Taxidermy is the craft of preserving a dead animal, bird or fish by treating its skin and fitting it over a shaped body so that the finished animal looks alive and can be kept and displayed. What is inside is not the animal — the flesh is removed, and the skin is mounted on a form made of wood, wire, foam or plaster, with glass for the eyes. This is worth knowing, because many students imagine the whole animal is somehow kept, and that is not how it works. Taxidermy is what fills the animal halls of natural history museums, and it was a serious scientific tool in the days before photography, when a mounted specimen was the only way a scientist in one country could study an animal from another. Today it lives in three worlds at once: museum and university work, hunting and fishing trophies, and a small modern art scene that uses it deliberately to unsettle people. It is an uncountable noun — say 'he studies taxidermy', not 'a taxidermy'. Feelings about it differ sharply; plenty of people find it fascinating and plenty find it grim, so it is a subject to raise gently.