Well I am sending off one jacksons chameleon head to Alaska sometime soon(as soon as I get to my house), and in the mean time here(shore house) I was digging through the freezer and found a male jacksons chameleon head...anyway, I tossed it into some 190 degree water and let it in there to soak for a while..then I climbed down my dock and caught several grass shrimp as well as a small 1 inch blue clawed crab. Anyway, what I did was toss it all in a cup and fill it with water. Hopefully they will eat the flesh off of the skull as well as possible and then I will leave it in the salt water to soak and macerate. It just seems like a neat little new experiment. Let me know what you guys think about my idea!
-Steve
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Let me know how it works out, I may have to try it! lol
Wolfwoman
It'll work but a scalpel does the same thing faster. Using other critters to clean it works great if they can clean all of it... otherwise yer just using them to remove the bulk of the flesh and allowing bacteria to eat the rest. Ive experimented with lots of different critters but found that fish and crustaceans don't help enough to make it worth my while. What takes them 4 days I can do in 15 minutes with a scalpel...
Maggots do a really good job... dang near as good as dermestids. They progress through instars a lot faster tho and the flies can get out of control REAL fast. I'm doing a moose in my garage right now and in 2 days went from no visible flies in the garage to a couple thousand! The bones are cleaning up nice but DAMN what a lot of flies - LOL!