Collecting Skulls and Bones

Skulls are beautiful, coming in many shapes and sizes. It can be fun to collect animal skulls, but how does one start a collection, and perhaps more important, how can we collect skulls while promoting conservation and ethical practices?

Where to obtain animal skulls

It can be easier to find dead animals if you live in a more rural area, but you can still collect skulls if you live in a densly populated area. Below is a list of where to find skulls and skeletons. Be sure to always wear rubber gloves (those disposable ones work well) when handling a dead animal.

• Roadkill
Be careful with this, as roadkill often contains shattered bones, which can be sharp enough to cut rubber gloves. Don't collect roadkill from busy roads or thru-ways, traffic is too busy in these areas to be safe.
• Wooded areas
Animals that die naturally (from old age, sickness, etc) rather than by a predetor can sometimes be found in wooded areas. Even larger animals that died due to a predetor can sometimes be found, although pieces of the skull and bones are sometimes missing from these.
• Barncats
Barncats, or any cat with access to the outdoors, are well known for their ability to hunt mice- and also for their sometimes undesired habit of leaving small dead animals for their owners. These can be buried and dug up again after a few months, and are a good way to start a collection, and to practice artuculating (reassembling) a skeleton.
• Online Stores
Entire websites are dedicated to selling skulls and bones. Some don't prefer buying skulls online, as they find it more fun to find bones themselves. If you choose to buy from an online website, buy from a reputable one so that you know the skulls were obtained ethically and are of the best quality. Some reputable stores include Skulls Unlimited and the Bone Room. Edit: I have had the privilage to speak to a museum curator, who has confirmes that in addition to bleaching and boiling their skulls, Skulls Unlimited and the Bone Room also sell bones illeagally. Both stores also sell bat remains. The reason they are still in business is because not many people know this about them. Please purchase bones from reputable sellers, such as Oracle KC instead. These bones can be expensive, but are usually profesionally cleaned, which can be a good option if you don't prefer handling freshly dead animals. Don't ever purchase bat remains, even if they say they are ethically obtained. Here is a post from Bat Conservation & Rescue QLD explaining why:



• Owl Pellets
These are another way to obtain smaller animals. When an owl eats a rodent or small bird, they digest the flesh of the animal and are left with the bones and feathers/fur. The owl throws this up in the form of a small pellet. These are another good way to obtain smaller skulls and bones, and the bones are already cleaned of most flesh. This is a fun activity for kids.

Cleaning Bones

Now that you have found some bones, you will need to make sure that they are cleaned and dissinfected before you bring them in your house. This needs to be done carefully to avoid damaging the bones. Here is a list of bone cleaning methods:

• Burial

This is a good way to clean off flesh from skulls and skeletons, especially larger ones. If you choose this method for an entire skeleton, especilly if you want to articulate it later, wrap the animal in wire mesh or a similar material to keep everything together. Bury the animal deep, and mark where you left it with a brick or similar. Small animals (rat sized and smaller) only need around a month before they are mostly bones, and larger animals can take anywhere from a month or two or more before they can be dug back up.

• Masceration

I have never tried this method, where you soak the animal in cold water, allowing bacteria to eat at the flesh, but I have heard that it has an extremely unpleasent smell. It might work better with really small animals. Edit: I tried this with a rabbit skull and it seemed to work ok. It takes a long time to clean skulls this way, but it also helps degrease them. Larger animals, and animals with more flesh on them will take longer.

• Leaving Outside

Not recommended if you have next-door neighbors. Leave the bones on the ground outside far away from where anyone can smell them. A variety of smaller creatures and scavenger animals will clean the flesh for you. Keep in mind that animals may also damage your bones or take pieces away with them.

Once you have removed the flesh from the bones, you will still often find that it has smaller pieces of flesh still attached to it. Depending on which method you chose, and for how long, the skull/bones may still have an unpleasent smell. This is easy to fix: rinsing the bones with clean water and scrubbing them with an old toothbrush will get rid of a lot of remaining tissue.

Degreasing

For fattier animals, degreasing is usually a necessary step in cleaning their bones. you will know your bones need some form of degreasing if they show these signs:

• Translucent, yellowish, or reddish
• (Sometimes) Adipocure, which is basically solidified animal fat. It is nasty and hard to clean off.
• Unpleasent smell, even after using hydrogen peroxide and rinsing with clean water

Most bones I have had to work with did not need to be degreased, so I don't have much experience in degreasing. Edit: I have had to work with a few greasy bones, and have learned a few things. There are a few methods I will cover.

• Using Dish Soap

  From looking at other websites, the clear Dawn dish soap (not the blue kind, it can stain bones) is a good one to use. Fill a container with hot water and dish soap (enough to make the water sudsy) and place the bones in the water. It is recommended that you keep the container of water warm with a tank heater. I have also used a small amount of regular blue Dawn, and it hasn't stained anything when I rinse the bones off right after.

• Using Ammonia

  Not reccomended, there are easier methods. Edit: I haven't had much experience with using ammonia, but after talking to a fellow naturalsit and bone enthusiast, I have learned that ammonia is nasty, but is one of the best ways to degrease skulls. Museums will usually use ammonia.

• Simmering In Hot Water

  Find an old pot or saucepan that you don't mind putting gross bones in. Boil water and put the boiling water and greasy bones in the pot. This doesn't have to be on the stovetop or over heat, you can do this outside, especially since boiling greasy bones doesn't smell great. As it simmers, you will probably see blobs of oil rising to the surface. This oil is what was making the bones transluscent and unpleasent. Never boil bones, only simmer them, and with simmering, some people have noticed damage even with simmering, especially when going over 90 degrees F. Genarally, ammonia is a safer bet.

Hydrogen peroxide

The last step of cleaning yor bones is to disinfect and "bleach" them. Never use actual bleach on bones. Bleach will make bones chalky and brittle. Instead, I recommend hydrogen peroxide. You can find this at most supermarkets and drugstores. Hydrogen peroxide is a disinfectant, and will also lighten the color of bones a bit. Stores usually sell hydrogen peroxide at about 3% hydrogen peroxide. It is diluted since a higher percentage of hydrogen peroxide is often used in the making of bombs. However, for cleaning bones, 3% hydrogen peroxide works very well. Simply find a container large enough to hold bones, and place your skull/bones in the container. Then, fill the container with hydrogen peroxide until the bones are entirely covered. You will know whether the bones are really gross because hydrogen peroxide fizzes when it makes contact with dirty bones. Depending on the size of your bones, you will want to leave them in the hydrogen peroxide for a day or longer. After the bones are done in the hydrogen peroxide, remove them and rinse them off to prevent the hydrogen peroxide from drying and looking powdery. You can set the bones on paper napkins or old towels to let them dry.

Storing and Displaying Bones

Once your bones are clean, you can really display them however you want. I think that skulls look really good in shadow boxes, especially in boxes with a black back-ground. If you want to store them, plasic storage bins work well, and entire small rodent of bird skeletons can be kept in a mint tin. Skulls look really nice all together displayed on a shelf.

Notes on Legality

Most of the time, it's okay to keep a found skull. However, there are some things to keep in mind:

• If you live in the United States, keep in mind the The Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA). You can read about it here. If you find any bird bones and live in the US, it is best to leave them, even if you didn't kill them. Any bird that is not protected by the MBTA (Chickens, gamebirds, anything kept as a pet/domesticated) is perfectly fine to own, though. If you live somewhere with laws like the UK, this probably won't apply to you, depending on species.

• Everyone has different views on animal ethics. That being said, it is wasteful and possibly illegal to kill an animal just for its bones. Killing an animal because it is a pest and there are no other options, or shooting deer or pheasents when it's hunting season, is one thing, but killing an animal for no other reason except to collect its bones is almost always unethical and wasteful.