Rattler Skull

I haved cleaned the skulls from a lot of different animals, but a recent request from a hunter in New Mexico brought a bit of a challenge to my door. He wanted me to clean the skull of a rattlesnake he'd just killed, so he boxed the head up and shipped it over to me. I didn't know how my beetles would take it, but as usual they didn't disappoint. Once they got the skull cleaned it basically fell into a couple of pieces, and it turns out that a rattlesnake skull is fairly fragile. Once I got it put together, though, it was really interesting to see where all of the glands and organs go. That's actually one of my favorite parts of cleaning skulls, is to learn about the anatomy of different animals.

One of these days I'll buy a better camera, but for now I got as detailed of pictures as I was able to of the rattler skull. And if you'd like to see more pictures of some of the animal skulls I have cleaned up, click here to go to an online album.