I started drawing in 2019 as a mindful activity to reduce stress. I followed a Kingfisher tutorial and got completely hooked. I had no idea about all the equipment required for professional drawings, special professional grade (and expensive) pencils, the right paper,...
Old Blue was now 9 years of age, old for a species that has an average life span of 4 years. Shortly after being transferred to Managere island one of Blue and Yellows’ nests was destroyed in a storm. The robins built a replacement nest and Blue laid two more eggs....
Black robins are native to a group of islands off the East coast of New Zealand called the Chatham Islands. The islands were originally called Rekohu (“Misty Sun”) by the Moriori people. For thousands of years the black robins flourished on the forested Islands. There...
Antennae, we’ve seen them on insects but what do they actually do? It turns out they are a pretty amazing piece of anatomy. They connect into the brain and have the ability to augment senses like navigation, orientation, smell and even taste!What are Antennae? In the...
Why use a heated drawing board? For coloured pencil artists, a heated drawing board melts the pencils making it quicker to layer on surfaces like pastelmat and makes pencils easier to blend. It works brilliantly with neopastels on drafting film for smoothing and...
What is rendering? The final week of the Natural History Illustration course involved rendering an animal of our choice. Rendering is the process of adding the fine details of colour, fur, feathers and shading. For this course we were only allowed to use graphite,...
I recently completed a fantastic course, Drawing Nature, Science and Culture: Natural History 101. It’s an online course run by the University of Newcastle in Australia on the edX platform and is aimed at artists who want to improve their observational skills in order...
Have you heard of the Tizzie-Whizie? The tizzie-whizie is a very rare creature found only in Bowness Bay, Lake Windemere in the UK. It is described as having the body of a hedgehog, the tail of a squirrel or fox, insect-like wings and antennae. It was first discovered...
At number 5 is capybara poo. Cabybaras are the largest rodents in the world and super cute. They are related to guinea pigs but much much larger. Capybaras are native to South America and live a semi-aquatic lifestyle. They are herbivores meaning they have have to digest lots of the tough fibres contained in plants called cellulose. To help them extract all the nutrients from their plant diet they produce two types of poos, one of which they eat and redigest. This process also helps them maintain healthy gut flora.
At number four is parrot fish poo. The parrot fish use their beak shaped mouths to graze on the algae that lives on coral, helping to keep the coral healthy. As they scrape and bite at the algae they also scrape off bits of coral from the coral reefs. Their coral diet comes with an interesting side effect, their poo is composed almost entirely of white sand. They produce so much new sand, estimated at 2000 pounds per parrot fish per year, that some of the beautiful white beaches in Hawaii are formed entirely from parrot fish sand.
The African double banded courser is a ground dwelling bird. It lays only one egg at a time which is vulnerable to predators. This clever little bird protects its egg by laying it on the ground next to antelope poo which is exactly the same shape and colour as its eggs. The poo camouflage helps to confuse predators so instead of snatching an egg, a predator can end up with a mouth of antelope poo instead. Photo reference Tom Bastin.
Narrowly missing out on the top spot, at number 4 is wombat poo. Wombats are marsupials that live in Australia and have cubed shaped poos. Wombats are nocturnal, sleeping in underground burrows during the day. Wombats carry their young in pouches, like kangaroos. But wombat pouches are upside-down with the opening towards the rear. This stops soil entering the pouch when they are burrowing. The reason behind their distinctive poo shape has only recently been discovered.
The cubed shape is actually formed as the material moves through the intestines rather than at the exit point. Their intestines have a unique muscle structure with a combination of stiffer and more flexible regions that form the cubed shape as the muscles contract. So what is the advantage of cubed shaped poo? Ecologists have theorised that the cube shape stops the poo from rolling away when wombats mark their territory on uneven ground like logs and rocks. They are also a sign of a healthy wombat gut, the rounder the poo, the unhealthy the wombat.
Taking the top spot, at number one is tree shrew poo. Tree shrews like to drink nectar. Pitcher plants are most well for catching and digesting insects but some pitcher plants in the Nepenthes genus have evolved to entice the shrew to sit on the mouth of the cup shaped flowers and drink nectar within. The lip they sit on is the perfect size for a tree shew toilet. Once they have eaten they use the pitcher plant as a toilet which provides the plant with a nitrogen rich meal.
The pitcher plant is the perfect size for a tree shrew toilet.
I started drawing in 2019 as a mindful activity to reduce stress. I followed a Kingfisher tutorial and got completely hooked. I had no idea about all the equipment required for professional drawings, special professional grade (and expensive) pencils, the right paper,...
Old Blue was now 9 years of age, old for a species that has an average life span of 4 years. Shortly after being transferred to Managere island one of Blue and Yellows’ nests was destroyed in a storm. The robins built a replacement nest and Blue laid two more eggs....
Black robins are native to a group of islands off the East coast of New Zealand called the Chatham Islands. The islands were originally called Rekohu (“Misty Sun”) by the Moriori people. For thousands of years the black robins flourished on the forested Islands. There...
Antennae, we’ve seen them on insects but what do they actually do? It turns out they are a pretty amazing piece of anatomy. They connect into the brain and have the ability to augment senses like navigation, orientation, smell and even taste!What are Antennae? In the...
Why use a heated drawing board? For coloured pencil artists, a heated drawing board melts the pencils making it quicker to layer on surfaces like pastelmat and makes pencils easier to blend. It works brilliantly with neopastels on drafting film for smoothing and...
What is rendering? The final week of the Natural History Illustration course involved rendering an animal of our choice. Rendering is the process of adding the fine details of colour, fur, feathers and shading. For this course we were only allowed to use graphite,...
I recently completed a fantastic course, Drawing Nature, Science and Culture: Natural History 101. It’s an online course run by the University of Newcastle in Australia on the edX platform and is aimed at artists who want to improve their observational skills in order...
Have you heard of the Tizzie-Whizie? The tizzie-whizie is a very rare creature found only in Bowness Bay, Lake Windemere in the UK. It is described as having the body of a hedgehog, the tail of a squirrel or fox, insect-like wings and antennae. It was first discovered...