Some animals can be powerful, strange, unsettling, elegant, and a long list of additional adjectives, but one detail that many overlook is the fact that they manage to surprise us even after they have left this world. Their skeletons go beyond the classic museum pieces. They serve as an impressive source of knowledge, and if preserved correctly… they are beautiful. Would you like to see?
It's fabulous to see them in action through a documentary or directly in person (if possible). Some become our pets, and others are better left alone. Either way, our relationship with animals is closer than we think, and for that reason we need to know more about them. One way to do it is through their skeletons.
Do you know what the structure of a manta ray looks like? Can you recognize the difference between bones and cartilage? What happens to the body of a seahorse when it dies? Is a chameleon's tongue really a tongue? All these questions and many more are answered with the help of these images and the spectacular work of the experts who preserve each creature, including the functional morphologist and biologist Steve Huskey.
Prefer insects? No problem! We also have excellent galleries with close-up photographs dedicated to them. Enjoy!
Animal skeletons gallery
