What group of people first invented stuffed animals (toy animals, not taxidermy)?
Stuffed animals in the past were made by stuffing the empty skins of hunted animals. Home-made ones were made of cloth dolls stuffed with straw, and go back to at least the 1830s, perhaps much older. Steiff were the first commercial concern to create stuffed toys. Babo http://www.fatbananafeet.com/uglydolls.