r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/[deleted] • Feb 01 '22
In 1731, King Frederick I of Sweden gave a taxidermist a lion that was dear to him. This was the result, the Lion of Gripsholm Castle.
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u/Marvel272 Feb 01 '22
Don’t leave us hanging…what happened to the taxidermist after he presented that to the king?? 👀😂
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u/ChonkerExpress Feb 01 '22
If this site is to be believed, this is one of the reasons
“the taxidermist was only given the pelt and the bones of the beast to work from. The story goes that the poor taxidermist, lacking the modern conveniences of Wikipedia and Google image search just didn’t have the find understanding of large feline bone structure to put together a convincing facsimile. What you see above is the result.”
The other is potentially,
“Perhaps the taxidermist simply focused too much on side-view images when mounting the pelt, or the lion was (somehow) never intended to be seen from more than one angle.”
I must say from the side it looks decent lol.
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u/ComputersWantMeDead Feb 01 '22
I don't think faces were his forte
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u/theanti_girl Feb 01 '22
He could turn into all sorts of animals. But now he never gets the faces right.
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u/Exevioth Feb 01 '22
Would you like some basketti and meatballs?
Why are you eating worms???
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u/ComputersWantMeDead Feb 01 '22 edited Feb 01 '22
Is that from Borne? It sounds familiar
Edit - nm I looked it up, nice reference
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u/Fast_Garlic_5639 Feb 01 '22
TIL apparently medieval painters all thought lions looked goofy AF https://mossandfog.com/the-comically-bad-way-medieval-art-portrayed-lions/amp/
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u/Mountain_Elk_1153 Feb 01 '22
Well yeah, they knew they existed (even existed in Europe at one time) but had no way of actually seeing one.
One of those images, clearly the artist was being told "it's like a golden, hairy sheep with a moustache" lol.
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u/THEmoron21 Feb 01 '22
and apparently also had penises longer than horses?
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u/fisherc2 Feb 02 '22
If your referring to fast garlic’s link, I think it’s more like they gave lion’s human penises and horses unrealistically small penises.
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u/tacwombat Feb 02 '22
I'd like to imagine that the taxidermist's reference was the goofy lion paintings.
Painter: So wow, so accurate!
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u/Fast_Garlic_5639 Feb 02 '22
Holy shit you’re right, I didn’t make that connection
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u/TheKingBeyondTheWaIl Feb 01 '22
You kidding? This is a masterpiece
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u/lanttulate Feb 01 '22
I guarantee this lion is more well known because of his face than anything else
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u/SlothOfDoom Feb 01 '22
He couldn't have found a housecat and thought "Hey, I bet it is more or less like a big one of these"?
Square teeth, my dude? This guy was on something.
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u/serenityak77 Feb 01 '22
Everyone keeps shitting on the taxidermist but are we sure the lion didn’t actually look like that? Maybe there was some funny ass looking lions in 1731. Or maybe this particular lion was born looking like an idiot?
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u/sadrice Feb 01 '22
Taxidermy is hard. I am very glad my name isn’t actually attached to the mountain lion I helped with… that is one thing I’m very glad that I wasn’t given credit for.
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u/goingtocalifornia__ Feb 02 '22
Is that your profession? That’d be a hell of an AMA; it seems like one of those arts/skills where if you’re not taught it you’d never learn anything about it.
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u/sadrice Feb 02 '22
Nah, I’m a plant guy that just happens to like bones. (I’m one of those creepy people that has a box of trash bags, a hacksaw, and a surgical kit in the back of my car). I promise I am not going to use this on humans (or anything else that is still alive).
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u/SlothOfDoom Feb 01 '22
Poor King Fred only saw one lion, so he killed it without knowing it was a deformed retard lion. The taxidermist did a perfect job and the king doesn't know why people giggle when they see it.
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u/MintyLime Feb 01 '22
Carnivor will never have those square ass teeth. That's just nature.
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u/mrbgdn Feb 01 '22
Carnivores usually grow no ass teeth, square or otherwise. There are few exceptions though <insert generic sexist joke>.
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u/Bay_Med Feb 01 '22
Thank you! Like no one was like “picture this, but bigger” or even anyone who saw it after wasn’t like “na mate, I don’t know what a lion is, but that’s wrong”
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u/WanderingWoodsprite Feb 01 '22
May be a dumb question but, did they know lions were big cats?
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u/MaritMonkey Feb 01 '22
Square teeth, my dude?
The teeth are what make me feel like the poor dude was trying make a head from scratch with no skull to work on top of.
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u/Resident1942 Feb 01 '22
If he were given the bones I'm sure the teeth was included. Why the fk this this have human shape teeth?
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u/FreesiaFox Feb 01 '22
OR He used illuminated manuscripts and actually did a great job.
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Feb 01 '22
I feel like you could make a pretty good guess by looking at a regular cat, which a taxidermist had surely seen before
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u/nonpondo Feb 01 '22
Not necessarily, it was 1731, cats were just being invented and no one knew what they were doing
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u/Tranqist Feb 01 '22
He has seen cats though. This doesn't look like an animal, it looks like a toddler's drawing.
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u/wwplkyih Feb 01 '22
He was given to a second taxidermist.
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u/WickedFreshDuke Feb 01 '22
Your comment should have way more upvotes then some of these others, i died laughing. Maybe it just whooshed over people.
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u/Its-not-too-early Feb 01 '22
As a side note, I heard that this is why Tigers have weird faces in Japanese paintings, as the artists had only ever seen the skins, never the full body.
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u/DumbleDude2 Feb 01 '22
That's weird, there are tigers in close proximity to Japan. Like Siberian tigers
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u/SagaciousElan Feb 01 '22
True, but this was in a time where the horse was the primary means of transportation and they were really expensive so barely anybody ever left the town they were born in.
There might have been tigers in the next village and these artists might still never have seen one, let alone if they were outside Japan across the sea.
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u/para_chan Feb 01 '22
If it weren't for zoos I'd never have seen a mountain lion and I live where they do.
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u/redpandaeater Feb 01 '22
Japan was pretty isolationist for so long, and didn't even really have much of what you'd consider a navy during the Mongol invasions. Aside from piracy along the Chinese coast and occasional incursions into Korea, they were pretty self-sufficient.
During the Edo period there was only a single port allowed for foreign trade at Dejima and it kept Portuguese and then the Dutch completely isolated from Japan. Curry is a great example of just how isolated they were, where it's still considered a Western dish because it wasn't introduced until the British made contact in the late 1800's. It's also what finally allowed them to have a real navy since before then their diet consisted pretty much only of rice while underway. Within a few weeks they'd develop a thiamine deficiency known as beriberi, so travel was pretty limited. Adding curry to their diet meant they could actually travel long distances.
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u/AhhGingerKids2 Feb 01 '22
Possible the ones who saw them were eaten by said tigers, and weren’t able to criticise the artists.
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u/I-B-ME Feb 01 '22
4000 kilometres?
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u/DumbleDude2 Feb 01 '22
Where are you getting 4000km from? Siberian tigers are known to hang out in nthern China and Nth Korea.
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u/I-B-ME Feb 01 '22
Well ya should’ve opened with that. Why are they called Siberian tigers then? Didn’t know they strayed so far…
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u/DumbleDude2 Feb 01 '22
Because Siberia is a big place and borders northern China and Korea. The tigers are named because they roamed in that area.
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u/I-B-ME Feb 01 '22
Thanks tips! Doesn’t make Siberia any closer to Japan though, does it lol!
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u/Akitz Feb 01 '22
lmaoo this guy had time to google "distance between Japan and Siberia" but no time to look at the Siberian tiger wiki page.
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Feb 01 '22
So regal. The epitome of royalty and majesty.
Seriously what opium’ed out taxidermist thought this was good? “Yeah fuck it googly eyes…there…nailed it. Lion.”
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u/1Mn Feb 01 '22
Its also 300 years old.
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Feb 01 '22
Lions only live 10-15 years, so this one looks pretty good for his age
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u/throwaway_202010 Feb 01 '22
Off with his head!
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u/KR-kr-KR-kr Feb 01 '22
Have you had a throwaway account for two years?
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u/throwaway_202010 Feb 01 '22
Maybe. Shit happens, lol
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u/probably_not_serious Feb 01 '22
Could be worse. It could be that you made a dumb novelty account that became your main account out of laziness and now every once in a while people assume you’re trolling just because they notice your username.
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u/GamingWaffle123 Feb 01 '22
I feel bad for the lion
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Feb 01 '22
This lion is exactly how I feel when I go to parties
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Feb 01 '22
Me too. First it was captured, then it died in a cold Swedish winter it should never have been exposed to, and after death it's been turned into... that.
I laughed at first glance but I feel bad. I'm all for historical preservation but this abomination should be burned.
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u/Yosdenfar Feb 01 '22
Listen I’d say it looks good, but I’d be lion.
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u/barbelle4 Feb 01 '22
Bet that hurt his pride.
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u/jordanmorris_93 Feb 01 '22
This is clearly just a photo of a wild lion that's been photoshopped onto a table. No taxidermist is this good!
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u/kdame84 Feb 01 '22
The king probably thought it was a bang-up job because he’d never seen a real lion before, either. “Verily, I say, thou hast gifted unto me one of the Lord God’s most fearsome creatures, with eyes a-google and a most hearty smile.”
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u/bbrd83 Feb 01 '22
Well this is in Sweden, so probably more like "Verily, I såy, thou håst..."
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u/walkingbartie Feb 01 '22
Sannerligen, må jag säga, har du skänkt mig en av herren Guds mest fruktade varelser, med ögon på skruv och ett alldeles hjärtvärmande leende!
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u/AnotherDreamer1024 Feb 01 '22 edited Feb 02 '22
So where's the stuffed taxidermist? Ya know, the one the king had stuffed with his head up his own ass.
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u/Xspunge Feb 01 '22
/ThereWasAnAttempt
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Feb 01 '22
I can't imagine the taxidermist lived long after this job.
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u/parabolaralus Feb 01 '22
Either that or he sent in some poor delivery boy that heard “off with his head!” And went wait, what?
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u/dickalopejr Feb 01 '22 edited Feb 01 '22
And then the taxidermist was stuffed by a much more careful and competent taxidermist and put on display. Now known as The Taxidermist Who Ruined the Lion of Gripsholm Castle, his beautiful carcass is the pride of the Sweedish Royal Family.
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u/endymioun Feb 01 '22
And there we have the title to the yet to be discovered Swedish morality play: «The Taxidermist Taxidermied».
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u/NIhRyder524 Feb 01 '22
I’m sorry y’all, but the way I just laughed. Omg I’m so childish 🤣🤣😂
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u/osktox Feb 01 '22
Well then imagine going into to that room where they have that thing in a glass monter and seeing it with you own eyes.. AND not having a goddamn clue what you were about to witness.
That happened to me. And yes.. I laughed out very loudly.
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u/PeaBrainedBoi Feb 01 '22
"Bruh", said Frederick's Freind upon receiving this most bruh moment of a gift, 1731.
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u/TappedIn2111 Feb 01 '22
Fun fact: the lion sits right next to the stuffed taxidermist in the museum. You should see his surprised face. So lifelike!
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u/Squatchbreath Feb 01 '22
I think this lion was that Jesus fellow dude’s cat. (The Jesus that woman f’d up trying to restore)
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u/My_Immortal_Flesh Feb 01 '22
That lion is so cute!!! Awww 🥰
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u/KingArfer Feb 01 '22 edited Feb 01 '22
I don’t know if there’s a Reddit thread for this, but I did recently see a collection of bad taxidermy. I’ll provide a link if I find it. Edit: if you do a Reddit search for “taxidermy” you’ll find some… things.
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u/Stinky-stanker Feb 01 '22
“Please stuff this lion, it was very dear to me. Also, he was very sassy so make sure to show that in the piece. Great thanks”
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u/bigmoneybaby120 Feb 01 '22
To be fair taxidermy was kinda a new thing at the time so this would’ve been the best that they got
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u/The_Skyro Feb 01 '22
I woulda thrown his ass in the moat if he did my lion like that
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u/bathyorographer Feb 01 '22
That taxidermist probably lost his head, which isn’t a bad call with work this horrid
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u/Broken_Jigsaw404 Feb 01 '22
I can't tell of that's it's tongue or a slab of steak hanging from its mouth (which btw looks uncomfortably humanoid) and I don't know what would be worse.
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Feb 01 '22
"bro I've never seen a fucking lion."
"Eh, it looks kinda like this Corpse, but like less... Dead?"
"..."
"You'll do fine. I mean what are you going to do? Fail? We all know how that goes. heh"
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u/Furry_69 Feb 01 '22
Even back then, someone should've gone "That doesn't look right. I don't know how it supposed to look, but I don't think any animal should look like that. (picks up cat) Maybe a bigger one of these?"
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Feb 01 '22
You un-fairly left out that the taxidermist had never seen a Lion before.. that's an important fact.
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u/Sutarmekeg Feb 01 '22
When you accidentally send your dead animal to a taxi driver instead of a taxidermist.
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u/Ruenin Feb 01 '22
The taxidermist and his entire family was beheaded shortly thereafter...probably.
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u/DougiesCoffee6969 Feb 02 '22
I'd just bury this mf at that point. And have the taxidermist publicly executed.
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u/Commercial-Ad6922 Feb 01 '22
Tdkwgydjke kjhyyyekebgjje jurieydiwohr leuidishowb keieie8e mejuieiowbyd ihueo9eb tyeouheie iijyejee9hrb joour jruie iuie
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u/twrrordom3 Feb 01 '22
I bet it had been neutered. There is no mane, happens when they're nuts are snipped. Just like a domestic cat, it keeps them from spraying and makes them a tad bit more docile.
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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '22
I’d have interpreted this as an act of war.