Last week I gave you a particularly mean mystery object to try to identify:

This would be difficult if it was an accurate representation of the eye of the living animal, but I suspect it’s pretty much impossible (unless you’re familiar with this specimen), considering how different this eye appears from the eye of the actual animal. This is something that katedmonson spotted and commented on:

The problem I can “see” with this eye is that we are relying on the skill of the taxidermist to have correctly chosen the exact correct glass eye: pupil, color, shape of the iris, for the animal is is supposed to represent. And did the preparer accidentally strip the eye of any eyelashes, (sus scrofa as many have indicated) or does this animal not have any. Which is fairly unusual as far as ‘eyes’ go. Unless it was cetacean, which the fur would indicate it is not. Not seal either.

Kat made the point I was planning on making when I chose this mystery object – the eyes of taxidermy specimens are a choice made by the taxidermist who does the preparation, and that choice might be accurate – or it might not be. However, there is one point Kat makes that isn’t quite on point – this is in fact a type of seal:

This is a Hooded Seal Cystophora cristata (Erxleben, 1777) – a species that I have talked about before on the blog, in fact I think the specimen I used in that instance may have been the skull that came from this taxidermy example:

I should probably offer my apologies at this point, for going with such a difficult mystery object, but sometimes it’s nice to pose a puzzle that even the crack community of commenters on the blog have trouble with. Thanks to you all for your thoughts on this – I hope the search for an answer wasn’t too frustrating!