[HOW TO] Perform a Scorpion Taxidermy

Hi,

As a few of you may know we recently lost the first scorpion we bought, our male P.imp Tank.
As its our first i decided i wanted to keep him so had been looking into ways i could preserve him and was sure i had read a post by ladyriotcontrol on taxidermy so after a lot of hunting i found it and decided to give her method a go, also decided to make a picture log to post to show how i did it and how he turned out (good or bad lol)
Firstly here is the link to Ladyriotcontrols original post (thanx lisa for posting it, its a great method)

https://scorpionforum.darkbb.com/scorpion-guides-tutorials-f18/scorpion-taxidermy-t1178.htm

Now here are the pics.....

This is him before i started



First i cut along the top of the stomach segments (this is quite hard its like cutting leather! you need a really sharp knife)
Then i scooped out the insides (nice lol) and then used a cotton bud with alcohol gel and disinfectant to make sure he was all clean and then dried with another bud, then i stuffed him with fluffed up cotton wool being careful to check with the photo of him i took before to make sure he looked right.




Then i cut a small piece of card around the same length of the stomach cut and slid it in so that there was something to glue the body back to, i also coloured this piece of card a dark brown to match the colour of the other side of his stomach, and glued him back up. Once he was dry i got him ready for hair spraying by arranging his legs and bluetacking his pedipalps open. I found i really had to push the bluetack right down in the gap where the claw opened for them to stay open but so that you couldn't see it.
Then i laid him on his back and sprayed all over (apart from the tail) using a cotton bud to dab off any drips on the hairs and body.




Then once dry (i cheated and used a hairdryer to speed up the process)i turned him over and positioned him how i wanted him to look by using bluetack to hold the tail up in place, and sprayed him again (i used quite a few layers of spray for the top to make sure the tail stayed up) once again i used a hairdryer to speed up the drying process...(i'm so impatient) then removed the bluetack.



Then i thought hmmm what the hell am i gonna do with him now!?!?!

So decided that to make sure he stayed safe he needed to be in some sort of case/box and decided to utilise an empty cricket box (until i find something better)
So i took the lid of the cricket box and turned it upside down and mixed a load of substrate with PVA glue and stuck it to the lid (not knowing if it would work lol) then once the glue had dried i sprayed it with hairspray for some extra hold, once dry i took a pin and the scorpion and stuck it up through the box and substrate and into the scorpion and this is what it looks like...i can then use the cricket box to go over the scorpion to keep him safe..... this is really only a temporary measure until i can find something more professional looking like a plaque and some sort of glass dome.

Im also going to add a cricket or locust into his pedipalp at some point think that will look awesome!




Here's some larger ones of the finished scorpion....





So there you go my attempt at taxidermy lol And again big thanx to Ladyriotcontrol as this is her method!

wow, thats amazing. how long did it take to do?

sorry for ya loss aswell.

Thanx

Altogether about 3 hours the substrate took the longest to dry

you done a great job tho. hopefully you wont have to do it again for some time.

Thank you, was ok for first go lol
I hope I don't have to do it any time soon I don't think this method would work very well with smaller scorpions either, be far to fiddly I think.

Wow, great job!! I'm glad it turned out good for you too! What is Bluetack though? I think I may try to do this with some specimens at some point so definitely thanks for posting up! Great documentation too!
One possible idea is using a mirror for the base. You could check out different things like bread or butter containers where there is a wood or plastic base with like glass dome cover and just get mirror to match, glue it to the bottom and then mount the scorp on that. Just an idea, I may try that out and thought I'd share!
Really though, glad you posted this up and it looks awesome!!

iitomodachi1 wrote:

Wow, great job!! I'm glad it turned out good for you too! What is Bluetack though? I think I may try to do this with some specimens at some point so definitely thanks for posting up! Great documentation too!
One possible idea is using a mirror for the base. You could check out different things like bread or butter containers where there is a wood or plastic base with like glass dome cover and just get mirror to match, glue it to the bottom and then mount the scorp on that. Just an idea, I may try that out and thought I'd share!
Really though, glad you posted this up and it looks awesome!!

Thank you

Um blutack/white tack/ sticky tack is like stuff you can stick posters up with bit like playdough consistency, don't you have it out there?? Like this....



The mirror sounds like a really good idea will def look into that have no idea what to use for the dome though???

Ok, we have stuff like that, just didn't know the name of it.

As for a case I was thinking of something you set on the table and put pastries on or something. You could also find like sports or collectible display cases. Here's a couple I just pulled off of google:

http://www.monsterpuck.com/skin1/images/hockey-helmet-display-case-hero.jpg

http://www.glue-it.com/model-engineering/general-information/glossary/d/pictures/display-case-001.jpg

http://www.triodisplay.com/catalog/images/FCC.jpg

iitomodachi1 wrote:

Ok, we have stuff like that, just didn't know the name of it.

As for a case I was thinking of something you set on the table and put pastries on or something. You could also find like sports or collectible display cases. Here's a couple I just pulled off of google:

http://www.monsterpuck.com/skin1/images/hockey-helmet-display-case-hero.jpg

http://www.glue-it.com/model-engineering/general-information/glossary/d/pictures/display-case-001.jpg

http://www.triodisplay.com/catalog/images/FCC.jpg

Yeah there the kinda things cool but need them smaller be cool to put loads of different species in one case think I'd still like something small and domed though but I'm just to fussy lol

Oh oh oh just found this lol

http://www.taxidermy.co.uk/domes.htm

But omg the are fudging expensive

That looks awesome! Definitely post up photos if you make the change

thats really cool! must try that at some stage!

omg those domes are well expensive. stick with the cricket tub lol

hahaha prly will have to, to be honest unless i find something cheap lol

get a xmas snow dome, get rid of the inners and hey presto you got yourself a taxidermy dome.

Lol cool a scorpion snow dome lol don't think they would be large enough though

Do know anyone who does any carpentry? You could easily and cheaply make a base like in the below picture and just make it to fit a new cricket container and use the wood as a base and the plastic as the top.

Example Here

No lol unfortunatly not shame my dad isn't with us any more he could make anything was forever making stuff out of wood boxes frames furniture anything lol

Sorry to hear that, same here though, thankfully I picked up a few of his tricks before hand and now have all of his tools. But once again we come to this wrong side of the pond thing again! Keep your eyes open you'll find something!

Tank

what you did with your scorpions is awesome. dont be surprised if one day i pm you asking you to help me find this thread xD

Thanx, You can favourite topics at the top right in tiny writing there is 'actions' click on that and you can favourite whatever topic your on,

Thanks for the tip

Looks really cool and those are extremely expensive!

Holy poop on a stick! They're charging that much for glass?
Don't know if you have them over on the other side of the water, but we have a chain of craft/hobby supply stores called Michael's; they sell acrylic display cases for much, much less.
Not domed, though, but you can get them in all kinds of sizes.
I especially like this one:
http://www.michaels.com/Baseball/Model-Car-Display-Case/hd0099,default,pd.html?start=17&cgid=products-framing-displaycases

And a very, very nice job there. I now know what to do with my first emp when she eventually bites the big one.
I still have a little bark scorpion (first scorp ever) that's been sitting in a tiny jar of tequila for the last 20-25 years.