British Bat Taxidermy

Hi all, realised I haven't done a post in a while. If you want to keep up to date. Please follow me on instagram or my facebook page.

Now bat taxidermy...I'm not on about the poached dried indonesian bats you see on wish.com or Ebay (please do not buy these as they are not ethical nor proper taxidermy).

I'm on about British native bats. Now remember, they're highly protected and you must have a license to hold bats, live or dead if you start thinking about having one of your own. They should also be for educational purposes.

To get the boring bit out of the way. I use the WML-GL02 license which is a taxidermist's license to preserve bats for educational purposes. For non Guild of Taxidermist members or the general individual who wants to hold bats for educational purposes. You can get this license (A37)

I want to show you how I preserved this common pipistrelle for a bat conservation centre. This one sadly died of natural causes and I was entrusted to preserve it for them. They're very small, mouse/shrew sized even. There's such a variety of different types of bats in the UK. 18 species to be exact!

Here's some behind the scenes of me bringing this little guy back to life on a fake rock.

Raw Pipistrelle

Tiny form and skull

Fake bat body and glass eyes

My finger to show scale

Making the rock for the bat

Painting the rock up

Bat all pinned up for drying

Bat pinned up for drying

Finished article!

Bat in perspex box

I created the bat body out of balsa wood, used the real skull which I carefully cleaned and used a tiny amount of glue gun glue inside the skull cavity to put back together. You can see the scale which it was, and very small individual. I used 1mm glass eyes (yes you can get them that small). Sewed it back up once the body was back in and pinned it to the rock to dry. It's fiddly work and I use a lot of tools which you can see here to put him back together. The rock is made of insulation foam, MDF base, then coated with sand and PVA to create a texture, then let to dry and painted. With a final coat of dry brushing.

The bat is then pinned on the fake rock and left to dry. The perspex box is to protect the bat from dust. Rather than glass, perspex is safer, especially when educational pieces are created for talks and training. The handling of the box is less dangerous and a lot lighter too.

I hope this gives you an insight of what my day is like as a taxidermist. Some range to huge specimens to tiny little creatures like this one.

Customer license for this bat: 2019-43431-SCI-SCI

My license: WML-GL02