ANATOMY OF ANIMALS
Creatures as you’ve never seen them before
A trip to the zoo will only give you part of the picture.
That’s how Body Worlds installation director Sven Rosenberger sees live creatures. Now he’s tasked with overseeing more than 100 animals that have been meticulously preserved, dissected and “plastinated” for posterity.
In preparation for next Friday’s opening of the Body Worlds: Animal Inside Out exhibit, workers busily drilled, assembled, hauled and unwrapped six semi-trailers worth of the globe-trotting specimens and their display cases Friday at the Telus World of Science Edmonton.
“The most amazing thing, is you can see what’s underneath,” Rosenberger said. “You will receive a tremendous impression which you can’t find in books, because what you see here is real.”
Body Worlds’ initial claim to fame 23 years ago was its collection of preserved and dissected human cadavers that both fascinated and shocked exhibition-goers. In 2010, the creators expanded their dissections to animals for a new touring exhibit.
After creatures are donated to the Institute for Plastination in Germany, they are immersed in a bath and filled with the preservative formaldehyde, Rosenberger said. Then most or all of their skin is removed, and dissectors decide how to pull apart the layers of muscle, tissue, fat and bone to best reveal their anatomical structure. Preparing larger animals for display can take more than two years.
Already unpacked Friday was a 1.5-metre long squid and what looked from a distance like a threeheaded camel. It’s just one camel, whose head and neck have been neatly sliced into three sections, revealing how it looks inside when the camel is nibbling food off the ground or raising its head high.
Visitors also will see a pony’s digestive system tidily removed and reassembled next to it. There are creatures from each continent that swim, fly, or roam deserts or forests, including Roseberger’s favourite — a “handsome” giraffe.
Other animals were subjected to a different plastination technique that recreates every vessel of their circulatory system with a bloodred polymer.
Some spectators who find the human body exhibits too shocking will see the animal display as more palatable, Rosenberger said. The specimens do not appear gory, so bring the kids along.