The Saturday Story | After life comes taxidermy

Death is not the end of the story for Dr Santosh Anant Gaikwad. It marks the beginning of another journey, where he preserves animals and birds with astonishing realism for educational purposes. Mrityunjay Bose meets the sought-after taxidermist from Mumbai.

The tiger appears frozen mid-growl. A flamingo stands in impossible stillness, its curved neck looking elegant. A snow leopard watches with glassy intensity, seemingly ready to leap. Macaws cling to branches while a kingfisher appears poised to dive. Pangolins curl beside mouse deer, egrets, herons, jungle fowl, kites and cuckoos. Nearby, a lion and
lioness stand side by side, their silent presence enough to stop anyone cold.

Seemingly alive, these animals and birds are, in fact, long dead. Today, they live on within the glass showcases of the Natural History Museum inside Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) in Mumbai, preserved with astonishing realism through the art of taxidermy. And behind every feather, claw, whisker and scale lies the painstaking work of one man: Dr Santosh Anant Gaikwad. Though a self-taught taxidermist, he is perhaps the only practitioner in India who is working at this scale.

Step into his world, and the boundary between life and death begins to blur. “It is nothing but life after death… the cosmic life force,” says the 53-year-old. For more than two decades, he has given around 700 dead creatures a ‘second life’, not as trophies, but as reminders of India’s rich biodiversity and humanity’s complicated relationship with the natural world. That, for him, is the true goal of taxidermy: to preserve animals and birds so future generations can study and remember them, including species gone extinct.

Five fields in one

Taxidermy is the art of preparing, stuffing, and mounting the skins of animals, birds, fish, crustaceans, amphibians, and reptiles. The term comes from the ancient Greek words taxis (order or arrangement) and derma (skin), and translates to “arrangement of skin”. “Through this art, you preserve the movement of the skin,” Dr Santosh explains.

Taxidermy is an art, a science, and much more. It is a combination of cobbling, sculpture, carpentry, painting, and anatomy. “All five arts need to be mastered by a single person,” he says with a constant smile. “Every step is difficult, every step is important… You cannot skip anything.” Anything less, he repeats, will spoil the specimen. “We have to be careful even with strands of hair,” he emphasises.

That makes it a time-consuming and labour-intensive job. Preparing a bird may take five to seven days, while mounting a large mammal, say a tiger, can take close to a month. But many see it as “dirty” work. Handling a carcass is challenging enough; then comes the stench during the skinning and tanning process.

Mysuru expertise

The decline of taxidermy in India has deeper roots. The craft once flourished during the colonial era, when British officers, hunters and naturalists preserved animals as scientific specimens and hunting trophies. By the 19th century, museums and princely collections across the Bombay, Calcutta and Madras presidencies displayed mounted tigers, leopards, deer, birds and reptiles. Among the most notable taxidermy firms was Van Ingen & Van Ingen in Mysuru. It was founded by a family of Dutch origin who were drawn to the region’s dense forests and rich wildlife. Over nearly a century, the now-closed firm is estimated to have worked on tens of thousands of big cats, including tigers and leopards.

After Independence, the scene shifted. Stricter conservation laws, particularly the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, banned hunting and tightly regulated the possession of animal trophies and preserved specimens. Taxidermy also came to be associated with cruelty and colonial nostalgia.

But elsewhere, particularly in South Africa, the US and parts of Europe, taxidermy remains “very prominent”. In some regions, regulated hunting and safari tourism sustain demand, while in others, interest is supported by museums, natural history traditions, and collector cultures. Taxidermy has also emerged as a contemporary art form; it is practised using ethically sourced materials and is displayed in exhibitions and competitions.

Big shoes to fill

Dr Santosh serves as an honorary wildlife taxidermist at SGNP, located in Borivali. But taxidermy is not his primary job. He is, in fact, a professor and head of anatomy at Mumbai Veterinary College (MVC), Parel. His tryst with mounting animal skins began with curiosity and concern.

In 2003, as a practising veterinary doctor, he visited the Prince of Wales Museum, now the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, in Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda. The wildlife exhibits stopped him in his tracks. “The animals, birds and fish looked so real I could not take my eyes off them,” he recalls. They were the work of British naturalists and taxidermists, he would later learn.

At the time, he had no idea what taxidermy was, but through research, he realised it was an important field. “The next logical step was to find out where it was taught,” he says. He wrote to museums, zoologists and natural history experts in Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai, only to be told that “those who knew the art had retired, grown too old or passed away”. The absence of active experts troubled him. “Why should endangered animals and birds be burnt or buried after death?” he wondered. A provision in the Wildlife Protection Act that allows the preservation of animal specimens for educational purposes became a turning point. “I could see light at the end of the tunnel. I decided I would do this myself,” he says.

He began by reading books and online material. He also travelled to museums across the country to study mounted birds and animals (their form, proportions and techniques). But theory alone was not enough.

He went to cobblers for hands-on training. “Handling the shoemaker’s hammer was difficult, and using the metal file required precision,” he says. He then learnt sculpting and painting from art students, followed by woodwork from carpenters.

He also observed Ganapati idol makers at work ahead of Ganesha Chaturthi, and visited tanneries in Dharavi. Tanning is a critical step because “it prevents decomposition and turns animal hides into durable leather”.

He fitted all this training into evenings after college work. “As far as anatomy was concerned, that was my subject,” he says.

Home experiments

Now, Dr Santosh had to put what he had learnt into practice. “I began by bringing home dead chickens and practising on them, on our dining table,” he recalls.

His family was supportive of his home laboratory, though his wife had occasional complaints. “I was using the refrigerator’s deep-freeze compartment to store dead birds!” he admits. To ensure hygiene, he began wrapping chickens and pigeons in plastic “several times over”.

Slowly, word spread and people began approaching him for taxidermy work. In the early years, he created several specimens for the Dr Balasaheb Sawant Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth, an agricultural university in Ratnagiri. From small birds, he moved on to fish — rohu, katla and mirgal — then to larger animals like spotted deer and sambar, and eventually to big cats including tigers, lions, leopards, snow leopards and even a Siberian tiger. Except for one tigress from Madhya Pradesh that was found shot dead in a
poaching case, he has worked only on wildlife that died of natural causes.

Throughout the conversation, Dr Santosh returns to one point. While museums today also display photographs and videos of wildlife, these cannot capture an animal’s three-dimensional reality the way a properly stuffed specimen can.

Renewed interest

Taxidermy in India took a hit after wildlife conservation laws were introduced, but ironically, today it is once again in demand to support conservation efforts.

Dr Santosh says museums, national parks, zoos, and educational institutions now require preserved specimens for research and awareness. Even the Central Zoo Authority, New Delhi, advocates preserving ‘Rashtriya Mrut Van Sampada’, or dead national wildlife, for educational purposes. Forest departments across states now frequently collaborate with Dr Santosh.

In 2006, MVC, where he teaches, approached the Maharashtra Forest Department seeking permission for him to work on specimens from the Mumbai Zoo. The proposal took time to clear, and materialised two years later with a male leopard named Deepak. Wildlife taxidermy cannot be used for commercial purposes and requires official permissions. “The Chief Wildlife Warden is the nodal authority for granting permission under the Transactions and Taxidermy Rules,” he explains.

Dr Santosh’s big break came in 2009, when the then Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife), Bimal Mazumdar, approved the setting up of the Wildlife Taxidermy Centre inside SGNP. The only facility of its kind in India, it began in a garage space before it gradually expanded. The centre’s establishment lent credibility to his work. “Forest departments began sending specimens regularly. In some cases, I travelled to other states and worked on-site,” he recalls.

The centre itself feels like a world tucked away inside Mumbai’s chaos. Outside, one can hear distant traffic, construction noise, and the endless rush of the Maximum City. Inside, there is no movement except the slow turning of fans and the occasional footsteps. The contrast is surreal — a city racing ahead, and a lone man quietly preserving fragments of vanishing wilderness.

Highlights

If one were to draw up a resume for Dr Santosh’s taxidermy career, the highlights section would read: 500-plus birds, 150-plus fish, 15 big cats, one elephant and one rhinoceros.

Under “the most interesting case” would be Vimla. “She was a female elephant that died in Allapalli in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district in 2009. The situation there was very different then. Naxalism was at its peak,” he recalls. The forest staff decided to preserve only the head and trunk due to the challenges of transporting the carcass, and by the time Dr Santosh arrived, the rest of the body had already begun to decompose.“We did it, and it is now mounted at SGNP,” he shares.

The “most challenging” case involved a rhinoceros in Assam. “We had to use a crane to lift it. It is the only time I have worked on a rhinoceros,” he says.

One case he fondly recalls involves the preservation of a peacock at Mumbai’s Raj Bhavan, now called Lok Bhavan.“When I presented it to the then Governor K Sankaranarayanan, he got very emotional,” he recalls.

He has no “favourite” creation, though. “Everything is a matter of dedication,” he says, simply. For Dr Santosh, the end goal is perfection. The specimen should look as lifelike as possible, and the key lies in getting the anatomy right. “A tiger walking, hunting or resting is all different. The body shape changes with each activity,” he explains.

As for assessing his own work, he leaves that to others. “It is difficult to say. But people tell me my creations look like the real animal,” he says.

Has he ever accidentally damaged the skin of an animal he was tasked with restoring and preserving? “I do everything very carefully. I do not want an important resource to go to waste,” is all he says. And it is not an inexpensive task. Preserving a tiger alone can cost close to Rs 50,000, with the expenses borne by the commissioning party.

According to him, the specimens he has created can last up to 70 years if preservation and maintenance protocols are followed properly. Only once did he have to redo some exhibits at SGNP after they were hit by floods.

Lessons for future

When Dr Santosh started as a taxidermist, he had no guru. At the peak of his career, he has no shishya. “I worry that this art (in India) will be lost with me,” he says.

When he visits colleges to speak about taxidermy, he is largely met with scepticism. Students question the relevance of stuffed animals in a world of computer-generated graphics and AI visuals. Yet some also ask if there are any courses available. He has, thus, sent a proposal through MVC to the Maharashtra Animal and Fishery Sciences University in Nagpur to launch a one-month certificate course in taxidermy.

“Taxidermy forces humans to confront mortality, extinction and the fragile relationship between civilisation and nature. In a country where forests are shrinking, and wildlife habitats are increasingly under pressure, these preserved specimens become more than museum pieces — they become warnings, memories and lessons for future generations,” he says.

As I walk out of his museum, the growl on the tiger’s face, the glassy intensity in the snow leopard’s eyes, and the flamingo caught in a moment of stillness remind me who we share this earth with.