Spooky, Scary, Inaccurate Skeletons

Happy Halloween from Major Buzzkill! To celebrate, I’m going to ruin everyone’s fun and take a look at a recent trend in Halloween decorations: the inaccurate animal skeletons.

Let me preface this by saying I think these decorations are super cute and if I ever get past my ever-growing student debt and get a house, I will most likely buy a whole menagerie of spooky animal skeletons.

However…as cute as these decorations are, the zooarchaeologist in me dies a little inside when I see how…well, unrealistic they are.

Let’s start with the raven. Thanks to Mr. Poe, the raven is probably one of the spookiest birds for the season. But what’s even spookier is…well, whatever that plastic skeleton is (left). In reality (right), raven skeletons are a less more hollow, with lots of space throughout the skeleton and larger long bones. Also, the fake raven’s eye sockets are terrifying…or is it just me?

Unsurprisingly, bats have also become spooky, scary skeletons for Halloween. Now, this was a little unfair in that I’m not entirely sure what kind of bat the decoration was going for (seen on the left, the skull is probably a little closer to a vampire bat), but for the sake of comparison, here’s a fruit bat (right) – I’ll give the fake skeleton credit for the bones of the wings being kinda…sorta…close. But look at those ears!

Speaking of ears…what I’ve noticed is that most of these animal skeleton decorations get these strange, bony ears – probably for the sake of differentiating them, but how weird are they?! As for cats…you know, the fake one (left) almost gets it right…minus the ears and the significantly elongated skull that most domestic cats (right) lack – although that’s probably just to give them a cute nose.

And now…perhaps one of the scariest decorations of all…the dog. Judging by those weird bony ears alone (left), I imagined that it was supposed to be a Rottweiler (right)? I’m actually fascinated by the ears on this one…are they weird, floppy bones? How do they work? If anyone wants to brainstorm with me later, let me know.

Again, this is all in good fun – I understand that its a silly Halloween decoration and that some adjustments are made to make them recognisable to the general public! But seriously…what the hell is this, Party City?

Have a safe and fun Halloween, everyone!

All skeleton decorations are from Party City and all actual skeletons are replicas from Bone Clones.

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