Taxidermy

One of the books I have been reading, The Postmodern Animal, has really bought my attention to taxidermy in art and particularly 'botched' taxidermy. Where random parts are put together not anatomically correct to the individual animal. I find this really interesting as I think it really ties in with the themes of animal gods, like Ganesha; part elephant part child/human, and mystical creatures, like the unicorn, part horse part… rhino?

Why do we as humans create these combinations, what do they mean/symbolise in our world. Animals through the human eye. As we are practically the top of the food chain, do we have to give animals adaptations away from their natural state in order to compete with us or empower or scare us to enable them to work as their role of goddesses or their power in folk law etc? Or is it just that we as humans see specific characteristics we admire in these animals? Do we want to appreciate these characteristics in the animals but not actually aspire to be the animal itself because we like to identify as separate and above these animals as humans. For example buddhism- their is a hierarchy of animals and the least like humans, e.g. the worm, seem to be at the bottom, with powerful rich in resources humans are at the top- have been moral in a previous life. In hinduism the animal gods are used to give the farmers a language (symbol) they understand.. these aspects of the elephant are to be aspired to or scared of - but how is this linked to the physical animal itself ?

Anyway. 

I have been doing some more research into taxidermy due to this and I have taken out three books:

'Taxidermy' by Alexis Turner, 2013, Thames & Hudson Ltd, London

'Finders, Keepers' Eight Collections, (photographs) Rosamond Wolff Purcell and (text) Stephen Jay Gould, 1992, Hutchinson Radius

'Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums' by Stephen T. Asma, 2001, Oxford University Press, Inc.

This also links in to other research I have previously undertaken;

• Visiting the Hunterian Museum in London. Within the University- a third of the collection (the rest was bombed in the blitz) from Hunter, the royal surgeons, collection of anatomy (things both human and animal in jars). Included foetuses of anything from a baby sloth to a human, spines, faces etc. 
• BBC documentary (find again on bbc inlayer) about artists and one focusses on one artist which uses taxidermy in her work, such as small mouse suspended in air by a balloon. The public send her road kill and dead animals from natural causes, which are frozen and then used to work from. 
• Aynhoe Park- Stately home bought by someone that worked for the Ministry of Sound. I did an event there and was stunned by the juxtapositions within the house, there was amazing imagery. For example the dining room was extremely long and it was possible to open up doors on each end of the room to prolong the length of the room- on the table there was about 12 globes of differing scale and size, it had such an impact! There was a hanging Jesus on the Cross on one wall, but confronting it directly opposite was a hanging McDonald's sign- symbolising the differences but similarities in the objects/ideas we 'praise/cherish/religious' (can't remember the word).