A young biology graduate and former taxidermist from Ghent, Belgium, creates warrior figurines out of hundreds of dead insect body parts.

28-year-old Joos Habraken typically spends between 20 and 30 hours working on each of his ‘Frankenstein bugs’, fantastic creatures born out of his imagination and featuring intimidating names and impressive backstories. He uses body parts sourced from his own impressive collection or from a network of people he has collaborated with over the years. He only uses body parts from already dead bugs and would never even consider killing insects simply to fuel his hobby.

Photo: Joos Habraken/Instagram

Habraken, who works in a climbing gym as a route setter and instructor, has always had a thing for taxidermy and insects, so his intriguing hobby combines both passions. It all started when he went to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences for his masters, after studying biology in college.

“We had a behind-the-scenes tour of the collections and were told volunteers could take some material home to mount the insects and bring it back – it all started from there,” Joos said. “I had a lot of free time so I started doing a lot of work for the museum and got to keep some broken butterflies.”

For me it’s really important that the backstory is part of it because that’s where it all comes alive.

“You start with nothing, just a steel rod and then you start looking for mythological names and looking at places where they could live.

“And then you use all of these different parts of insects to create something beautiful.

After graduation, the Belgian already had an impressive collection of insects and had started mounting them to sell to like-minded bug enthusiasts. Then he landed a job as a taxidermist and ended up piecing together his first Frankenstein warrior in his shop.

In the beginning, his creations were simplistic and didn’t even have a name or a backstory. But that all changed after The Hero With A Thousand Faces, his first truly complex figurine, for which he used 70 body parts, including 26 insect heads.

After his first complex project went viral, Joos Habraken kept challenging himself to create even more complex pieces, with his most recent projects featuring between 100 and 200 insect body parts and intriguing backstories.

“For me it’s really important that the backstory is part of it because that’s where it all comes alive,” Habraken said. “You start with nothing, just a steel rod and then you start looking for mythological names and looking at places where they could live. And then you use all of these different parts of insects to create something beautiful.”

The young Belgian uses superglue to piece hundreds of insect body parts together, spending tens of hours designing and experimenting with each creation. His latest one took a total of 40 hours – spread over several weeks – to finish.