#creature-aesthetics

#creature-aesthetics

These water-women are beings of transformation, embodying sensuality, cosmic energy, and the transmission of matrilineal knowledge.

Performance artist Jon Darc's movements unfold like nature's hidden gem, the Queen of the Night flower, serving as a powerful metaphor for emergence in inhospitable environments.

"I looked at many water towers to get an idea of their variety," Chast said, about her cover for the March 30, 2026, issue.

Frogmouths have another life that few people see: like vampires, they wake at sunset and night-hunt until dawn. These stolid creatures turn into zephyrs that silently swoop, catching prey on the ground and in the air.

Drawing on childhood memories, folk art, and nature, the London-based illustrator and model maker creates expressive sculptures and puppets that inhabit dreamlike realms. Invoking historical costumes and cartoonish and emotive faces, Johnston's otherworldly cast seems both familiar and strange, as if children's book protagonists have sprung to life or converged with a strange dream.

We think that in this early deuterostome, the median eye contained both ciliary and rhabdomeric cells. As a result, both cellular lineages were incorporated into a single, ancient, cyclopean eye, which later evolved into the vertebrate eyes.

Beauty, it turns out, is capable of launching not just an armada of ships, but a cascade of the same feel-good chemicals you get from being in love, eating chocolate, exercising, and having orgasms- dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin. It also lowers stress, blood pressure, and heart rate.

After quite impulsively tackling a frame-by-frame sequence of an animated figure merging into a mountainscape using paint on paper a few years ago, the artist started her journey into analogue animation and it's "a rabbit hole I never want to leave", she says. "This sense of continuous, boundaryless flow underpins both my life and my work. In animation, I have found the most compelling way to interpret the world being in constant motion."

This short captures Tim Bovard, the staff taxidermist for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, as he reflects on over five decades spent perfecting his craft. Sparked by a childhood fascination with the museum's dioramas that never faded, Bovard has devoted his career to shaping what he calls the 'illusion of life' - a process that requires both scientific precision and imaginative interpretation.

A peek behind the scenes at the zoo reveals animal escapades, and a glow-worm shines in a mild midwinter, in our weekly dip into Nature 's archive.

The House of Elements, set to become the crown jewel of Orientarium Zoo in Łódź, Poland, takes the classical elements (earth, ice, water, fire, and air) and transforms them into a 6,000-square-meter narrative experience. Rather than designing a building where you walk from exhibit to exhibit, VMA created a continuous downward-then-upward journey that mirrors the evolution of life itself. Designer: VMA Design Studio for Orientarium Zoo

"Wake Up, Beauty!": The Superb Digital Concept & Fantasy Art Works of Tony Sart "Stranger Toys": Illustrator Re-Imagines The Characters Of Stranger Things As Adorable Figurines 'South Park' Irks White House, Scientology With Trolling Mobile Billboards Artist Creates An Installation That Takes From The Rich To Give To The Poor Stunning Digital Female Portraits By Irakli Nadar Machinery In Black And White: Cool Rapid Sketches By Paul Heaston '25 Things I've Learned'

Close your eyes and picture an apple. Most people see something-a faint, slightly blurry image, less vivid than a real apple. A few, however, will see it as clearly as if it were sitting right in front of them. This ability is called hyperphantasia. Hyperphantasia, literally meaning "beyond imagination," refers to exceptionally vivid mental imagery. It is often described as the opposite of aphantasia, a condition in which people report little or no ability to form mental images.

'Orcas are psychos,' quipped a close friend recently. He wasn't joking, nor was he ill-informed. In fact, he is probably the world's leading historian of whales and people. He had just watched a BBC Earth clip, narrated by David Attenborough, in which three killer whales separate a male humpback calf from his mother in the waters of Western Australia. The video's closing footage, with two of the orcas escorting the naive youngster to his imminent death, resembles nothing so much as a kidnapping:

A debate over a potential newly discovered species, and a tip for buying good sherry in this week's pick from the Nature archive.

The animals do, however, have neuronsnerve cells that appear interconnected throughout their body. And now a new study shows that how these animals sleep is surprisingly similar to humans, suggesting that sleep may have evolved before even the most primitive brains. The findings, published on Tuesday in Nature Communications, also help answer one of science's prevailing mysteries: Why do animals sleep?

Ever wondered what your Instagram feed says about your inner animal? Or why you scroll through TikTok like a cautious deer while your friend posts boldly like a roaring lion? The way we use social media mirrors the same personality traits scientists have found in animals for decades. Just as personality traits like neuroticism, agreeableness and extraversion have been studied in animals, these same traits shape how we present ourselves online.

Jane Goodall, the late primatologist, was known for her imitations of chimpanzee greetings. When she met with Prince Harry, in 2019, she approached him slowly, making panting noises through circular lips. She prompted him to pat her lightly on the head, then reached up for an embrace, making soft hooting sounds. During her career, Goodall observed chimps engaging in more than a thousand such greetings. They sometimes touched their lips together, breathed into one another's open mouths, or stood on two legs and hugged.

The timing could not be better: We have much to learn in this moment from a movement that was both explicitly antifascist and radically hopeful - and from how the not-so-antifascist Dalí broke from it. But Dreamworlds presents precious little of the historical and political context - for example, the birth of the movement out of the grotesque terrors of World War I - that would help viewers grasp the relevance of what's in front of them.

Wooden objects carrying the marks of carving and use could be the oldest wooden tools ever found. Researchers dated the artefacts, found in what is now Greece, to 430,000 years ago - and suggest they might have been made by early Neanderthals or their ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis. A separate study describes 480,000-old flint-knapping tools made from antler and elephant bone, from what is now the United Kingdom.

The mirror spider can rapidly shift a patchwork of minuscule reflective plates underneath its abdomen's outer surface, altering the pattern of mirrorlike flashes. This uncommon display comes from common building blocks: Similar tilelike arrangements of plates and soft joints appear throughout the tree of life, from turtle shells to tropical fruit peels. Researchers have now compiled 100 examples of this pattern across animals, plants, microbes and viruses, which they describe in PNAS Nexus.

British Designer Liam Hopkins Creates A Full-Sized Cardboard Car For SKODA Amazing Pictures Show Dolphins, Blue Marlin And Gannets Feasting On Sardines During Annual Migration Of Millions Of Fish The Amazing Millennium Falcon Bedroom Artist Spends Her Days Creating Stuffed Toys With Artificial Human Teeth Sculpted Meals So Beautiful That You'll Starve Rather Than Disturb Them Artist Born Without Hands Draws Beautiful, Hyper-Realistic Portraits "Sweeteens": Young Londoners Enjoying Freedom after the Lockdown The Cutest Felt Kids Toys Ever By Katerina Kozunenko

An elephant's trunk is a marvelous thing, flexible enough to bend and stretch as it forages for food, but also stiff enough to grasp and maneuver even delicate objects like peanuts or a tortilla chip. That's because the trunk is highly sensitive when it comes to sensing touch. Scientists have determined that the whiskers lining the trunk are crucial for that sensitivity thanks to their unique structure, amounting to a kind of innate "material intelligence, according to a new paper published in the journal Science.

In 1835, a tortoiseshell cat measuring more than three feet long was enough to warrant a small advertisement in a British newspaper that as "the greatest curiosity ever shown to the public," it could be viewed at the Ship Tavern in London. Surely a pint of ale was the informal fee to view this extraordinary animal. It was during the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe that cats became increasingly recognized as worthy pets, beyond their role as mousers.

Recently, two unexpected examples by a wild wolf and a domesticated cow named Veronika attracted global attention and once again opened the door for experts and others to weigh in on the question, "Are these really examples of tooling?" Many people are eager to know more about the nitty-gritty details of tooling, so I am thrilled that Dr. Benjamin Beck, an expert in this area, could answer a few questions about this fascinating behavior.