animals

Posts tagged
with animals

Science

Scientists Discover the First Biofluorescent Reptile, a ‘Glowing’ Hawksbill Sea Turtle

No, this isn’t a clip from the latest Miyazaki anime, this is the first sighting of a real fluorescent turtle.

Marine biologist David Gruber of City University of New York, was recently in the Solomon Islands to film a variety of biofluorescent fish and coral, when suddenly a completely unexpected sight burst into the frame: a glowing yellow and red sea turtle. The creature is a critically endangered hawksbill sea turtle, and until this sighting last July, the phenomenon had never been documented in turtles, let alone any other reptile.

Biofluorescence is the ability for an organism to reflect blue light and re-emit it as a different color, not to be confused with bioluminescence, where organisms produce their own light.

Many undersea creatures like coral, sharks, and some shrimp have shown the ability to show single green, red, or orange colors under the right lighting conditions, but according to National Geographic, no organisms have shown the ability to emit two distinct colors like the hawksbill. As seen in the video, the coloring appears not only in mottled patterns on the turtle’s shell, but even extends within the cracks of its head and feet. Gruber mentions this could be a mixture of both glowing red glowing algae attached to the turtle, but the yellow fluorescence is undoubtedly part of the animal.

Watch the video above to see the moment of discovery and learn more on Nat Geo.

Illustration

Creatures Illustrated with Curved Moiré Patterns by Andrea Minini

Milan-based designer Andrea Minini (previously) just shared his third series of animal illustrations where he challenges himself to create the familiar forms of mammals, birds, and fish using the effect of moiré patterns. For this latest series Minini used only two lines that are repeatedly scaled or rotated to make each creature. These and many of his earlier illustrations are available as prints.

Art

An Interview With Artist Beth Cavener Who Captures Human Emotions Through Sculpted Stoneware Animals

[Briefly NSFW?] Artist Beth Cavener (previously) explores the extremes of human emotion and psychology through the articulated forms of animals. The twisting shapes of oversized predatory cats, foxes, goats, and other animals are meant to depict the internal and external human struggles of fear, anger, love. “On the surface, these figures are simply feral and domestic individuals suspended in a moment of tension,” Cavener shares, “[but] beneath the surface, they embody the consequences of human fear, apathy, aggression, and misunderstanding.”

Filmmaker Bas Berkhout of Like Knows Like recently interviewed Cavener in her Montana studio to learn more about the inspiration and process behind her sculpture for a new short film. If you’re interested, the video shows the artists working on two new pieces: Trapped and Foregiveness. (via Juxtapoz)

Art Craft

Delicate Layered Paper Sculptures of Birds and Other Animals by Calvin Nicholls

Straddling a line between 2D and 3D, paper artist Calvin Nicholls forms carefully cut and layered paper sculptures of animals that seem to break free from the surrounding matboard and hover just above the surface. To achieve the haut-relief effect (a process he shares online), Nicholls first works from a drawing which he uses as a template for the various paper components. Using an X-ACTO knife, scalpels, and scissors he then carefully cuts pieces of paper and glues them in place. Each piece can take anywhere from a few weeks up to two years depending on scale and complexity.

Nicholls recently sculpted five birds of paradise as part of a private commission that are currently on view at the Society of Animal Artists annual ‘Art and the Animal’ show at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute in Jamestown, NY. The pieces won both an Award of Excellence and the “Artists’ Choice” awards. You can also keep an eye out for his work at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum later this month for the Birds in Art exhibition.

Seen here is a collection of artworks from the last year or so, but you can explore hundreds of additional pieces on his website and Facebook.

Art

Unusual Hybrid Animal and Wildlife Murals Painted by Alexis Diaz

Puerto Rican artist Alexis Diaz (previously) brings textures and patterns reminiscent of traditional engraving techniques to his murals of phantasmagorical creatures using only a paintbrush. Twisting tentacles, strange fusions of anatomy, beings wrapped in plants, all rendered atop colorful gradients create an unmistakable style Diaz has become famous for. You can see much more of his work here. (via Cross Connect)

Art Craft

Decaying Animal Skeletons Crocheted From String by Artist Caitlin McCormack

Caitlin McCormack creates crocheted animals that appear to decay in front of your eyes, delicate corpses crafted from cotton string and glue. To produce each of her sculptures she must stiffen the string which produces a consistency similar to the bone tissue of the animals she is recreating. These fragile remains appear extremely macabre, a typically cute hobby made somewhat morbid.

Documented on dark backgrounds, the details of her creations are all the more apparent, string dangling from bits of the animals’s arms and wings as if it was truly decomposing. By using a technique inherited from her deceased relatives McCormack says she “aim[s] to generate emblems of my diminishing bloodline, embodied by each organism’s skeletal remains.”

McCormack studied Illustration at the University of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Her work will be featured within Opus Hypnagogia: Sacred Spaces of the Visionary and Vernacular at The Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn, New York which runs through October 15th. (via Laughing Squid and Beautiful Decay)

World Before the World, 2014

World Before the World II, 2014

Bound, As It Were, 2015

Mothering, 2015

Ghost, 2014

Crawlspace, 2014

The Organist, 2013