Hey there folks! If you’ve been following my twitter and instagram, for this Mermay, my theme is to basically take inspiration from real life biology, and apply them to their design as merfolk… especially their wicked set of chompers. It got so popular on Insta, I even made backstories for their designs there xD.
You can read up more about their stories on my Insta, but the gist is this:Karais a Great White Shark mermaid, and she does her best to look out for her sister, a Lamprey. She lives in a town full of quirky characters, whose merfolk come from multiple kinds of fish and critters of the sea.
From a project on the Azores and their historical whaling trade (two things that I’ve sort of accidentally become very well-informed about), a spread and a spot illustration. This was my first attempt at painting the ocean on any sort of large scale with watercolors, and I think it turned out not half-bad.
Happy Cephalopod Week! One of the most famous dioramas in the American Museum of Natural History depicts a battle between two gigantic animals: the sperm whale and giant squid. But unlike most dioramas in the Museum’s halls, this scene has never been witnessed. Paleontologists Neil Landman and John Flynn explain how we know that this encounter does happen–and whether we humans will ever catch it in real time.
Cephalopod Week is the annual celebration of all things tentacled. Learn more at sciencefriday.com/cephalopodweek and cephalopodweek.tumblr.com
Hi guys, another long silence I know. It’s busy with the train driver’s course - on top of regular driving I’ve had training for and taken a couple more exams (all passed, thankfully). It’s coming to an end though - within a few months I should be driving independently! Looking forward to it, as well as being able to pick up drawing again.
To show I’m not dead, here’s some more illustrations from last year’s big commission: the sperm whale. Males are quite differently proportioned from females, most notably that huge head! On big bulls it can be almost 1/3 of their total length - I’ve kept it a bit more modest here because at some point it just starts looking wrong to me lol. I’m very pleased with how these came out. I feel I’ve never managed to get sperm whales right, but these two are much more to my satisfaction (especially the female). Couldn’t resist putting some elaborate markings on the male because they are just so pretty. I hope you’ll like these swimming sonar-boosters too!
really confused as to how some cetaceans drink milk from their mothers without flexible lips
ok but now im stuck on imagining whale milk as like…yogurt…and it comes out like a soft serve machine
thank you! I have absolutely no use of this horrifying information other than I will now be haunted by thoughts of whales forcefully shooting toothpaste thick milk into their baby’s mouth like a go-gurt
Give nightmares a little more credit than that, you know it’s going to be yourmouth
Baby cetaceans also make a little tube with their tongue.
You can sort of see the shape in this picture of a bottlefed calf.
The tongue-tube fact is a super important addition!! For many species it is a very necessary part of nursing, because while the milk may be rather viscous, it still goes everywhere if it’s just shot out into the ocean. And this is why cetacean calves have frilly tongues! They use these little tongue flaps to better make a seal around mom’s nipple. The frills decrease substantially with age, though may not always completely disappear. These are tongue flaps of a bottlenose dolphin, who was 4 at the time but still drinking with mom cus she’s spoilt.
For sperm whales the tongue-tube method isn’t very viable because.. well.. have you seen a sperm whale? Instead they just insert their lower jaw into the mammary slit (ouch) and mom squirts milk into their mouth. It’s hard to see in available footage, but I think the babies still make a little tongue-straw to quite effectively suck up the milk. I wonder how much seawater they consumer while doing this?
And another infographic. I’m really liking this way of showing off work, feels a bit more visually appealing than just bare illustrations. This time it’s the turn of the mini sperm whales. Even though they look somewhat similar to Sperm whales, they are in a separate family, Kogiidae. It’s interesting how often they strand, given their low sighting rate at sea. They may simply be overlooked or misidentified: they tend to keep a low profile, and aren’t very demonstrative (though Dwarf sperm whales occasionally breach).
Even when stranded, the two species can be surprisingly difficult to identify. The most obvious difference lies in the size and position of the dorsal fin. A useful tool on ‘textbook’ individuals, but some animals have a relatively big/small dorsal fin for their species, positioned more in the middle. Another ID tool lies in their markings. Quite noticeable is the ‘false gill’ both these species have - a possible form of Batesian mimicry to look like a shark. In the Pygmy sperm whale this gill mark takes a sort of bracket shape, with a recurved bottom, while in the Dwarf it tends to be straight. There might be a slight difference in overall body markings as well, and from what I’ve seen Pygmies seem to have a somewhat longer head than Dwarfs, but this would be hard to use in the field. Interestingly, some Pygmy sperm whales turn up with more contrasting colouration and speckles all over. Perhaps older individuals? Also, both have these dark ‘eye patches’ which I think is very cute. I hope you enjoy and maybe learn something new about these mysterious whales!
He was born in New York on August 1, 1819, into a family of eight children between brothers and sisters. Son of a rich merchant, from a very young age his father stimulated in him with the stories of his travels, the desire for adventure. He spent a comfortable life until the summer of 1830, when his father suffered a financial meltdown declaring the bank broken, later manifested a mental illness that led to his death. The impoverished family moved to the Hudson River village of Lansingburgh. Herman’s restlessness began to be felt, the desire to be economically independent and his adventurous spirit pushed him in June 1839 to embark as a hub on the “St. Lawrence”.
In 1841 he enlisted again as a sailor on the whaler “Acushnet”, bound for the Pacific Ocean, once in Nuku Hiva, in the Marquesas Islands, Melville deserted with a companion.
Two Typee novels followed and its continuation Omoo, autobiographical, relate precisely to this story, even if fictionalized. Probably from the experience of 18 months aboard the “Acushnet”, Melville reworked his memories, and from the information gathered by the sailors, he drew inspiration for his novel “Moby Dick”.
Queequeg - harpooneer
His life now set, he embarked continuously, and from his experiences he wrote autobiographical novels. In 1847 Melville married Elizabeth Shaw in Boston, and here his seafaring adventures ended, he bought a farm in Pittsfield, and in February 1850 he put his hand to Moby Dick, who finished and published in 1851.
After the successes of Typee and Omoo his works were received with decreasing favor; in 1867 the eldest son Malcom killed himself in his parents house, the second son died later after a wandering life. Melville died in New York on September 28, 1891; in 1892, new editions of his four most successful novels were published by Arthur Stedman: Typee, Omoo, White-Jacket and Moby Dick.
NOTE: The name of the species “Leviathan melvillei”, a Miocene cetacean similar to modern sperm whales, has been dedicated to Melville, with reference to the beast protagonist of his novel Moby Dick.
Captain Ahab (Gregory Peck) Moby Dick, the white whale 1956 - film director John Huston.
Moby Dick, the white whale
The novel by Herman Melville (1819-1891) is today considered the greatest example of an American novel of the nineteenth century, even if the work was rediscovered only in the 20s of the last century, when it was indicated as the cornerstone of the literary tradition American.
Queequeg (Friedrich von Ledebur) Moby Dick, the white whale 1956.
The novel is the first person account of the protagonist Ismaele of the expedition of a whaling ship, the Pequod, in pursuit of the mythical “white whale” Moby Dick.
In command of the ship is the charismatic figure of Captain Ahab, obsessed with revenge against Moby Dick who in a previous hunting trip, had torn his leg. Moby Dick, alternating with white whale hunting scenes (partly based on real events), is a work of extreme complexity and for over a century critics have tried to illuminate the numerous dark corners of this vast and so articulate.
If at first glance the novel seems dominated by the theme of adventure and exploration, in the course of reading the mythical and almost mystical-religious dimension of Moby Dick’s pursuit is stratified, so much so that the parallels with the Bible, explicit or under understood, they are innumerable, assuming then a theatrical aspect, to the Shakespearean tragedy, from an adventure by sea to a grandiose epic poem.
Sleeping Sperm Whales. To breathe, they swim to the surface, take a breath, and then descend to their position to keep sleeping. Photography: Stephane Granzotto. Source
