r/animalid • u/CosmicCatPerson • Jun 26 '24
Not really taxidermy but preserved skin, what animal is this? 🧱🫎 TAXIDERMY ID REQUEST 🫎🧱
I just got this from a thrift shop while on vacation in Daytona, FL. I think it's a type of weasel but I don't know which.
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u/Skyfish-disco 🩺🐾 ZOOLOGIST / ZOOKEEPER 🐾🩺 Jun 26 '24
This has gotta be that nut obsessed prehistoric squirrel from Ice Age.
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u/Led_Zeppole_73 Jun 26 '24
Weird, mink fur/body but long fox snout.
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u/iowafarmboy2011 Jun 26 '24
The head could absolutely be made to look like a fox as that would fetch a higher price than a mustelid fir, not to mention the look would've been more fashionable.
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u/Led_Zeppole_73 Jun 26 '24
How exactly did they stretch a pug-nosed mink into the long snout of a fox without some kind of damage to the hide or thinning of the fur? I’ve dabbled a lot in tanning and hide prep, just trying to figure it out.
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u/iowafarmboy2011 Jun 26 '24
No stretching needed as im sure you are aware you cant really stretch tanned fur too much without distorting it or flat out ruining it.
Designers would simply trim the fur to make the face more narrow, mold it around a roughly fox-shaped mold, glue it around the mold to preserve the shape of the head and then put fake eyes closer together than where the mink actual eyes would've been. This was incredibly common practice for the fashionable fur stoles women wore in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Here's an antique mink stole that shows this style of fur a little better than OPs example.
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u/FancyRatFridays Jun 27 '24
That link is a great example of the style! If you want really bad examples, look no further than Goodwill's online auction site... there are all kinds of monstrosities on there. I've seen mink stoles with completely fake snouts affixed to the front, mink whose heads have obviously been removed and their necks reshaped around a snout to make a "face," multiple mink sewn together to make a sixteen-legged headless monstrosity right out of "The Thing," and so on.
I gotta be honest... I understand the appeal of furs in general, but I don't really see why the stoles-with-faces ever had appeal. Was leaving the face & legs on a way of bragging about how many furs you could wear at once? Were they considered "cute," like carrying around a plushie?
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u/Wildwood_Weasel 🦦 Mustelid Enthusiast 🦡 Jun 26 '24
Probably a combo of thinning the hide and stretching it over a form before drying, if I had to guess.
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u/Squirrel-Lee Jun 26 '24
Might be mink? That's a type of weasel. But, yeah... the face is super weird. It kinda looks like it has googly eyes 👀
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u/Remote-Tap-2659 Jun 26 '24
Agree that it's a mink. Mink are commonly raised for fur and this is one of their standard colors. These stoles* made out of whole pelts with faces, feet and tails were somewhat common in the mid-twentieth century.
*if anyone isn't familiar with the term "stole," it refers to a sort of detached collar that functions like a scarf. They often have hooks on the back so that it will fasten around your neck.
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u/Terrible-Food-855 Jun 27 '24
Im from daytona beach lol, how was your visit outside of obtaining this creature?
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u/CosmicCatPerson Jun 27 '24
Very nice, very rainy but nice
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u/Terrible-Food-855 Jun 28 '24
Yea it gets rainy forsure, i used to work at the crab place riptides for 10 years before i joined the military, glad you got a souvenir though!
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u/Goliath04 Jun 26 '24
Possibly an Arctic Fox
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u/iowafarmboy2011 Jun 26 '24
I considered this first but I don't think it is. The hind paws and tail tell me it's definitely a mustelid.
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u/Goliath04 Jun 26 '24
Now that I look at the ears, I see a mustelid too. It's too big for an Ermine for I agree with the other people that it's a mink.
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u/Prosperous_Petiole Jun 26 '24
I used to see few of the same kind when I was working for some thrifting shops, they are mink but their face is just that : bad taxidermy (and for some mysterious reasons they ALL look like this lol)