Funny taxidermy - disrespectful or harmless?

Its a weird one for me, I eat a plant based diet but have quite the collection of second hand taxidermy, baby bunny in a jar, wear foraged bone jewellery, have dead bugs and butterflies on my walls and my favourite is a little mouse dressed up as a vampire.

I'm picky about where it comes from, as the ethics in the trade don't sit quite right with the reasons I don't eat animals, but I would absolutely love a little mouse on a stripper pole.

I think I pretty much agree with this.

If my cat kills a mouse I won't put the body in the bin because that feels disrespectful to what was a living creature. I will put it outside somewhere out of the way and let nature do what it does, I don't see a problem with letting it rot (or get eaten) - that's what happens naturally. Circle of life and all that. I wouldn't feel comfortable turning it into something meant to be amusing.

I would love a piece of Victorian taxidermy IE squirrels playing cards with mice
For the record DW says I'm weird.🐭🐿️

Eat it, wear it, have it posing in a top hat in your living room... it is all the same to me. It is harmless. The animal is dead. This thread reminds me of the man who turned his dead cat into a drone.

Maybe best not look up 'extreme embalming'.

The victorian taxidermy done badly I have laughed it. The ops ones sound a bit nasty. But I'd never actually own any type of taxidermy

I find it deeply disrespectful and pretty disgusting. My concern is not that the animal minds (it is dead) but more that it coarsens and warps humans' views of what animals are.

People can disagree about whether it's ok to, say, eat animals for nourishment, but we generally agree that the question of whether it's ok is a morally serious one. Deliberately violating an animal's body purely for amusement in a way which is designed to make it appear ridiculous seems to make the opposite statement- that there is nothing morally serious about it, that an animal is merely an item to be used in any way we see fit, so why not put a pencil sharpener up its arse if that might raise a laugh?

The disgustingness of this sort of thing is readily felt when we think about human bodies and the respect with which we feel they should be treated. It's partly for the feelings of the dead person's family and friends, sure, but not entirely for that (after all, it doesn't become acceptable if done in secret)- disrespecting a corpse disrespects human dignity more generally. As with a human, so with a rat, a little. I'm not arguing for ratty funerals etc, just against deliberate violation and ridicule, which offends against the rat's dignity as a rat (or perhaps I mean its eidos and telos) and as a result either sickens us or coarsens us in our interactions with the world.

I have a taxidermy squirrel head wearing a top hat and with a huge moustache mounted on a plaque in my lounge. Makes me giggle all the time and I pet it's nose as I walk past.

I misread as Fanny Taxidermy 😂

YABU - it's a bit of fun. The animal is dead, it doesn't care. Or it's a good way of putting something that would rot away into use. A rat turned into a pencil case is no different to cutting skin off a cow to make one.

It is sick and inappropriate. It doesn't matter if a dead animal has aunties or uncles. Obviously.

Disrespectful to who? The dead animal? I mean, it’s not as if the animal is going to have relatives wandering bout feeling disrespected, is it?🤷‍♀️

I've never seen anything like rodents with pencil sharpeners up their bums .

It is obviously sick and in very bad taste.

It’s no less or more wrong than ordinary taxidermy. It’s really strange to want to own a dead, stuffed animal in the first place