The main subject of this thesis is the taxidermy. The taxidermal mounts will be used as a teaching tools in teaching practice. The thesis is a comprehensive guide for creation of the taxidermal mounts of birds and mammals. There are described both old and modern methods of taxidermy in this thesis. Thesis is enriched with news from contemporary foreign literature. The result of thesis is 8 mounts (6 birds, 2 mammals) which will use as teaching tools during teaching of biology. Key words: taxidermy, preparation, bird, mammal, teaching tool

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This thesis deals with the preparation of dermoplastic materials of birds and mammals. They are described in detail specific methods of preparation from the collection of material to its final treatment. The first section summarizes the theoretical knowledge concerning preparation of dermoplastic models and osteological material. The second part is dedicated to knowledge survey of high school and primary school students concerning recognition of birds and mammals dermoplastic models. The results are processed by descriptive statistics. Keywords: taxidermy, dermoplastic models and osteological material, skulls, teeth, birds, mammals.

This work deals with vertebrates bone preparation of birds and mammals to enrich the science classes at secondary school. It also expands the collection of vertebrate skeletons at the department of biology and enviromental studies. The display would be enriched by Talpa europea, apodemus sylvaticus, rattus rattus, alectoris rufa and skulls of octodon degus. In this work there are described ways how to prepare taxidermy and bone preparation is described from the beginning of collecting vertebrates, then methods of preparation (maceration, hot water maceration, dermestidae bettles and more) including degreasing and bleaching and final treatment not the get it damaged by insect. This work is completed by survey. There are involved teachers of biology at elementary schools. The idea of questionnaire was to find out what's equipment like and how often do teachers use nature products to enrich the lessons. Key words - taxidermy, osteological preparation, birds, mammals

Children find decomposing bodies on a beach. A girl becomes a ghost and finds someone. A dog dies but its owner is out of his mind and eating waffles. Sheep are a perfect species. A woman experiences a pregnancy that is out of this world! A raccoon dies and you watch its body break down. A father does his best fathering. You take a textual road-trip tour of America’s oldest hobby. A trauma is slowed down, picked apart. A soupfin shark is dissected and you watch. A homestead becomesa ghost town in rural Oregon. Joseph Beuys is an artist. A sister falls in love with an object, has a difference of opinion with her sister.

As taxidermy increased in prominence in American natural history museums in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the idea of trying to replicate nature through mounts and displays became increasingly central. Crude practices of overstuffing skins gave way to a focus on the artistic modelling of animal skins over a sculpted plaster and papier-mâché form to create scientifically accurate and aesthetically pleasing mounts, a technique largely developed at Ward's Natural Science Establishment in Rochester, New York. Many of Ward's taxidermists utilized their authority in taxidermy practices as they formally organized into the short-lived Society of American Taxidermists (1880-1883) before moving into positions in natural history museums across the United States. Through examinations of published and archival museum materials, as well as historic mounts, I argue that taxidermists at these museums reached an unspoken consensus concerning how their mounts would balance pleasing aesthetics with scientific accuracy, while adjusting their practices as they considered the priorities of numerous stakeholders. Taxidermists negotiated through administrative priorities, legacies of prominent craftsmen, and a battery of instructive materials, all claiming some authority as to what proper taxidermy could—and should—be. The shifts in taxidermy authority revealed truths about what taxidermy could mean, questions of how taxidermists identified themselves within the profession and to outsiders, practices for presenting taxidermy to museum visitors, and techniques for representing nature. This project traces the paths of consensus for developing techniques to construct museum taxidermy from the 1883 end of the S.A.T until the founding of the Technical Section of the American Association of Museums (AAM) in 1929. Two critics who book-end this project—Robert Wilson Shufeldt, an army doctor, naturalist, and museum critic, and Lawrence Vail Coleman, director of preparation and exhibition, American Museum of Natural History, and director of the American Association of Museums—identified similar characteristics that suggest a like-minded approach as to what constituted proper museum taxidermy among museum taxidermists. Museum taxidermy carried with it a set of characteristics: accuracy and a pleasing aesthetic for Shufeldt; feeling, unity, action, balance, reality, and size for Coleman. These two sets of criteria complemented each other as they reified consensus. What complicated this finding was that taxidermists themselves did not acknowledge them specifically, only relating to them in passing, if at all. Regardless, taxidermic practice seemed to be consistent across these decades. This study complicates the nature of scientific representation, in that it focuses a great deal on its artistry. Museum taxidermy is supposed to be an instructional tool, guiding museum visitors in the way they approach nature, and especially how they see animals, and focusing on teaching the science of animal behavior, biodiversity, and habitat, to name a few. It is a scientific object, representing the most up-to-date research in the field, but consensus surrounding it is not scientifically measurable. Instead, taxidermy consensus happened in hallways and back rooms (both literal and metaphorical), with little written down, and the mounts as the most substantial evidence that is had been achieved. Nevertheless, taxidermists negotiated the array of stakeholders present—museum administrators, naturalists, collectors, and the public—as they fashioned mounts that were both accurate and aesthetically pleasing representations of animal lives. / Doctor of Philosophy / In this project I look at museum taxidermy in United States natural history museums, from the 1880s to 1930s. In that 50-year span, taxidermy practices coalesced around a primary technique for mounting animal skins, using a wooden form and papier-mâché as the structure for stretching the skin over it. But there was more to this consensus than using the same techniques, as two critics who book-end this project—Robert Wilson Shufeldt, an army doctor, naturalist, museum critic, etc., and Lawrence Vail Coleman, director of preparation and exhibition, American Museum of Natural History, and director of the American Association of Museums—identified similar characteristics that suggest a like-minded approach as to what constituted proper museum taxidermy among museum taxidermists. I argue in this project that taxidermists reached an unspoken consensus around their craft that balanced scientific accuracy with a pleasing aesthetic, to achieve mounts that would be both scientifically meaningful and not off-putting to museum visitors. Museum taxidermy carried with it a set of characteristics: accuracy and a pleasing aesthetic for Shufeldt; feeling, unity, action, balance, reality, and size for Coleman. And these two complement each other as they reify consensus. What complicated this finding was that taxidermists themselves did not acknowledge them specifically, only relating to them in passing, if at all. Regardless, taxidermy seemed to be consistent across these decades. This study complicates the nature of scientific representation, in that it focuses a great deal on its artistic nature. Museum taxidermy is supposed to be an instructional tool, guiding museum visitors in the way they approach nature, and especially how they see animals. Museum taxidermy generally shies away from terrifying visitors with animal size and ferocity, focusing instead on teaching the science of animal behavior, biodiversity, and habitat, to name a few. In this sense, it is a scientific object, representing the most up-to-date research in the field. Consensus in the realm of taxidermy, and in scientific representation more broadly, is not scientific consensus, but more consistent with an artistic approach, like a posteriori recognitions of characteristics unique to artists or artistic movements. Taxidermy consensus happened in hallways and back rooms, with little written down, and the mounts as the most substantial evidence. Nevertheless, taxidermists negotiated the array of stakeholders present—museum administrators, naturalists, collectors, and the public—as they consistently made these mounts both accurate and aesthetically pleasing. And they still make sense when we see them, as they can be repurposed to tell new stories consistent with current understandings of animal lives.

The thesis presents methodology of creating whole-fish dermoplastic models. It is primarily intended for teachers of natural history and biology. The results are based on mapping out both modern and traditional methods of fish taxidermy. By empirical verification and introduction of new methods, a comprehensive manual of fish taxidermy was created. It can serve as a useful didactic tool. Methodology also describes the issue of obtaining and preserving fish specimen. Profound knowledge of fish anatomy is a necessary prerequisite for specimen taxidermy, thus methodology also includes anatomical overview and guidelines for fish anatomical dissection. The output of the practical part of the thesis are dermoplastic fish models which became part of the specimen collection at the Department of Biology and Environmental Studies at the Faculty of Pedagogics at Charles University, where they are meant to be used for educational purposes. Methodological part of the thesis evaluates the experience gained during the process of model creation. Certain recommendations regarding suitability of particular fish species for taxidermy, material and tools required, choice of method and its advantages and disadvantages, were made. The thesis discusses several specific technologies, such as producing eyes for the...

This dissertation explores the ways in which practices of killing animals in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Canada shaped humans’ perceptions of self and place. Analyzing the multivalent meanings of animal death in wild animal stories, sport hunting, photography, taxidermy, and meat eating, I argue that killing animals was integral to the expansion of settler colonialism in the dominion, materially facilitating the extension of agriculture and industry, and rhetorically legitimizing claims to conquest over indigenous peoples and wild landscapes. But humans’ self-definitions through animal death were not straightforward tales of mastery. Increasingly aware of the disappearance of wildlife from the dominion’s forests, less dependent upon wildlife for subsistence, women and men attributed greater cultural, political, and economic value to the nation’s animals, empathizing with animals and condemning animal extinction. Expressing a sense of guilt over human culpability in the vanishing of wild species, then, humans sought ways of defeating the ravages of modernity by preserving traces of animals in material, representational forms, using encounters with animals as means of defining a sense of self and nation. Fictional stories of animals proliferated, sport hunting soared in popularity, and taxidermied animals adorned many walls. Contemporaries killed animals as a means of legitimizing colonial occupation of newly settled land and asserting mastery over nature, then, but they also regretted their role in precipitating the disappearance of animals from nature. In reconciling this paradox, human and animal engaged in an ongoing process of co-constitution, defining and redefining shifting boundaries of kinship and otherness in a myriad of ways. Such paradoxical meanings of animal death emerged when humans were no longer reliant upon wild animals for survival. As such, I conclude this study by analyzing an important counterpart to wild animal death—the slaughtering of domestic animals as meat. Eating commercially produced meat increasingly defined one’s status as a modern subject within a technologically advanced and civilized nation, the transition from eating wild animals to domestic animals symbolizing a sense of success in overcoming the challenges of settlement in a colonial landscape.

This dissertation explores the ways in which practices of killing animals in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Canada shaped humans’ perceptions of self and place. Analyzing the multivalent meanings of animal death in wild animal stories, sport hunting, photography, taxidermy, and meat eating, I argue that killing animals was integral to the expansion of settler colonialism in the dominion, materially facilitating the extension of agriculture and industry, and rhetorically legitimizing claims to conquest over indigenous peoples and wild landscapes. But humans’ self-definitions through animal death were not straightforward tales of mastery. Increasingly aware of the disappearance of wildlife from the dominion’s forests, less dependent upon wildlife for subsistence, women and men attributed greater cultural, political, and economic value to the nation’s animals, empathizing with animals and condemning animal extinction. Expressing a sense of guilt over human culpability in the vanishing of wild species, then, humans sought ways of defeating the ravages of modernity by preserving traces of animals in material, representational forms, using encounters with animals as means of defining a sense of self and nation. Fictional stories of animals proliferated, sport hunting soared in popularity, and taxidermied animals adorned many walls. Contemporaries killed animals as a means of legitimizing colonial occupation of newly settled land and asserting mastery over nature, then, but they also regretted their role in precipitating the disappearance of animals from nature. In reconciling this paradox, human and animal engaged in an ongoing process of co-constitution, defining and redefining shifting boundaries of kinship and otherness in a myriad of ways. Such paradoxical meanings of animal death emerged when humans were no longer reliant upon wild animals for survival. As such, I conclude this study by analyzing an important counterpart to wild animal death—the slaughtering of domestic animals as meat. Eating commercially produced meat increasingly defined one’s status as a modern subject within a technologically advanced and civilized nation, the transition from eating wild animals to domestic animals symbolizing a sense of success in overcoming the challenges of settlement in a colonial landscape.

The thesis briefly describes some techniques of preparation which should lead to creating ornithological dermoplastic preparations and their use in education and biology. These techniques are shown on several bird species. The thesis can be also used as a instruction for creating ornithological dermoplastic bird preparations. It shows some problems of preparation technice. The main goal of the thesis is creating a real ornithological preparations which are, used for education on Pedagogical Faculty of Charles University in Prague. Key words: teaching practices, preparation, taxidermy, birds, ornithological preparation