Carl akeley autobiography ranger smith

African Explorer: The Adventures

Carl Akeley was an artist, photographer, inventor, conservationist, and the pre-eminent taxidermist of his day. Akeley was among the first to place his specimens in realistic dioramas for the leading American museums of the day. He spotted no game to speak of until reaching the Lualaba River in central Congo, where in five days he saw only a few antelope, half a dozen elephants and a handful of hippos.

The continent was being hunted out, its great species seemingly destined for extinction. Carl Akeley was born in on a farm in western New York. As a boy, he was obsessed with nature and developed a keen interest in taxidermy. To stuff a deer, for example, Ward would wire its bones, hang it upside down and fill the body with straw until it would hold no more.

When Akeley asked to make a more realistic plaster mount for a zebra, Ward insisted he work on the project only at night. He did, but Ward stuffed the zebra in the old style anyway, then fired Akeley for sleeping on the job. Six months later Ward begged Akeley to come back, and he did. The project gained Akeley a certain amount of recognition in the field, and in he secured a position with the Milwaukee Public Museum.

He worked there for six years refining his revolutionary approach to taxidermy. He sculpted realistic clay models of the creatures he mounted, informed by his study of anatomy and observations in the field. He was, after all, an artist. He complemented his dioramas with painted backgrounds and faux foliage.