strangespeciesart

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hate when people are like "trust your gut! listen to your intuition!" like okay well my gut is telling me every person i lay eyes on is hunting me for sport and my intuition is saying i should find a secluded cave and live there forever so what do you suggest i do with that information

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fight back

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Leaping into 2025 with audacity

From the first pages of a fresh diary. Ink, marker, digital touchup. Artist Site / Patreon

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Do you require some skull-themed jewelry? Whomst among us doesn't, really? I've got some fun pieces!

Top to bottom are glass lockets filled with rodent bones from owl pellets (the owls say hi), replica hoary bat skulls, brass eagle and raven skull pendants, and tiny alligator skull replica earrings. (The scans were done on the alligator's hatch day and are 3D printed in life size!)

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How do you do, fellow kids? This is a casual reminder that it's not very cool to collect bat specimens if you like bones and taxidermy, and instead you should get replicas like these ones! The collector market has an awful impact on the populations of wild bat species and we really need those bats out there, doing bat stuff like eating bugs and pollinating things and being adorable as absolute fuck. (We need them to help us make tequila, that's how important bats are to human society.)

These days pretty much anybody who sells any sort of animal specimens will tell you their stuff is sourced "ethically and sustainably," but when it comes to bats that's not really possible. They're not farmed or captive-bred, they're not invasive species, and people aren't actually just finding them in perfectly preserved condition just lying around dead.

What you find for sale out there on the web or at events or whatever are vulnerable species, usually from countries with weak wildlife protections, harvested en masse and possibly poached. They're sold cheaply in wholesale (so you know they're taking a LOT of them at a time). So 99% of the time things you see for sale are not things you should buy, and just in general it's better to be safe than sorry and avoid any real bat products at all.

Bat biology is extremely awesome so I get it if you want a cool specimen for your shelf, but if so please reach for a replica instead! I make a ton of super accurate bat skull replicas, including ones that I've enlarged so you can actually see all those neat skull features better. The pics on this post are some of my replicas, so you can see how detailed they are... most are printed from CT scans so even the inside of the skull is anatomically accurate!

You can also get something like an extremely cute bat art doll from Wild Bendy Workshop! Or IDK buy a framed bat picture for your wall instead of a real bat. Get a sweet bat tattoo? Oh shit I just realized I don't have any bat tattoos, brb gonna add that to the to-do list.

If you want to learn more (about bat poaching, not bat tattoos) there's a good article on The Verge or I've got a more detailed page on my website too

Also shoutout to the Oddities & Curiosities Expo for banning the sale of bat specimens, and props to Etsy for finally getting on board and banning bat sales also! I feel like this isn't really a well known topic in the bone collecting hobby and I'd love for the word to really spread, please feel free to repost this or idk ask me about bats or something. I'm not a bat scientist or anything but I am a passionate collector of animal facts.

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UV curing a resin 3D printed unicorn skull (the horn is printed separately). I love how the combination of blue lights, yellow UV shield, and water make this eerie green glow like something out of a weird science lab.

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Some days I feel overwhelmed by my possessions but then other days I find super nice rocks, so like??? Anyway if you need to be a little more tchotchke-forward I have tiny bat skull replicas in glass display domes! Do you see any other cool stuff you like in my goblin trinket collection? I didn't show it all obviously, but I did show you a few of my favorites. 😁