I choose to believe he got it exactly right. There’s no way to know for sure that one lion didn’t look like that!
The Lion of Gripsholm Castle is a notable example of bad taxidermy located in Gripsholm Castle, Sweden. The Lion is badly stuffed and is considered to have a comically deformed face.[1]
In 1731, the dey of Algiers presented King Frederick I of Sweden with a lion, one of the first lions in Scandinavia.[2] When alive, the lion was kept in a cage near Junibacken. When the lion died, it was stuffed and mounted; however, the taxidermist and the museum-keepers had never actually seen a lion before, and did not know how they were supposed to look.[3] The taxidermist mostly based the reconstruction off of historic artwork of lions. As a result, the mount was especially anatomically inaccurate, most apparent in its face.
In the 21st century, the badly-stuffed lion has been widely mocked.[4][5][6][7][8][9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_of_Gripsholm_CastleThis seems weird, did the taxidermist not get the corpse but just the fur or something? Otherwise they would have seen what I lion looks like (although a dead one).
oh man, I would pay handsomely for a collection of animals stuffed based on their medieval illustrations. The cats would get particularly wild.
