# Live animals in scene question



## The Archivist (May 31, 2009)

Anyone know the regs regarding having live animals such as insects in a scene with a corpse? The insects would be contained away from the TOTs but still easily visible. The idea was to have a victim being eaten alive by carnivorous insects.


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## jdubbya (Nov 6, 2005)

How would you plan to do this? Just curious.
I've see live rats used in a scene before. They were in a cage with a severed hand. Looked pretty cool. I don't know how you'd "contain" insects but would be interested to see what you come up with.


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## Bone Dancer (Oct 7, 2005)

I kinda doubt that there are regs covering the treatment of insects. They don't fall into the warm an fuzzy dept.


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

Insects classed as endangered species would be protected by law.

Live insects are notoriously bad actors, so you might have an issue with them cooperating with the corpse-eating scenario. Carnivorous insects also want their prey alive and moving. Scavengers, carrion eaters, flies, and maggots are less refined in their tastes and would be more appropriate as diners on a corpse

Okay, seriously, I think you would find that using live insects for this type of scene would not give you the effect you might want. Activity and lights near them would probably cause them to go into hiding or just sit still. Since your victim would not be a real corpse (right?), they would have no reason to "feed" on it, either.

Personally, I would go with creating some creepy insect-like creatures that could be posed in whatever manner suits the scene.


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## Just Whisper (Jan 19, 2009)

I tend to agree with Roxy. Insects would be hard to manipulate in any manner and wouldn't be very scary just sitting in a container.


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## joker (Sep 25, 2007)

There was a guy who used maggots in one of his scenes. I remember seeing it on the Fearnet.com Route 666 Americas Best home haunts or whatever it was called.

Seems like he took a pretty decent size piece of meat and let it set out several days before halloween. I'm sure it attracted flies and such and added a wonderful smell too.


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

joker said:


> There was a guy who used maggots in one of his scenes. I remember seeing it on the Fearnet.com Route 666 Americas Best home haunts or whatever it was called.
> 
> Seems like he took a pretty decent size piece of meat and let it set out several days before halloween. I'm sure it attracted flies and such and added a wonderful smell too.


Hmmm (thinking out loud), you could get a similar effect using mealworms and avoid the smell since they're vegetarian.

Mealworm - Wikipedia, the free [email protected]@[email protected]@/wiki/File:Tenebrio_molitor01.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Tenebrio_molitor01.jpg/240px-Tenebrio_molitor01.jpg"@@[email protected]@commons/thumb/7/7d/Tenebrio_molitor01.jpg/240px-Tenebrio_molitor01.jpg

(life cycle and background information, not a link to show how to use them in a Halloweeny way)


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## Devils Chariot (May 23, 2007)

and if you use mealworms, just cover the corpse in some oatmeal or whatever the bait guy feeds em, and they will be happy. Just put the food where you want them to stay. I think hedge your bets and put some glow in the dark maggots in there and have a mix of living and dead, in case they all go hide.


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## The Archivist (May 31, 2009)

thanks for the info everyone. I appreciate it.


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