, who saw a selection of images of baby mice, rats and a snake case in epoxy resin on one of her ex-classmates Instagram posts.
What bothered her the most and prompted her to voice her concerns was whether or not the animals are cast alive or how they were killed. The Animal Welfare shared her concerns.
She claims that when confronted, the teenager argued that this “is his version of art”. The boy apparently keeps snakes and she assumed the baby rats and mice may have been “spare snake food”, and remains uncertain of the origin of the snake.
“Our Mandate does not extend to judging what constitutes acceptable forms of art. There are those who enjoy decorating their homes with stuffed or encapsulated dead animals. That is their choice,” says the Animal Welfare Society of SA.
The only concern that the Animal Welfare Society has is whether or not these animals (and those still to adorn his collection) suffered any form of cruelty bearing in mind that before these animals were encapsulated in their resin graves they were alive.
Picture: Supplied