Pairi Daiza Anyone Want Sammy???

Sarus Crane

Sarus Crane

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
Sammy the Asian Elephant died in 2009 at Parc Paradisio in Belgium and if you have $37,590.36 you can buy his head mount from 1stdibs.com His father was the famous Siam from the Paris Zoo. Based on how he looked in life, I think the taxidermist did a poor job. In the video below taken shortly before his death he looks nothing like the mount. Maybe a zoo will buy it and use it for educational purposes. I wish US zoos would save their tuskers for museum educational purposes. Poor Ranchipur from San Diego went to the incinerator and Packy as well as Tusko were buried. They could've been mounted and put in a museum for people to see them close up more so than at any zoo when they were alive.

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Yikes! They really didn't do poor Sammy any favours. He was definetly one of the better looking young bulls in Europe at the time of his death, and this mount has severely mangled what was a rather stunning bull. Plus the got the tusk shape and girth wrong for the particular animal, however that is less of an issue for me.

Now I tend to be more of a sentimental fellow, so I'm not terribly upset when a prominent animal is simply buried or cremated. However it sometimes does have a purpose beyond that. For instance, Packy was an active TB risk, and preparing his body for any sort of taxidermy would have been extremely risky. As a matter of fact they didn't even necropsy him because of it.
 
Hyak_II said:
Yikes! They really didn't do poor Sammy any favours. He was definetly one of the better looking young bulls in Europe at the time of his death, and this mount has severely mangled what was a rather stunning bull. Plus the got the tusk shape and girth wrong for the particular animal, however that is less of an issue for me.

Now I tend to be more of a sentimental fellow, so I'm not terribly upset when a prominent animal is simply buried or cremated. However it sometimes does have a purpose beyond that. For instance, Packy was an active TB risk, and preparing his body for any sort of taxidermy would have been extremely risky. As a matter of fact they didn't even necropsy him because of it.
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If Sammy had lived he was gonna look great like his dad with that really tall head and long tusks. If you watch the film "YoYo" by Pierre Etaix (1960's) Siam looks very much like a slightly older Sammy. From photos I've seen, Siam didn't get chubby till he got to Paris. His tusks also got really long there and I believe at one point they had to be trimmed at one point. I'm just glad that Jack Thiney, the taxidermist who mounted him for the museum, got his anatomy right. What about San Diego's Ranchipur, Emmen's Radza, Copenhhagen's Chieng Mai and others? Do natural history museums not value their state/city zoo's tuskers anymore? I mean Siam doesn't look especially big in pics but when you stand next to him in the Grand Gallery of Evolution he's HUGE!!!! I've never felt so tiny in my life! It was the next best thing to seeing a Stegodon in real life.
 
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