Animal bones can have a fascination for us all, especially children. Just think of all the children around the world who are totally absorbed by dinosaur bones. All are desperate to grow up and become palaeontologists- which to be honest, is no bad thing! When I present Natural History roadshows in schools, I often bring with me animal skulls and some of them I choose because they display certain abnormalities. This leads to investigation and encourages the children to ask questions - how did it happen? did it affect the animal in its daily life? was it fatal? etc. We will also look closely at the placement of eyes - why are they in a different setting to our own? Why do deer even have antlers and what are they made from? How do they use them? What happens to them when they loose them? Loads of good investigative questions and its great fun to encourage the children to think. They very often surprise themselves!
Children often recognise a Fallow deer skull with its large antlers but not our other smaller deer species. Even a skull with very small antlers present, (such as a Muntjac), children can often think they are a dog or badger. We have 6 species of deer in the UK but 4 of those species have been introduced. Only the Red and Roe deer are truly native.
Two Muntjac skulls being bleached. Bleaching is part of the cleaning preparations of a skull. The bleach must not cover the antlers as it will remove their colour.
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