Question: are the animals you study already dead or did you kill them?

Sive Finlay answered on 13 Nov 2013:

Hi Hannah,

I’m interested in studying the shape and physical characteristics of tenrecs to figure out how similar they are to other mammal species. To do this I take measurements and photographs of their skulls and limbs so I use skeletal collections of animals at natural history museums. Most of these have been dead for a very long time (the oldest I came across were from the 1890s) while others were collected within the last 10 years.
As well as the animals’ shapes I’m interested in studying their ecology – so where they live, what they eat etc. For this I collect data from studies of wild animals, all of which are very much alive 🙂
Sive