Very old fruit bat taxidermy

(Click for bigger, better detail!)

Here's my most recent acquisition--a very, very old and battered fruit bat! It was a rejected mount from the University of Michigan (someone gave it to them in that condition!) Someone clued me in to it, and made the arrangements to have it shipped to me, and so here it is! The curator said that he wasn't sure of the exact species, but said "I believe the bat is a Pteropus species, but I can't be positive which it is. It is probably from the vampyrus complex, which are all common and not threatened or endangered". I'm planning to keep it and restore it somehow; all that webbing is probably going to have to be removed as it's paper-thin and so delicate that it crumbles to the touch. And yes, I will be VERY careful in handling it since it almost certainly was prepared with arsenic--whee!!!

In the last picture you can see where the board the bat is mounted on has glass so that light can shine through the wings--pretty cool! Poor thing has a significant layer of dust; I foresee myself spending a great deal of time in the garage with a filter mask and a can of air.

And no, despite my artistic proclivities I will NOT be turning this guy into a headdress