Taxidermy

One of my favorite things in life is Science Friday on NPR. They repurpose their Friday radio program in podcasts and also produce videos that are available on their website sciencefriday.com.

http://sciencefriday.com/video/12/17/2010/preserving-the-craft-of-taxidermy.html

Flora Lichtman, Sci Fri's Multimedia Producer, has a truly enviable job of producing the media content for the show, mostly video and a blog. She produced the video below, about a subject dear to my heart--taxidermy. Last year, I read the book Still Live: Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom, which includes a great history of the art plus some interesting anecdotes about learning the craft from the best in the business.
Looking at the web page about the video I am reminded that I have to also read Jay Kirk's book Kingdom Under Glass that focuses on the life and work of taxidermist Carl Akeley. A cool film factoid is that Akeley designed and produced a new kind of field motion picture camera that was eventually used in Robert Flaherty's documentary Nanook of the North.