kinda gross-dead animals

[Lrptls]

iv always been interested in animal skulls or even full skeletons and trying to put them together some how. or finding dead snakes for their teeth or even a rattle on a rattle snake. just one question...what exactly do i have to do to get the bones? i know it has been done by otheres, do i have to totaly gut the animal and pull meat and every thing off just to get them? or i was thinking let them naturaly decay outside but other animals would most likely take them and eat parts or whatever. and then iv heard people boil the bones? i guess thats to get all the rest of the icky stuff off. i hate to see them but there are just dead aniamls galore where i live and collecting some skulls and skeletons would be pretty neato. would even be very willing to give some to schools for educational stuff. thanks for any anwers.

[Lrptls]

well i found a website that says they use a certain species of beetle to eat the animals all except for the bones. i forget what there called but does any one know any thing about them?

["Red-eye"_Matt]

I have heard from wildlife officers that when they want to get the skeletons from dead animals they take the body and put it on an ant hill and then come back a few weeks later and it is picked clean. Never tried it but it makes sense to me as I don't believe ants would be able to eat the bones.

[butch29]

Meal worms do a great job at cleaning meat off bones.I have tried it with a rabbit.

[Shad0w]

There is a better way of doing it...
In the lab, we usually boiled the carcas... the meat will just fall off the bones leaving you with a sanitized specimen :)

[joey]

boiling the stuff is nasty and smells AWFUL! Best way, I've found, is to just take the carcass outside and bury it for awhile---nature does a better job than anything else. THEN after the bones are cleaned of tissue and what not get a bucket of part bleach part water and let them soak for abot 1/2 hour, rinse and set them in the sun for a day or two----works every time.

[BOAS_N_PYTHONS]

BOB the CSI agent, lol.....anyone complete the boiling with some veggies and spices for a stew, lol :)

[pythonmdk]

maggots, ants, or carion beetles all do a good job, just make sure you put is somewhere that say a raccoon or other scavanger can't walk off with it.
Good luck.
John

[Shad0w]

LOL Tony U clown!!! :)

[Lrptls]

thanks every one. around here there are plenty of ants and i breed my own mealworms. perhaps ill try both and see who does a better job. i think for a while i will be more into collecting skulls but if i wanted to put a skeleton together how do people do that? glue? thanks

[cheech]

i just feel i have to point out that jeffrey dahlmer started out playing with rotting animals and keeping there skulls.............

[joey]

hey-----that's right.



ew.

[spidergecko]

The beetles are Dermestid beetles. Interestingly enough, these are the beetles that are sometimes found in boxes of crickets when you buy large lots.

[Lrptls]

is that what those are?! i get them all the time, doesnt even have to be boxes of crickets. i always wonderd what they were, they just seem to die in the cricket containor.

[pythonmdk]

That was a different kind of beetle I was talking about but that's pretty cool I didn't know those guys ate carion too, Thats pretty cool, The ones I was talking about was about 1.5 cm long by 1 cm wide and has 4 orange spots, I think there are 2 natural types of carion beetles in Ontaio, I've only found one type though, they do a good job on mice from what I've seen.
John