All language subtitles for Stuffed.2019.720p.AMZN.WEBRip.800MB.x264-GalaxyRG.srt - eng(2)

You know, you go around a
cocktail party,

people say what
they do.

At first they
think I'm joking.

- It's somewhere between
a hobby and an addiction.

Sculpting an animal is
intriguing, it's fascinating.

- I was blown away by the beauty
of the material.

- Taxidermists do what they do,
not because they see death.

They do what they do because
they see life.

I am definitely a bird addict.

Birds are just so much fun
because I don't have to know the
pose before I finish the bird.

It's playing, it's discovery.

I just noticed he was doing this
funny little thing where his
head was tilted.

And I actually
kinda really like it.

I was like oh I think he wants
to tilt his head.

Um I think he
wants to be kinda curious.

This bird is a superb starling.

And I just really like these
guys 'cause they're super
dynamic,

and I can really do something
kinda fun and,
and funny with them.

They have these big long legs
for this small bird,

and these fun little pantaloons
that I want to make sure show.

These are called
the tail coverts,

these little white
tush feathers.

I call it the tush plush.

I like to make sure
that that looks good.

Birds are design.

They are dressed up.

They look certain ways to
attract each other.

And that is fashion.

- I get to study nature.

And that is the most satisfying
thing in the world.

I'm from Zimbabwe,
as well as South Africa.

The art of taxidermy is the
combination of being an artist

and being a naturalist.

You've got to understand how to
capture that expression.

I started leaning
towards doing big cats.

You know, the African lion,

it's always sorta captivated me
since I was a child.

You find a special bond with
wildlife and animals

because you're viewing
them in a different light.

It's an ongoing study.

You, you,
you'll never get it right.

It'll never look real.

- We don't want
to duplicate nature;

we just want to
make something unique.

- All the stuff we work
with is all antiques.

- We sort of make objects and
taxidermy is a part of it.

It's not our main goal to
reproduce an animal.

We just like to make cool stuff.

We have a history
in art direction.

And when we start learning the
craft of taxidermy,

we that took into it.

Instead of what you see in
normal taxidermy

that it's all based on nature,

we work after the
17th century painters,

who sort of portraited these
animals in a way

that all the features of those
really weird animals show.

- The old masters,
when they make statues,

when they portray a
guy picking an apple,

he's not just doing this

but he's doing the really fancy
pose, showing all his muscles.

- That's more or less
what we try to do.

- Showing off,

- I don't really know what it is
that makes a person

get interested in taxidermy.

I, I think you're born with it.

I was born in Switzerland.

So I like to think of myself
more as a Swiss taxidermist.

I actually started doing
taxidermy when I
was eight years old.

So I've been doing it
for 15 years now.

My parents put up with a lot.

They threatened to make me quit
taxidermy several times

cause it was just overwhelming.

I was always just
obsessed with leopards

Leopards have been
my lifelong addiction.

I pretty much raised cubs, like
grew up around leopards,

black leopards, spotted
leopards.

Working at the museum, I had my
hands on snow leopards,

Persian leopards, and more
leopards, clouded leopards.

It's one thing to call yourself
a taxidermist when you're a kid,

but when you can say you're
working at a museum,

it just changes everything.

- To me, natural history museums
have always been where it's at.

They're hallowed ground.

They're beautiful, studious,
artistic places.

I had a corporate job in
marketing,

working on computers
all day long.

But I really wanted
to learn taxidermy.

I went to Montana,
took my vacation,

went to taxidermy school.

You know, it's just a couple
week program,

but I really loved it.

And got back and was like that
was awesome.

Now what do I do
with any of that?

And so I looked up who was doing
taxidermy at the museum.

And I happened upon Tim.

- I work at the Natural History
Museum of Los Angeles County.

Been here for the last 32 years.
I am the staff taxidermist.

- You know, if I could take him
and put him in a diorama

to keep for all time,
I would.

I feel like he's that special.

- She managed to hunt me down,

figured out how to
get ahold of me.

- I just started showing
up every day.

I still had
my marketing job.

So I would go from 6 am to 9:30
Monday through Friday,

and I would volunteer with Tim.

I remember one day I went to
work and I had mountain lion

blood on my work shirt.

So I just told people
it was coffee,

but I really wanted to tell
people the truth

'cause I was so proud of it.

I kinda knew then that that's
what I should be doing.

So I quit my marketing job and I
volunteered there full-time.

And I was so much happier.

After Allis had worked for me
the second year,

she said, you
know, I have sorta this dream.

- I'm the owner of
Prey Taxidermy.

We are located in
Los Angeles, California.

Certainly not the usual place
for a taxidermy studio.

- When she told me she
was gonna open her studio

Downtown Los Angeles
in the Art District,

I'm like oh really?

Something I couldn't imagine.

But once again,
Allis could imagine.

And it di-, it's worked.

Madison's worked with me since
the Natural History Museum.

You know, we're both apprentices
of Tim Bovard.

- Prior to Allis and Madison,

most of my volunteers really
didn't have an interest

in working with dead stuff.

- Right now, I am
skinning an ermine.

And uh it's
fairly delicate work.

I've never actually skinned one
of these, but I have 11 to do.

laughs] So I'm sure I'll become
very familiar with them.

Skinning is truly my favorite
part of this whole process

I love seeing the insides and
the anatomy of things.

Me and Allis are definitely
museum trained.

We pay more attention
to making the final mount

be more true to
what the animal was in life.

- Based on the education
that Tim gave me,

I mean that was free art school.
That was free history.

That was free science.

You know, and he's a zoologist.

And then that's
the viewpoint that I got.

- To be the best, to really do
really high level work,

you can't be willing to settle.

You need to be able to look at
something and go

this could be better or how
could I do that better?

You do have to be nuts,

and not just because you're
playing with dead things.

You have to be a special kind
of obsessive compulsive

uh mixed
with an artist sensibility.

That's where you get that idea
of the, the tortured artist,

you know?

Maybe you do end
up like Van Gogh

and cut off your
ear or whatever.

But to be fair, a taxidermist,
if we cut off our ear,

at least we'd make
something out of it.

- We were fed up with
advertising because in the end,

you're not the boss
over your own work.

In the end, somebody
who pays will say

no I want to change this
and I want you to do that.

So when we started this,

it was the first thing we
sort of agreed on.

We're gonna do exactly what we
think is good,

and we're gonna take as
much time as it needs,

as much money as it needs.

Then we come up with a price,

and then we will see if somebody
wants to pay for it.

So it was a big gamble.

- Our work works best in
a great environment.

So when the museum called,

we were thrilled because it was
just the right place.

The exhibit is called Tier,

which is the German
word for animal

The whole exhibition is in this
beautiful house.

We photographed all the
rooms in the house

and see what'll
work for each room.

One of the themes of when they
build houses like this was to

incorporate nature
into the house.

- They loved flowers,
they loved animals.

It was a big thing in
that time.

You think they
need a dramatic pose

to show that they are talking to
each other. So you have to...

- Yes.

- The lines like this,

he's looking at him and he's
looking there.

- It's all about expressions,
this one.

This is like sort of catwalk,

parading in their
poses and the colors,

being as fancy as possible.

What painters use to make
stories in paint,

we use the taxidermy for.

And it's like what you normally
see with taxidermists,

making a little story
out of nature,

but more like a fairytale.

We put an extra large jaw in a
lower jaw just to emphasize

the greed he has on the eye.

He caught one.
That's not enough.

He's totally focused on the one
who got away.

When we made his mouth bigger,
you feel more that he wants it.

A traditional taxidermist
would never do that.

Yeah he would measure
it and he would say

this can't be anything else.

But for us,
it helps for the story.

- Growing up in Ohio,
being homeschooled

let me have a
lot of free time off.

So I did a lot of
hunting and trapping

and photographing
nature in the woods.

Neither of my parents hunted or
really even had any pets

I mean just not
really animal lovers.

So I was really the
black sheep in the family.

My first passion was
always live animals.

My mom tells this story where I
was like five years old

and she took me
to the Cleveland Museum.

And she said I started crying
and wanted to go to the zoo

because everything
there was dead.

And now I go
to the zoo and I'm like I,

I might get my hands on
you when you die.

This'll be the fourth black
leopard I've worked on

and it's by far the best one.

Isn't that beautiful?

Most people never even heard of
a black leopard before.

That's kinda what the whole
point of this right now is,

to preserve it and have it end
up in a museum,

so that people can enjoy it and
see it, and learn from it.

My grandpa had a
private zoo here in Ohio.

He rescued a bunch of animals.

And he had this one
for like 17 years.

It's really neat having leopards
when you're a kid growing up,

on your grandpa's zoo, and you
can just watch 'em.

There's these little flaps on
either side of the claw

that need to be opened up.

That's what gives it that really
awesome look.

I think this is when my parents
started to get a little worried.

I'd get on my bike and I would
ride around town

and look for roadkill.

And I still have a vivid me-,
I'm like six, seven years old,

and I remember being kind of
embarrassed about it.

So I'd make sure, like I would
wait sometimes half an hour.

Like I'd just ride back and
forth down the street

'til there were no cars around.

Like I didn't want any
witnesses.

And as soon as there
was a break in traffic,

I'd like jump off my bike, like
put some gloves on,

throw this thing in a bag,

and then ride to the woods
somewhere, bury it,

and just like put a rock there,
and come back,

you know,

couple months later and dig it
up, clean all the bones.

When I made the transition
into taxidermy,

I was like eight and a half,
going on nine.

and that's when I
took everything home

and started doing it in the
basement.

I saw one of my mom's
friends pulling her aside

and like whispering
in her ear like

this kid needs like
professional help.

When I was 14,
I got involved with

the Cleveland Museum
of Natural History.

And that really like opened up a
floodgate of doors.

Shortly after that,

I started traveling
around the country,

working with different
taxidermists.

Traveled and worked in
37 different shops

now in five countries.

So I just had this amazing
opportunity to work

with so many
different talented artists,

and really learn a lot.

To do really good
taxidermy from start to finish,

I mean you have
to know everything

from like a scientific
collecting viewpoint.

You have to start
with a real living animal.

That's the first thing
about taxidermy.

And once it dies,

you have a pretty
short window of opportunity

to do good quality
taxidermy on it.

The actual physical act of
taking the animal apart,

skinning and preserving and
fleshing and salting
and tanning.

That's where they actually
chemically alter

skin into actual leather,
like this.

This is 100% leather
with fur on it.

And then once it's tanned, you
gotta have a form to put it on.

The form is like a taxidermy
mannequin of the animal.

This here is a form for this
leopard head.

And I sculpted it starting with
a real leopard skull.

Then you basically
glue, pin, adjust,

taxi the skin
over the sculpture.

It's an awesome feeling
to walk out into nature

and see an animal
and it tips over dead,

and you can take it
from that very moment

'til it's on display
in a museum.

And you do every single thing,

even making the eyeballs,

casting your own teeth.

It's definitely art.

- The art of taxidermy, to me,
it's not so much having animals

in these weird
and fantastic poses

and moving and
jumping and leaping.

And that's different.
That's creative.

That's telling a story.

But the art of
taxidermy is to do all

of that but highly
accurately.

What we're starting to see in
today's day and age

is a lot more artistic
work being created.

And that hasn't quite reached
the shores of Africa yet.

I'm here in the States
for a few months,

traveling around
and visiting museums,

working on special projects with
colleagues and friends of mine.

It's inspiring to
meet these people.

They're so knowledgeable

about all these different
parts of the industry.

It's humbling just
to sit and watch.

In South Africa,

we didn't really have
specialized products that
come from the States.

So you just sort of
compromise by figuring out

alternative ways of doing it
using product that you can

pick up at a hardware store.

A lot of what I've learned is
sort of self-taught.

I walked out of high school and
I stepped straight into a job.

I started just at the bottom.

By just observation, you learn
how to do the basics.

A lot of it came from
instruction from magazines

and things like that.

And I was wondering why our work

never looked as good
as in the catalogues.

And it hit me that the forms
that they're using

have all this detail sculpted
into them, and ours didn't.

I picked up some clay
and took a skull

and started putting back the
muscles onto the face

and onto the head.

It was just very trial and
error-based.

Thinking back,
you know, South Africa,

I always wondered what is it
gonna be like, you know,

when you get to see these halls

with these great
animals everywhere.

And uh it's magical.

Some of those dioramas,

the actual scenery
that they're portraying

has been developed or destroyed.

So they're almost like
little time capsules.

- Vanderbilt had the ultimate
cabinet of curiosity.

This grand mansion is filled

with just these incredible
pieces of taxidermy, dioramas.

You cannot replace taxidermy

as a tool for learning about
nature and natural history.

One of the greatest
things we like to see

is when kids walk up to the
glass on the dioramas,

you know, wow, do, are they,
are they really this big?

You know, do they
really look like that?

Is the hair really that texture?

You can't get that
from anything else.

Taxidermy is an art form.

So you're going to
see this really broad

variety of taxidermy quality.

In natural history museums, I
think it must be
scientifically accurate.

In my opinion, you must
still be a field naturalist.

You're really recreating these
animals i-, in a scientific way.

Taxidermy is a
wonderful tool for

archiving a species
that no longer exists.

Lonesome George was the
last Pinta Island tortoise.

He was uh living in
captivity for 40 years

on the Darwin Research Center
on Galapagos.

They did everything they could
to try to get him to reproduce

and it just never happened.

He unfortunately died.

And w-, they decided
quickly at that time

that they wanted to
preserve George.

It was absolutely a,
a dream come true experience.

To work with these people
just opened my eyes

to the effort that goes into
protecting a species.

I mean we dealt with people that
were studying him for 40 years.

You know, they would
talk to you,

and they would say things like
well, well George would,

would do this on certain days,
or he held his head this way.

Or when he was happy
to see you, he acted like this.

When he didn't want
to be disturbed.

You're dealing with,
with um a personality.

This needed to be more
than a taxidermy piece.

This was rebuilding a subject
that everyone knew intimately.

They knew every
wrinkle on George.

I said to myself

if I screw this up, this'll be
the last piece I ever do.

To see the people from Galapagos

come to New York
when he was on exhibit

and see him for the first time
with tears in their eyes

was just the most
emotional thing for me.

And I got a little gift from
George's keeper.

He carved this little tortoise
out of local wood

and sent it up here
to give to me

And I held it that night, and
I'm like this is like my Oscar.

This is as good as it gets.

We get so involved
in these pieces.

It's this pouring out of
everything, every fiber
of your being.

You're feeling the highs,
the lows, the anxiety,

every emotion you could
possibly go through as an artist

being poured into this piece,

and hopefully this euphoric
moment at the end.

In this studio that you sit in,
I've spilled my blood,

my sweat,
and my tears, literally.

And, and that's okay. And,
and I'm, I'm good with that.

Because every time I get
to that point where I think

I've been completely broken,
I think of Akeley.

I think of Akeley, what he's
gone through, what he's done.

And then you just pick yourself
up and you just keep going.

Carl Akeley. He's the
father of modern taxidermy.

- I think I first found
out about Carl Akeley

when I was doing research.

Some article or book I was
reading, it mentioned this,

the famous taxidermist,
Carl Akeley,

who had once strangled a
leopard with his bare hands.

And so I made a little note
to look into that later.

I realized that there
was more than enough

for a whole book on him.

I mean the thing that
intrigued me the most was

like oh this is a great story
about an artist,

just going to that much
trouble being that obsessed.

- Carl Akeley was
the man who said

we need to really
elevate this art form

from creating these animals
with mediocre anatomy

into these great sculptures.

The American Museum
of Natural History,

where he has the Hall
of African Mammals,

you know, he created a
monumental piece of art.

It would take three
or four years

to work on one
elephant at a time.

- To read about Akeley
from the time I was a child,

that work in the American
Museum of Natural History

was always my inspiration.

He was basically the
first one to really create

this clay sculpted form of the
anatomy of the animal,

and use that as the
mannequin for the piece.

- I think my first impression
of Akeley was as,

it was like a Tim Burton kind of
character, you know,
like morbid and dark.

Johnny Depp would be like the
perfect Akeley,
just kind of zany.

I loved the preposterous
amount of work

that he had to go
to to make his work.

- You know, you're literally
traveling to Africa in 1900,

which is like a ship ride.

And then once he would be there,

he would have a small army of
painters and sculptors

and then like 150
native African porters

carrying tons of their
equipment with them,

just so he could do his art.

Any animal he would kill,

he was trying to work like a
scientist and an artist,

and he was incredibly meticulous

about all the measurements
and sketching.

And then he would make
these little clay maquettes.

Prior to Akeley,

a diorama might just be the
animal inside the box.

He had the finest
landscape painters

that were alive at the time to
paint the backgrounds.

And those painters themselves
would go on these
infinite expeditions,

recreating the plants and
getting the exact
species of flora.

During that period,

part of the big shift in
conservation has to do with

scientists' revelation
about ecology,

and what that term really means,

which is that everything
is interrelated.

Habitat became just as
important as the animal.

- To get that leaf to
really look like a leaf,

or to get that rock to really
look like a real rock,

you really gotta know
what that rock looks like.

When we do a diorama here,

we want it to be that
particular place.

- The museum where I work,
Carl Akeley started there.

So we have what
some people consider

the world's first diorama.

We have the muskrat group.

It was done in 1890 and it
was innovative at the time.

They had a cutaway view
of the underwater house.

I am the only full-time
taxidermist in a museum,

with the exception of Tim
Bovard, that I am aware of.

There's over 5000 mounted
animals in our museum.

So it's really a fun job
because I'm never bored.

I started the job when I was 19.

I just want to try to share my
love for nature
with other people,

and have people appreciate
the animals as much as I do.

A lot of people that
are my age or older

started with the Northwestern
School of Taxidermy

correspondence course by mail.

And we did that because
there wasn't much out there.

There was not videotapes.
There was not seminars

Taxidermy was a tight-lipped
closed community.

Nobody told
anybody their secrets.

Now, it's this wonderful
sharing of information.

Competitions have
just opened that field up.

- We come together for
competitions, which are our
conference.

And everyone's just so
excited to meet each other.

We all live in these
different far-flung places.

So we're the oddballs,
we're the outcasts,

we're the weird ones, right.

- Uh yeah go into a bar
and try and pick up a girl

uh and then you tell
them you're a taxidermist.

You get some weird reactions.

You get anything from you do
taxes to uh that's
really creepy,

or you get the ones that lie
and are like no it's not
creepy at all.

Um and then in the
back of their mind,

they're like this guy
could be Ted Bundy.

- I'm a 3D wildlife artist.

That goes over a lot better on
the first date than being like

yeah I stuff dead things.

- It ' s hard to get away
from the stereotypes.

This is not embalming.
This is not a dried head.

- People love to talk
about Psycho,

you know,

- Obviously everyone
thinks, you know,

a taxidermist is,
you know, a big guy,

older, wearing camo, beard,

with a bloodlust of some kind,

you know,

and a bunch of dead deer and
stuff in the back of his truck.

And while you'll certainly find
people who look like that,

if you talk to 'em for just a
minute, they're an artist,

and they're people that you
wouldn't think in a
million years

would be my friends,
but they are.

- You find people from all walks
of life and from all over the
world,

and we have this really
closely knit community

of eccentric weirdos that
like to recreate nature.

- As you can see,
the hocks go in.

So now I'm kinda
following that line there.

- When you go to these shows,
the seminars are just fantastic.

I like to teach a lot of
uh the fundamentals

of the work, and building
something from nothing.

So what I'm doing is
I want to feel here wi-,

I'm gonna drop the scapulas down

and I'm gonna feel underneath
where the spine'll be sitting.

The animal's dead, now what?

You know, what do
you do with it?

You ' ve gotta try and
create an attitude

with the body that tells the
story you're trying to create.

It ' s gonna freeze.

It's gonna start getting
stiffer as it freezes.

- When I get to
go to a competition,

it gives me that
chance to learn again.

You know, I really wasn't part
of the taxidermy
community before.

So I met all these
amazing people

that were so eager
to share knowledge.

- I tend to use
products that you can pick

up in any hardware
store for very cheap,

harvesting as much information
from that specimen as possible

and recreating that
to bring it to life.

- Competitions have made
quite a huge difference

in the quality of taxidermy.

It's just amazing the
leaps and bounds

when people start sharing.

- Overall visual
appearance and attitude.

- Overall vi-, is, is very good.

- This is how I learned
a lot competing,

was following the judges around.

When, when we
have the critiquing,

I think that's probably

where I have learned
more than anything.

- I have been a taxidermist
for a lot of years,

professionally for almost 40.

So I do a lot of traveling
around and, and judging,

designing product
and things like that.

You can put uh neck
rolls slightly overdone.

The competition taxidermy world
can get you the attention,

if you're good enough.

If you're able to put those
pieces together and win,

uh you can create a brand,
you know.

And then they want you
for sculpting product.

This is that blue foam that's
a floatation billet foam.

I carve whole bears
out of it all the time.

So you can see that
we've got a good start to our,

our template for our mannequin.

I specialize in mostly
life-size displays,

like bears, wolves,
and big things.

Re-creations as well,
re-creations of extinct animals,

rare endangered animals.

In re-creations,

you can use any kinda
materials to create an animal,

as long as the materials are
not from that animal itself.

When I did the panda bear,

that was the first time I won a
World Taxidermy Championship

with a re-creation.

That was when I realized that I
was kind of onto something.

I'm interested

in knowing where the limits
are to what I can do.

- Staub. Dust.

These are 17th century frames.

We tried to add
a classical touch

to the more modern images.

It's actually a
part of the process.

After you skin the animal,
you have to wash it.

And that's at a certain point,

we saw what sort of
romantic feeling it got.

It's sort of a water ballet.

- Mandy.

- Yeah these are mainly males,
I think, yeah.

Are these all stomachs?

Yeah, this is a cow stomach.

I wonder how she does this.

- I heard she's
totally grossed out by it,

but she has to make it.

Can't imagine, yeah.
Maybe it's inside out.

Yeah, yeah.
Yeah it's ins-, yeah.

It's inside out.
This is all the receptors.

Is he a cow?

Are you inside out?

I'm opening the stomach so
I can see the intestines.

I take the whole gill and
the intestines out of the fish.

It is um interesting and
disgusting at the
same time actually.

Now I'm trying to open
the head of the fish,

so you can see the gills.

And then I try to uh yeah
take the gills out with a,

with a knife.

First I was working on
um on the stomachs.

In the garden of my parents,

I built a really primitive um uh
tannery with, with barrels.

And I start with uh recipes
from the Eskimos,

like um [laughs] urine.

And my mom was asking why
are you drinking so much?

And I said I have to fill the
whole bo-, barrel today.

Animal intestines can be uh

beautiful when you
treat it and it's finished,

and it's so, yeah
it's so beautiful.

I'm also eating the fish.
So it's like uh up-cycling,

making better use
of the materials.

So now I'm placing the, the
dried gill on the, the stand.

I put uh the name of the fish,

like the scientific displays
in a natural museum.

What I like about nature
is that it's moving,

it's uh growing,
and I'm also part of nature.

And um when I'm outside,
um I don't know, it just,

you just feel more alive or
something with the wind
in your hair,

and with all those
animals around you.

- I saw a picture in a textbook
of a diaphonized mouse.

I just thought that was the most
beautiful and fascinating thing.

And when I couldn't
purchase one,

being a scientist
and a crazy person,

I decided to make them myself.

They basically feel like giant
gummy bears with bones.

- Will it move though?

Yeah. You can still see the
cartilage in the nasal cavity.

And then if you take it
out and you're delicate--

Yeah hold the jar.

You can see it's a little bit--
- Yeah.

--stiff but it's
like a gummy bear.

- And the little tongue inside.
- Mm-hmm.

- It's an old technique.

I did not invent the technique
for diaphonization.

You use chemistry in
order to highlight

the underlying structures
of the animal,

the cartilage and the bones, and
then alter the refractive index,

or the way that light works with
the skin and muscle,

so it becomes transparent.

I'm trying to look a little
deeper than just the skin

and see the underlying
tissue that really show

how an animal interacted
with the world,

or uh what they came from even.

It was a very strange creature.
It looks like a snake,

but it's actually
a type of skink.

And if you look closely, you
can see this is the sternum,

and where the arms would
attach, and then this is tail.

And then down here,
where it kind of opens up,

that is the pelvis.

And the vestigial hind
legs are still there.

You can see the tiny bits
of bone that are inside it.

At first glance,

most people would assume this
slithering creature is a snake.

But if you know what's
underneath the skin,

there's so much more to it.

- I've always had such a
connection with nature

and I've always
considered myself

like kind of an old-fashioned
naturalist, you know,

like the gentleman
adventurer or something.

There's a woodpecker up on that.
Do you see him?

- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're watching nature so much.
We're out in nature so much.

And I think the thing that so
attracts me to taxidermy

is it's both a science
and an art.

If I take a picture
of my nail polish

next to whatever
I'm trying to match,

if I know that this
color is correct,

then I know how to
match that color.

And this'll be my little rock
with the lichen on it.

When I work on a piece,

that piece should tell
a story about nature.

It should inspire people.

- No. I think it's a
ladder back.

- It's a ladder back.

It's not just about
identifying something,

but when you start to
know what things are

and identify them, you start
to care about them.

My family is like lovely,
artistic, back woods Indiana.

Like when you
meet them, you're like

oh that makes sense.

When I told them, you know,

I'm gonna leave my lucrative
job and go be a taxidermist,

they're like well you could
have just stayed here.

Like you didn't, you didn't
have to move to do that.

It took getting away from nature

in many ways to really
truly appreciate it,

and really appreciate my roots,
and where I came from.

- So Travis was visiting and I
had to go pick up this
mountain lion.

And he kinda said like hey do
you want help on this?

- What we're working on
is quite a young cat.

He was hit by a car and
delivered to a nature centre.

- We're actually
leaving a few spots

where you can see
some road rash,

and it's going to
tell that story.

And the more lifelike
that animal is,

the more people will
care about its species.

- The head was custom sculpt
from a copy of his own head.

That's why the skin on
his head fits so well.

Reference is the
most important thing

when it comes to
doing taxidermy work.

You gotta have a good
collection of photographs,

measurements, castings.

Mountain lions are very rare.

To have the opportunity to go
and look at them are even rarer.

Hmm, hmm. I know. I know.

- Oh I hear the purr.

- Lions don't purr.
- No this is the biggest cat
that still purrs.

Look at this.

I'm very lucky to
have a great relationship

with Dave Jackson.

And he has this amazing place
called Conservation Ambassadors.

Oh you get a nuzzle.

Our organization is set
up as a rescue zoo.

So all the animals
here are rescue animals

from some situation,

animals that are injured in the
wild and can't be put back in
the wild,

and illegal pets.

People think they're gonna

bring something like a monkey
home into their house.

- You want this?
Okay, yes, sir. Yes, sir.

But what we do with them is not

just stick 'em
in a cage forever.

They get to come out
and they get to be

what we call ambassadors.

And their second chance at life
is coming to schools with us.

Retention level of information
from the education

goes up exponentially
when they can touch

something and when
they can meet a live animal.

I use a lot of artifacts in our,
our presentations,

our programs,

because I can't let the kids
come up and touch a cougar.

- Yeah.

- But I can let them
touch a cougar skin.

- Exactly.

- I can let them
feel that amazing fur.

Taxidermy and live animals,
they're so intertwined.

They're so important
to each other.

Now you can tell stories
of not just natural history,

but you can tell stories with
taxidermy of today,

what's going on today, like a
mountain lion gets hit by a car.

That's, that's what
happens today.

- Caring about nature is
protecting nature.

And that's what we're
trying to instill

in people when
we create these things.

- Don't you use porcupine hair
as replacement whiskers?

- You can, yeah.

- In lions?

- Yeah, for some cats.

- Yeah.

- It works well.
Ah, don't back up.

- Uh no, dude.
Don't get up. Oh geez.

It's all about connection,
getting people
connected with nature.

Kids are growing
up in the living room.

They're not going out
and digging up worms.

They're not catching
craw dads in the creek.

All right, come on in.

- All right.

So uh this is our frozen zoo.

This is um our
Asian fishing cat.

- She's beautiful.

- And she educated
her whole life.

She went to schools every day.

She's been on every
show you could imagine.

- It'll be interesting to
come up with, you know,

a pose that you
feel really is her.

- Aww. How's my girl?

- What is truly unique about
Dave is his understanding
of death.

He doesn't want to waste.

He knows that there's value

in them continuing
to educate people.

- There's wildlife crises
everywhere all the time.

We get into an ecosystem
and we mess it all up with,

with freeways and
pollution and everything.

If I was to snap
my fingers right now

and all the people were to fall
off the face of the Earth,

the animals would do just fine.

But if I was to snap
my fingers right now

and all the animals were to fall
off the face of the Earth,

yeah turns out we need
them and they don't need us.

So [laughs] we gotta
have a generation

that's still connected
to nature.

- Over 100 years ago,

part of our
whole national psyche

was that we had endless
resources, you know,

this endless frontier
of the West.

Conservation was
such a new idea,

and I think that's one of the
hardest things for us to grasp.

'Cause the idea itself
just wasn't there.

And I think you could
make a parallel

between climate change and this.

That shift took a while for
people to realize like

oh we might actually have
to curb our behavior.

The top scientists at the time,

who worked for the American
Museum of Natural History,

and the Field Museum,
and so on,

they were coming out of a
different scientific mode,

which was more about just
cataloguing, collecting,

and knowledge for
the sake of knowledge.

They knew enough
about habitat loss.

They could see it in
America's West.

They could see it in Africa,
because of the,

the rampant colonialism
that was taking place there.

They knew that all of these
species were very likely going
to go extinct.

So they would collect one of
those species for the museum,

so we would have a collection.

It was an archive for future
generations to see what we'd
lost.

Like this was a giraffe,

this was an elephant.

The idea that we might use
science to try and change

the way things were wasn't
really part of their MO.

Theodore Roosevelt was
a very pivotal figure.

He was still a man of his time.
He was a hunter.

A lot of conservationists,
in retrospect,

but also at the time,
his contemporaries,

criticized him for being too
trigger-happy,

'cause I mean he came
home with animals that

he had shot in Africa that
could be measured in the tons.

There's no getting around that.

But at the same time,

he was the first one
who really started

to preserve land
in the United States,

because he was one of the first
people to really realize

that the frontier was closed,
that this idea that nature

was inexhaustible wasn't true.
I-. it is exhaustible.

And that was not a
popular idea at the time.

That's what makes him
one of the most

paradoxical figures
of his time.

And Akeley worshipped him.

And I think Akeley probably was
inspired enough by him,

that by the time he looked into
those gorilla's eyes

and he had his own personal
transformation,

he kind of lived something that

TR had been talking
about for years.

When he had his
moment of epiphany,

it was when he
was killing gorillas.

People were going
in with licenses

to kill like 20 gorillas
at a time.

And he knew that at
the rate they were going,

I mean they would have been
extinct within 10 years.

And so he managed to persuade
the Belgian government

to create a sanctuary to protect
the mountain gorilla.

It's the first wildlife
sanctuary in Africa.

To save the habitat
was to save the animal.

And that's what saved
the mountain gorillas.

- Every hunter I know that's a
true hunter actually
loves nature.

And that's something that I
feel like so many people

just can't wrap
their minds around.

How can you love animals and
still want to hunt them?

- Fold it back.

- Hunters are the greatest
conservationists.

They spend the most
amount of money on land,

on labour to
protect the animals.

And they spend the most amount
of time with the animals.

Hunting serves a purpose,
so it all goes back to that.

There has to be a reason,

whether it's because
people need food,

or if it's just game management.

A world without hunting is gonna
be a pretty sad world,

because nothing's gonna
have a value economically.

And if wildlife doesn't
have an economic value,

it just won't be around.

It just won't.

So this is actual taxidermy.

It's the difference
between just

gluing and pinning and
sewing a skin on a form,

but actually understanding
where it needs to go,

working out wrinkles,

and putting hair patterns where
they need to actually go.

There's not very many
taxidermists in Europe,

just because there's not
a lot of hunting in Europe.

And part of the reason there's
not a lot of hunting in Europe

is 'cause there's
no animals in Europe.

Growing up in Switzerland,

there's no such thing as
going on a nature hike

and seeing animals.

I wish most Americans
would just realize

how incredibly
fortunate we all are.

- When I was very small,
I once found a rabbit skull.

And I thought it was
so cool and so neat.

I think it was like the most
appreciated position I ever had.

- For us, it's very principle
that we only work with animals

that died of natural causes,
and that lived in captivity.

If you talk about hunting
here in the Netherlands,

they think it's animal cruelty.

They eat animals from a factory,

but hunting is uh a no-go area.

I'm not a fan of hunting,
but it's not all bad.

Since here in Holland,

you have like protected areas
where they keep deers

and other rare animals.

But these places
are crowded now.

So it looks very
funny in the summer.

But, when the winter comes,
they all starve to death.

And I think that's wrong.

- Uh when you
take out the body,

you have to sort
of copy it exactly,

because the skin that comes
off is like uh tailored suits.

It fits only one way.

So you have to take
all the measurements.

In Holland, taxidermy
isn't that common.

So many people think
we just cut it open,

empty it with a spoon,

and, and put
something back in it,

and then it's finished.

- Stuff it up.

When you explain
how much work it is,

then people appreciate it more.

These are all gonna
go on a birdcage,

on the outside,

try to make a whole
story of all the birds

interacting with each other,
talking, looking at each other.

All caged in, but you know,
looks like they're all free.

The animals we use
otherwise gets thrown away.

And it's either in the bin or we
make something out of it.

So sort of give
it a second life.

So my pet chinchilla
just died recently.

It ' s about one to
maybe three pounds.

I was wondering if you guys
could possibly give me a-

- Last message received.
- No.

This is why we don't pick
up the studio phone.

You end up on the phone with
these people for forever.

- I have a deceased owl
that died on my property.

- It doesn't work like that.

- Lived for 10 years
on the property.

I found an owl, I found an
eagle. They can't have it.

You really can't convince
them that it's federal law

and that they can't have it,

because they're like well it
died on my property.

And it's like okay but if you
found cocaine on your property,

like you couldn't
have that either.

What I'm working on here and
what we're really gearing up for

is the Visual Voyages exhibit at
the Huntington Library.

Visual Voyages is
expressions of nature from

Columbus to Darwin
in Latin America,

you know, explorers,
biologists, all of that

going over there and being like

what are these little
shiny amazing birds,

or you know,
what is this anteater,

what are these armadillos?

I was talking to
Ken on the phone,

and you know, he is such a
mentor to us and everything.

He's like well if
you need any help.

I think this is all fitting
pretty well.

This is a little square,
the space in between here,

but I don't know if that's
how the anatomy works.

- Actually this isn't too bad
because they,

that, that is a,
a pretty common pose.

- Uh-huh.

- For these guys, like the,

you know, the,
that spread on the feet.

The armadillos are gonna be
actual touch pieces.

And they're so unique and
they're something that like,

you know, I've never
worked on before.

I don't see how armadillos are
from the planet Earth.

I really don't.

I don't know where I would be
without the kind of advice and
leadership,

and that you have
people in this industry

that are so willing to do that.

Do you like these little rods?
They're cool, eh?

- I do like these little rods.

Those are gonna
be my new friends.

- Mm-hmm.

I had to defend the girls when
they first showed up
on the scene.

You know, people start
smart-mouthing to me,

I put 'em in their
place real quick.

A lot of the Millennials are
into like rogue taxidermy,

which is, you know,
making strange creatures

and doing things that
traditional taxidermists would-,

wouldn't be caught
dead doing, which is art.

So I love it. I love anything to
do with art.

- Rogue taxidermy is a
genre of pop surrealist art

that utilize conventional
taxidermy-related materials

in an unconventional manner.

Taxidermy for a long time really
had a stigma attached to it,

where it was like
wearing a fur coat.

You're hurting animals and
you're exploiting the animals.

The animals I work with
die of natural causes

or are byproducts of the
livestock industry.

People don't think about their
animal consumption,

when I say consumption,
not even what you eat.

They don't think about the
clothing they wear,

the products they use.

But you know, when you're
looking at taxidermy,

it has eyes. It forces you to
think about it.

The Goth Griffin,

which is a combination
of a crow and a black cat,

which is a combination of
a crow and a black cat,

New York Times Art
section in 2004.

And that was the catalyst for
interest in the genre.

When people came to
be part of our group

and want to kind of work under
that umbrella of
rogue taxidermy,

they had to pledge that they
wouldn't harm

animals to make the work.

So that kind of
rebranded taxidermy.

Like all of a sudden it wasn't
about killing an animal.

It has a recycling aspect to it.

Capricorn is constructed
out of a stillborn lamb,

a carp, and grouse wings.

And then the antlers
on that are from a

vintage roe deer trophy plaque.

A lot of people, when I
first started doing this,

didn't think that what I was
doing was acceptable whatsoever,

not ethical, not moral.

I never understood why I would
get just like lambasted,

attacked, just like
horrible hate mail,

whereas men that
were doing it, no hate mail.

Taxidermy is really rapidly
losing that good old boys club

feeling that it had
for so many years.

Not to say that never were
awesome female taxidermists
before,

but now we've got women that are
like at the forefront

of what's been
popularizing taxidermy.

- Of course there's always the
novelty taxidermy that has

really become en vogue too.

Novelty is when you have the
animals playing cards

or paddling a canoe or whatever.

That was really big back in
Victorian time period.

t seems to me like it kinda
completely went away
for a while,

and now it seems
to be resurging.

Taxidermy in general is
making quite a resurgence,

especially Victorian taxidermy.

There's a big history of
taxidermy and fashion.

And I think that's one
of the main ways that

taxidermy actually
entered the mainstream

during the Victorian era.

Queen Victoria was really the
one who kinda started that.

She started wearing these
amazing plumes in her hair,

wearing feathers
elsewhere on her garb,

and small ones in pins
and things like that.

And she's the reason
we call it Victorian era.

But you know, it really
had a dark side to it.

We lost several hundred species

in the 1800s to both collecting
and haberdashery,

hats, um or, or just
hat pins like this one.

In my case,
this bird died in captivity.

It's not bad for the
environment,

and it's probably the most
natural thing I put in my hair.

You're always
gonna get asked about it.

Maybe in some ways,
it's my sneaky way of

of getting people in Hollywood
to learn about animals.

I've been lucky enough to get
some high profile
fashion-y clients.

In the new Gucci
fragrance campaign,

you can see my
Victorian bird dome.

It's got a lot of elements
from their scents in it.

I worked with EB Florals

and we actually turned some of
my birds into diffusers.

They've been in Vanity Fair,
Marie Claire,

things that like I was like
reading as a kid.

You know, it's all these crazy
fashion things I could
never have,

and then my stuff is in them

And I'm a taxidermist.
Like how weird is that?

The Victorians were obsessed
with hummingbirds.

John Gould did these beautiful
hummingbird cases

for the Great Exhibit held in
London in the 1850s.

And so I'm re-creating
two of those cases.

I make a little body based on
their actual body.

I go slightly smaller
in some areas,

and then maybe a little fuller
in the chest and others,

because you have to imagine it
actually being alive.

They're very small.

So as you can imagine,
they're very delicate.

If you pull at all,
the skin rips.

If it heats up, the skin rips.

If you look at it funny or
think sad thoughts,
the skin rips.

So I try to stay real calm when
I'm working on hummingbirds.

These hummingbirds were
collected from the Moore Lab.

- The Moore Lab is a really
spectacular place.

We have this
amazing bird collection,

65,000 specimens.

We have one of the best
hummingbird collections
in the world.

This is a blue-tufted
starthroat collected in 1929.

- These guys are going to be on
this exhibit at the Huntington,

but then ultimately they're
going to end up

at the Moore Lab on display
as part of the collection.

One of the things that's most
important to the Moore Lab

is having the correct anatomy,

having the correct
characteristic behaviors.

So I get to learn
so much from them.

- Where Allis has been great

is in working in some
of our scientific ideas

into the taxidermy,

so we can talk about our science

with a bird in a lifelike pose
that sparks the imagination.

- I got interested in taxidermy
when I was about nine years old.

My grandpa taught this school.

- I started doing taxidermy when
I was 16 back in 1968.

I got interested,
I seen articles

in my granddad's hunting
magazines all the time,

since I was a little kid.

And I just started a school,
started teaching taxidermy.

- I took his full taxidermy
course when I was 13,

and then created
my own business called

Remington Taxidermy.

And then this crazy person took
grandpa's class

and became my
adopted big sister.

And ever since then,

we've had this bond that
we just share together.

- One day, I can draw up
concepts, I can,

the next day, if I'm sick of it,
I have animals to skin.

If I'm sick of that, I can

work on chemistry and
science with tanning.

I literally cannot
get sick of it.

- Dakota and I met
at the World Show

when I'd flown in
from South Africa.

Us as a younger crowd,
we tend to stick together.

One of the cool things
about the World Shows

having the Collaborative
Artists Division

is there is that opportunity to
make something

with people you
really want to work with.

We seldom ever get the
opportunity to work together,

especially on something
like a competition piece.

And that's what we did
with this little zebra.

We're trying to do something
here with a baby animal,

which is pretty difficult.

Very difficult to find
reference of babies.

- It's all about what
your work looks like,

can you prove yourself.

- I love making things
from scratch and

being able to do it
exactly how I want to.

- Commercial taxidermy is,
you know,

just putting out a nice piece,

good quality work in a
decent time for clients.

But you can really get into
the art in a competition

that you can't afford to
put into a client's work.

- A baby animal trying
to stand up,

it's not typically anything
anyone would do.

There's a hell of a
lot going on,

and it's not easy
to make it look real.

This technique that we're using
is not a popular technique.

Something like this being fully
customized from the
original animal,

it's far more accurate.

You can focus more on
anatomy and expression

and what's actually
going on in composition,

and less about just
getting the skin to fit.

Taxidermy's an extremely
labour-intensive work.

You spend countless
hours grinding away

at the most insignificant of
details, or so it would appear.

We try just our
very best to stay sane,

and create works of art.

But the world
doesn't appreciate it.

- Um hot gluing
the seam together,

so then when
we pour the foam in,

then we don't have foam
running out between the lines.

I've never made like a
cast body like this before.

- We looked at the original ears

and highlighted all of the
veins and where they were.

And then we're hollowing
them out in the mold.

- I've always learned
from Grandpa.

And Travis is kinda my first
time of one-on-one with someone,

learning something really new.

- We're trying to get something
alive and asymmetrical.

We got a puckered up
lip line, flared nostrils,

pumped up blood veins.

We're trying to get that really
worried look on its face.

The art of taxidermy is
re-creating the animal
precisely,

but breathing life into it.

Because if you just take all the
measurements, the casting,

all that reference you
get from the specimen,

and assemble it,
you got a dead animal.

You gotta know the animal.
You've gotta know nature.

You gotta know how they behave,

what they eat, where they live.

It becomes one of these things
that you just can't shake.

You can't stop
thinking about it.

It's always on the
back of your mind.

Like where am I going wrong?

Why does this not look alive?

And it never will.

But it's something that we
strive to perfect.

- To me, the competitions ain't
so much winning the competition,

it's learning.

And the more you can learn,
the better you get.

- I think that's another thing
that taxidermists all have
in common.

We always want to keep
getting better and better.

And that's why we're so excited
to go to places like

the World Championship.

- That's when I met pretty much
all the other big name

in the industry.

- We're not the best
taxidermists in the world.

We saw today we're not.

- It doesn't really matter where
you come from and,

where you are in your career.

Somehow we all
have this connection

and you become this
really close-knit family.

- Even though we're really
different from each other,

we have a common language

that other people
simply don't speak.

- So I need all my Euro pins
that everyone is constantly

stealing from me.

Hunting down all the weird
little things that I need.

There's like nice-colored
stout roughers.

And I think every lady
needs a golden caliper.

Oh, yes. Thank you.

- Oh a shopping basket,
there you go.

- I know. I'm gonna
need a cart though.

- Even though we're the
producers, uh it's
magical for us.

- Oh, it is.

- Yeah we've been doing
it for about 27 years.

It's just remarkable the effort

and time that each artist
puts into their piece.

To look at 'em is
just splitting hairs,

if you want to say --

--to be able to determine
which one is the best piece.

- When we're judging
a show like this,

a lot of us are kinda old timers

that have been judging the show
for many, many, many years.

I kinda started hearing
people say well, you know,

a lot of these old timers
couldn't compete today.

I wanted to see if I could
still run with the big dogs.

I competed with
this re-creation of a gorilla.

It's o-, 100% artificial.

That was pretty cool for me
because I actually won

all the top awards.

I won Best of Show,
I won People's Choice,

I won everything.

- Every once in a while,
we'll have an individual come in

and I can immediately see

they're gonna be
superstars quick.

And one of those was Travis de
Villiers from South Africa.

He is one of the super talents
at a very young age.

And Daniel Meng.

- Yeah he's a young competitor
right now. He's, he's fiery.

He won last time
for the first time,

his first Best in World.

He'll do it again too.

- The competition world
can open the world to ya.

If you're good
enough and you believe

that you can do something that
the world needs to see,

then you have this
venue to show it to them.

- Did you expect
to win anything?

- No.

- We got a 95.

- And then to find a judge
to get a critique and him

basically being like I have
nothing to say.

I'm shaking.

Yeah it's been a great
experience.

We worked our asses off.

- We did work our asses off.

- Africa moves to its own beat.

It's its way of life.

It's the rhythm it moves to,
like nowhere else.

Being back into that rhythm now,

it's sort of put the world
into perspective.

I needed to be back
here to ground myself

back to who I am.

Africa is home.

It's where the animals that
inspire me to do the
work I do are.

I've always wanted to do work
that's unique and dynamic.

I needed to take off and leave
the nest completely,

and try to surround myself with
the best people that I knew,

and by so doing, find that
inspiration again to create art.

- We really want to
work with Travis,

taking our point of view
together with Travis's
point of view

and his sculpting skills,

doing sort of a mix-up
of Europe and Africa.

It's a very nice combination,

with the black and white
of the guinea fowls,

and the white of the statues.

- Rotate it like
this a little bit. Yeah.

It really started with
the idea of using spears.

It's like when you
make a sketch,

you make a composition,

first you start with lines to
make a shape.

So then we thought
if we use spears,

it would be a great way to make
a big piece with small parts.

And it also has a story.

Bring spears back to
Africa and working with an

African sculptor
together in one piece.

We thought it would be nice.

- We're the invisible artist.

You shouldn't see us.

You should just see nature.

I'm always trying to educate.

And that's what I try
to put into my work,

is those opportunities
to tell a story.

And that's what's so great about
doing things in museums

and nature centers,

is those stories are gonna
be told so many times.

- It's funny, when you ask
me what my profession is,

I still don't even
think of it like that.

It's definitely a passion.

I remember going to these zoos,
you know, and things would die.

And I just felt like ah it's
such a waste, you know,

it's such a beautiful
animal. It's so rare.

There's not very many of them.

The only other place you can see
these are in museums.

So I feel like they need to
be preserved somehow.

- I will actually retire from

the Milwaukee
Public Museum next year.

For financial reasons,

the museum administration has uh

eliminated most of
the exhibits department.

And I am part
of the exhibits department.

It's really, really, really sad
because it's gonna be
an end of an era.

And I will have had 35
and a half years there.

Tim came up and
gave me a big hug and he said

he didn't know he would be the
last survivor.

- When I was a kid
and I was reading books

and then trying to do taxidermy,

I told my parents that,
you know, one day

I was gonna be working
in a museum.

Most major museums
had taxidermists,

say back in the '50s and '60s.

I got to walk through these
halls as a kid and look at their
work and admire it.

You know, I hope
when the time comes

that I'm not gonna be here
full-time anymore,

well there'll be somebody coming
in to carry that legacy on.

- The individuals that are in
taxidermy all have very
unique talents.

You gotta know the animal.
You've gotta know nature

You gotta know how they behave.

Being able to have the skillset
to capture that is very rare.

You end up spending your entire
life trying to do that.

But it makes for
an interesting life.

- In art, a lot of people who
use taxidermy for artwork,

they use it in a different way.

They want to shock people.

We are the opposite.

We want to emphasize
the beauty of it,

because they are beautiful.

- When you skin an animal, it
becomes material in a way.

But it's such beautiful material

and you know where it's from.

So give the credits
where it belong:

in nature.

- Taxidermists just
love animals.

We show people this little
frozen bit of nature.

- We treat this as somewhat
of a silent obsession,

re-creating the animal,
breathing life into it.

- It's this connection that
cannot be described.

- There's a little piece of us
that goes into every single

mount we do.

- I get to make that
golden eagle immortal.

I'm immortal in that too.

My passion is.