The cleaning of Skeletons by means of larvae of Dermestid Beetles

Skeletons are an essential part of every zoological collection. The cleaning of the carcasses or other crude skeletal material obtained from collected animals can be carried out by mechanical defleshing, by boiling in water with or without chemicals, or by a combination of mechanical cleaning and boiling, and these methods are employed in many musea as a routine treatment. In the case of small specimens this process of scraping and boiling almost invariably destroys some of het more delicate structures, so that the preparators are usually very careful when handling small carcasses for fear of damaging them, which often results in incomplete cleaning in spite of their tedious and time-devouring work. They must often feel between the devil and the deep sea, because the obtained skeletons are either damaged or unsatisfactorily cleaned.