Make use of skin of inferior animal (5)
I believe the answer is:
tapir
'animal' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'make use of skin of inferior' is the wordplay.
'make use of' becomes 'tap' (tapping is a kind of making use of).
'skin of' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters).
'inferior' with its centre taken out is 'ir'.
'tap'+'ir'='TAPIR'
(Other definitions for tapir that I've seen before include "Tropical hoofed mammal with a flexible proboscis" , "creature" , "A trip (anag) - animal" , "Nocturnal mammal with a short flexible proboscis" , "Animal with elongated snout" .)