What is taxidermy? Detailed answer

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What is taxidermy? Detailed answer

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What is taxidermy?

The animals you see in natural history museums are the work of taxidermists. The same can be said about reptiles and birds, about fish, which proud fishermen hang on their walls. We think of them as "stuffed animals" and in most cases this is exactly what taxidermy does.

Taxidermy is the art of making stuffed birds, animals, fish and reptiles. It has been around for about 300 years, and the earliest known effigy was a stuffed rhinoceros made in the sixteenth century. When an animal dies, its internal organs and other body parts begin to decompose.

In order to preserve the animal in such a way that it looks real and "alive", the insides must be removed. Then the appearance of the bird, fish or animal can be preserved. The job of the taxidermist is to mount the "appearance" of the animal on the frame in such a way that the color, structure and overall appearance is preserved, and that it all looks natural.

Let's see how a stuffed animal is made, using the example of a large animal - a deer. As soon as the body of the animal reaches the taxidermist, he takes measurements of various parts of the body, after which the skin is carefully removed. The skin is well salted in order to preserve it until the moment when it gets into the taxidermist's workshop. All soft tissues and muscles are cut off. The bones are cleaned and the entire skeleton is preserved if possible. The skin is tanned so that it does not tear and so that its hairline is preserved.

Thus, the taxidermist has the skin and bones of the animal, as well as carefully taken measurements. He puts the skeleton in the required position, using props. Then wet clay is laid out over the skeleton. A taxidermist makes an accurate clay model of an animal in compliance with the shape and dimensions.

Gypsum is then applied over the clay mold, resulting in an artificial body. In conclusion, a tanned skin is stretched over the artificial body. The eyes are made of glass, and oil paints are used to restore faded colors. Now you have an animal that looks natural and alive, and you can exhibit it. Making stuffed birds, fish and amphibians is done differently, but the basic principles are the same.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

What is plankton?

The word "plankton" comes from the Greek word, which means "wandering", "going with the flow". Plankton is a floating living mass made up of billions of tiny living organisms. Some of these organisms, such as tiny green plants, always remain plankton. Others, such as fish, lobsters, make up the plankton while they are in the embryonic stage. Sometimes in the composition of plankton there are large jellyfish or such small creatures that cannot even be seen through a conventional microscope. But all the plankton can stay afloat and live together, drifting with the flow.

The smallest plankton organisms are single-celled plants, microscopic algae. One of the most numerous varieties of such algae is called diatoms, or flint. In two liters of water there can be up to a million of them. The animal life of plankton is quite interesting. One of its species is the pear-shaped copepod (copepod means "copepod"). The copepod swims very fast, making sharp, jerky movements with its tiny paws, as if rowing on oars. The largest copepod is less than 13 mm long.

Young molluscs of various species also make up the plankton. Among them are shrimp, crabs, lobsters and sea ducks (a type of crustacean) living in salt water, as well as lobsters and water fleas - inhabitants of fresh water. The larvae, or developing juveniles, of these mollusks are tiny, microscopic, and at this stage of development cannot move independently, and therefore drift along with other plankton.

Other mollusks, such as snails, mussels, behave in the same way. They are part of the plankton at the first stage of their development. Plankton may include insect eggs and the larvae of many fish. In fresh water, plankton often includes developing insects.

Flying flies, dragonflies, water beetles and many other insects lay their eggs in the water. When the larvae hatch from the nest, they live and feed on plankton plants. This is only part of what makes up plankton. You see how many animals and plants are included in it and how interesting it is to study them.

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Robots will sew clothes for the military 22.06.2012

Defense science agency DARPA wants to revolutionize clothing manufacturing by fully automating the process.

The Pentagon has provided a $1,25 million grant to develop a concept for fully automating the sewing process. Initially, this will completely change the process of providing the army with uniforms, which in the United States spend about $ 4 billion annually. In the future, the new technology will spread to the civilian commercial market, which will make the biggest revolution in sewing since the invention of the needle. Automated lines will be able to produce huge quantities of cheap clothes without employing thousands of seamstresses from developing countries.

Despite the giant leap forward in various fields of science and technology, sewing clothes still requires a lot of manual labor. Most often, the poorest people on the planet are involved in this exhausting work, who receive mere pennies for their work. The contractors who make military clothing for the US Army alone use the almost free labor of more than 50 workers. Also, professional athletes who earn millions of dollars a year flaunt clothes made by poor children from countries like Bangladesh. At the same time, the cost of clothing in stores in many countries is very high.

The Pentagon is encouraged by the success of some companies that have developed the first prototypes of seamstress robots. For example, SoftWear Automation Inc., a DARPA grant, has developed a promising automated system that relies on very precise monitoring of fabric structure to move it in the right direction and stitch it in the right order. According to the concept of SoftWear Automation, a serial seamstress robot will be equipped with manipulators for capturing pieces of fabric and machine vision capable of identifying individual sections of future clothing.

The robot will solve a simple "puzzle" and use suction cups to place the fabric in the correct order under the sewing machine needle. The output will be a finished item of clothing, and its design can be easily changed using modern computer modeling technologies. According to the developers, the automated sewing system will save billions of dollars for the army and be able to sew clothes at a cost lower than in China or any other country with very low labor costs.

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