NAVIGATION

One of the first instruction manuals for taxidermy was published by Belon in 1555, but decoys used by bird trappers probably consisted of stuffed and crude mummified specimens long before. The first major use of taxidermy was to preserve the specimens collected by explorers and brought back from across the world. Not all the live specimens captured survived the journey and although shells, corals, insects and some fish could be dried successfully, the larger mammals and birds posed a bigger problem to preserve. Thus, most of the old European Renaissance cabinets of curiosities contained those exotic specimens most easily dried rather than ‘stuffed’, such as crocodile skins, armadillos, chameleons, sawfish blades and pufferfish. All of these were more resistant to insect attack than taxidermied birds and mammals, and so some still survive in old collections such as those that can be seen at Ambras Castle in Innsbruck in Austria.