Photos of formalin-preserved animals

Posted by David Pescovitz, December 22, 2008 9:35 AM | permalink

Joanna at Morbid Anatomy found a beautiful photo gallery of animals preserved in formalin.

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Older Santa Claus's Fortean family tree

Newer Stanley Milgram's shocking experiment, redux

Discussion

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#1 posted by Ugly Canuck , December 22, 2008 10:35 AM

Well pickle me pink!

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#2 posted by Purly

, December 22, 2008 10:39 AM

I don't understand the appeal of preserving things in formalin. Just kind of creepy.

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#3 posted by Anonymous , December 22, 2008 10:47 AM

Well, thanks to bad judgment on MY part, I won't be needing the rest of my lunch.

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#4 posted by NickP , December 22, 2008 6:43 PM

I'm pretty sure those specimens are actually in ethanol. Formalin is used to fix and harden the tissue but usually not for long-term storage.

Purly:
Fixing in formalin hardens the tissue and preserves morphology very well, so formalin fixed specimens "keep" better than those that have simply been immersed in ethanol. This is important for scientific specimens which may be studied years or decades after they are first collected.

Formalin does not, however, preserve color.

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#5 posted by Hawkman , December 22, 2008 7:14 PM

Really quite amazing those photographs...the blog in which these reside (morbid anatomy) is a masterpiece as well.

He linked the following blog as the source, there are a good bit more here. Put on a few Christmas carols for a chaser...

http://www.hemmy.net/2007/09/27/animals-in-formalin-preservation/

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#6 posted by Anonymous , December 23, 2008 3:30 PM

http://www.elaineduigenan.com/gallery_61231.html

"The images were taken over the course of three years at the Royal College of Surgeons, London. They are of 200 year old animal specimens which were preserved by pioneer anatomist John Hunter (1728 - 1793)."