i (heart) odd-toed ungulates

One Lovely Day in the Life...

I was asked recently by a friend (and elemetary school art teacher) to create a short video for her students of my life as a professional illustrator: How does one day unfold for me; where do I collect inspiration; what sort of tools are specific to what I do; what DO I do - and what ever do I even look like?! These are big questions, with potentially complicated answers, and the truth is - I do a wide variety of things in order to keep the lights on and Oscar well fed. It seems I have fewer and fewer "typical" days... but if you asked me to generalize for a moment and describe a single, quintessential day, I'd quickly use words to paint a picture of what's been neatly put into moving images above.

As luck would have it, I am studio-mates with a world-class videographer (and all around amazing and very talented individual). Doubly fortunate for me, Steve (Stebs) Shinnerer of Paper Fortress Films had been interested in shooting an "A Day With..." portrait of me (as part of a larger creative series) since last fall... The timing finally right, we coordinated a day of interviewing and shadowing through multiple locations (including my beloved Franklin Park Zoo), and a few weeks later, the final edit was ready for it's debut - in front of dozens of eager first and second-graders... in Missouri... The resulting 4-minute project is darn near pitch-perfect - I actually find myself pausing to thank my sweet stars for this life every time I watch it (plus, it's chock full of cool animals... so, WIN).

As a supplement to the video, I took one of the sketches started during that one, lovely day, and developed it into a finished coloring page, so that each child in my friend's class could create their own work of art, inspired by an FPZ creature ("Azul", a hyacinth macaw, to be precise). Drawn in a similar style to a project I did for National Geographic.com years ago, the ink drawing is designed for easy print/download. If you'd like to color your own parrot, just click on the image below and print from your browser, or save to your hard drive!

A note to my few dear subscribers:
You may have noticed the silence here at the ungulate blog over the last 6+ months... it was with great disappointment that I had to suspend regular creature feature posting; life, as they say, is what happens when you make other plans. This little personal project, beloved as it may be to me, just couldn't compete with a host of professional projects and opportunities that have been courting my time and talents in increasing numbers. One of those time monopolizers was, I am so proud to say, training for the 2013 Boston Marathon. The big day of course turned horribly sad toward it's end, but I couldn't have been happier with my run, and the reason for my effort:

I ran the 2013 Boston Marathon on behalf of the Franklin Park Zoo. That's right, I took on the fundraising challenge of running 26.2 miles with a charity that couldn't fit me better if it were hand-tailored to my every measurement. I ran with 2 other beautiful, strong women, each of us pledging to raise $5,000.00 by the end of the summer.

The race may be over, but my fund-raising continues, and it's projects like the one above that make it crystal clear how important the Franklin Park Zoo is to the Boston community, and beyond. Perhaps especially in light of the tragic events at the end of the April 15th race, now is the time to support the institutions and organizations that enrich, enliven, entertain and educate this vibrant city. So, if you are inclined (and I would urge you to be!) PLEASE CONSIDER SUPPORTING MY MARATHON RUN with a donation. I trained for 3 months and put over 4 grueling hours on the race course - what can you do to make a difference in the lives of these animals and their tireless keepers?

Fruit Bats & Cathedral Bells

And now for something completely different...

Shame on me for allowing this blog to neglect the ENTIRE month of September... my great apologies to the few individuals who keep tabs on this tiny window of artful ungulate (and other) adventures. Things get busy, others go south, and before you know it, it's October... but I am delighted to share this new post - it is both long overdue, and an exciting step in a direction I have been meaning to go.

A month or so ago I was aksed by the fine folks over at 101florals if I'd be interested in contributing a pattern to their weekly series of illustrator collaborations - and of course I did! But as an animal artist, how could I spin this assignment to reflect my own particular passion and skill, while sticking to the realm of "floral" design... My solution? In a word: BATS. The explanation (from the 101florals post):

"As a specialist in animal and natural/scientific illustration, it was important to me to incorporate a critter of some sort into this floral project. Pollinators were an obvious place to start, and the more I researched, the more I became fascinated with BATS! The flowers that lend themselves to bat pollination (aka chiropterophily) are generally large, showy, often bell-shaped, and bloom pale or white blossoms - at night! The bats readily duck into them to sip nectar, dusting themselves with pollen in the process. How cool is that?! The flowers featured here are aptly named Cathedral Bells (Cobaea scandens), and the use of a restricted/muted palette I think does a swell job at conveying a sense of dusk or nighttime… I'm hoping the concept of bats and big beautiful flowers inspires and encourages people to learn a bit more about these amazing, gentle, and extremely beneficial little flying mammals."

And there you have it... just in time for Halloween to boot!


Also, for the record, pollination via bat is AMAZING - if your interest is at all peaked, here are some additional links: check out this gallery of bat pollinated plants; this crizay-zay photo of bat tongue (perfect for reaching into long tubular blossoms); an article on one incredible tropical flower with an ingenious, bat-centric phenotype; and this short exploration into the evolution of bat pollination.

Salameandering Into Cutaneous Respiration

Meet Plethodon cinereus - the Northern Red-backed Salamander. These relatively plain little fellows belong to the "woodland salamander" family, a nod to their forested terrestrial home. Unlike some salamanders who, like many amphibians, lay their eggs in water, at no point in the Red-back sallie's life cycle are they aquatic. A cluster of 4-14 eggs is laid in the soft nook of a rotting log or tree stump, from which young develop fully inside their eggs until they hatch; the "infants" wobble out like dainty versions of their parents.

The painting above documents 5 stages of the Red-back reproductive cycle - zig-zag top to bottom: beginning with a clutch of eggs (fiercely defended by mamma for up to 2 months); followed by a view of the embryo development within those eggs (dark eye spots and long tail coiled around a creamy round yolk clearly visible); a pile of wee hatchlings (roughly 1" in length); a juvenile, starting to look a bit more proportional; and lastly, coming full circle, an adult Red-back, poised to find a mate of his own. The prominent Hemlock needles and cones in the painting are in reference to the Eastern Red-back's preferred forest type.

A unique feature of woodland salamander physiology not obvious in the illustration - they are lungless. That's right - no lungs! Instead of breathing through organs in the chest, a lungless salamander gets oxygen through its skin, via a process known as cutaneous respiration, or cutaneous gas exchange (remember, breathing in oxygen goes hand in hand with breathing out carbon dioxide). A seemingly bizarre strategy, but Red-backs aren't the only ones...


Lungs are what enabled the ancestors of all tetrapods (4-limbed animals) to climb out of the Devonian soup some 400 million years ago and begin sucking in great quantities of air for a living. Since they utilize the vast surface area of alveoli for gas exchange, rather than the relatively limited amount of surface area provided by a creature's skin, lungs are a much more efficient way for an organism to respirate - especially large creatures, or those requiring bursts of energy and high O2 consumption. For comparison, an average human adult's skin has a surface area of roughly 16-21 square feet - the surface area of the alveoli inside that same human is about 100 square yards!

Amphibians are neither large, nor particularly active, and many spend almost their whole lives in or around water. For these reasons, amphibians of the order Anura (ie: frogs) evolved FOUR mechanisms for breathing: 1. through gills (present in the larval stages of many aquatic species, but they are generally lost prior to adulthood); 2. lungs (slightly more primitive than those of mammals); 3. through their very permeable skin, and; 4. through sensitive skin inside the mouth (aka buccal cavity). Lungless salamanders (about 431 species of the family Plethodontidae, and making up an entire 2/3 of all salamander diversity!) took things one step further and got rid of the primitive lungs all together, to rely solely on cutaneous gas exchange. Similarly, two known Caecilians (bizarre, smooth-skinned amphibians resembling a combination of a worm and a snake) made themselves a sans-lung niche, one-upping the sallies by also losing their legs! ("squeam" factor is a bit high on these guys...). Until fairly recently, these examples were thought to be the only tetrapods lacking lungs, but in 2008, the Bornean Flat-headed Frog became the first frog (they're actually toads...) to be discovered without lungs. So yeah - Nature: stranger than fiction, EVERY TIME.

Still iffy on how this whole "lungless breathing" concept works? I was, and since the interweb failed to deliver the all-encompassing visual diagram I was hoping for, I went ahead and fashioned my own (facts carefully double-checked with the Harvard researcher who studies the Plethodons in the painting above)...  


Hungry for more deets on breathing in and breathing out? WATCH: this quick 3D medical animation of respiration in human lungs; this insanely authentic Encyclopedia Britannica film on the respiratory system requires about 25min, but the 80s edu-film effects are priceless (and it's actually jam-packed with all the basics) - highly recommended if you want something thorough and entertaining; and for a gander at how a few additional amphibians have solved the oxygenation problem using... creatively alternative methods... check out the bizarrely bristly Hairy Frog, the excessively wrinkled Lake Titicaca Frog, and the amusingly sweet-faced Axolotl.

My great thanks to Zachary Lewis, currently a Phd student in the Hanken Laboratory at Harvard University (where he studies the evolution of development - via salamanders!), and Carolyn Eng, doctoral candidate in the Harvard Human and Organismic Evolutionary Biology departments (Carolyn studies anatomy and physiology and frequently puts animals like goats on treadmills to observe muscle function through locomotion - I covet her job). 

Carbon Dust Redux: Phacochoerus africanus

The above slideshow is a quick process recap of a carbon dust drawing I completed recently using a warthog skull (from my personal collection) as my model. The drawing was made specially for an event at my favorite arts and event space in Brooklyn, NY - Observatory. Since the carbon dust technique was introduced to me just this spring, at a wonderful workshop held in the classroom at Observatory, I thought it a fitting medium for the assignment.

This week, Observatory co-founder, Joanna Ebenstein, released the second in a series of short, web-based documentaries centered around her work as a passionate researcher, curator, and collector of "curious collections" - you can watch this little gem on her blog, Morbid Anatomy. Below, an African Warthog (Phacochoerus africanus) making haste to somewhere important (look at that wee tail straight up in the air!). Compared to other African game, warthogs may be diminutive omnivores, but that tusky snout is backed up by a tenacious attitude, and wise predators learn not to make light of that. 

From the Mouths of Owls

I have fond memories of many lessons in elementary school, but one of the shining highlights was the day us kiddos were each given an owl pellet to dissect. The ugly little grey-brown lumps, the size and shape of stuffed grape leaves, looked a whole lot like any number of small critter scat one might discover on the forest floor, and while they were indeed evidence of wild digestive systems at work, poop they were not. Along with our pellet, we were given tweezers and microscopes, and it didn't take much prodding before squeals traveled the room, for each and every nugget contained a terrific assortment of tiny, nearly perfectly clean, rodent bones. Like archeologists at an ancient burial site, we gingerly tweezed through the furry fibers, lifting out everything from skulls to the most minute metatarsals. I don't know if every kid in the room felt this way, but for me, it was a bit like Christmas... and I've been dying for the opportunity to paw through an owl pellet ever since. To my rescue this spring: the Great Mount Auburn...

Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA became a bit of an avian circus last spring when the rather conspicuous nest of a resident pair of Great Horned Owls was discovered. The proud birds produced 2 handsome chicks and raised them successfully in front of eager crowds. Sadly, the female of that mated pair, Roxanne, died tragically this spring - I'm told an autopsy revealed she was "with eggs" as well... such a shame. Luckily for us, her baby-daddy, Alexander the Great (I didn't name them) is still very much alive, and on one early visit to the Dell last month, it occurred to me that I might possibly be able to sleuth a pellet or two from under his favorite towering pine roost...

Oh happy day - not only did I find a pellet, I found heaps.


Owls tend to select favorite trees (most often coniferous ones) - right down to the branch - so combing the ground beneath a known roosting spot is a bit like crawling around underneath the kitchen table of a toddler - each day, a predictable selection of tidbits hits the same spot on the floor... In this case, substitute Cheerios and frozen peas with mouse femurs and shrew pelvic bones, and what you get is nothing short of a bonanaza for a naturalist.

If you missed out on aforementioned owl pellet dissection day in elementary school, you may be wondering: So if it isn't poop, what is an owl pellet anyway? Well, here's how it works:

Owls, like all birds, must swallow their food relatively whole; they may pull it apart with their beak and claws, but without teeth, they can't masticate (chew) their food. In creatures with teeth, mastication is actually the first step of digestion, but birds skip most of that and just send their meals down the hatch. Since owls are birds of prey, and meals consist of small animals, an owl's stomach is faced with an assortment of rather challenging-to-digest fare; some of it, like fur, feathers, bone, teeth, and claws, can not be digested at all... instead, it must be "ejected" via the same route it went in.

When an owl swallows a meal, it enters the mouth, passes down the esophagus and then heads through the first of a 2-part stomach (all birds have a 2-part tummy). Stomach #1 is called the proventriculus, or "glandular stomach", and it produces enzymes and acids - just like your own stomach - that begin the process of digestion. Next, the partially-digested owl snack moves on to stomach #2: the ventriculus, or "muscular stomach". The ventriculus, aka the gizzard, has no digestive enzymes, but uses muscular contractions to continue the process of digestion and move soft and soluble food bits on to the rest of the system (intestines, liver, pancreas, etc) where nutrients will be absorbed by the body. At this point, the ventriculus also serves as a block for all of that INdigestible material that the body can't process. Within hours after eating, all that fur, bone, and tooth (and sometimes inorganic items like leg-bands from songbirds!) is compressed in the gizzard into a pellet, which travels back up from the ventriculus and into the proventriculous, where it will sit for up to 10 hours before being regurgitated.
 

An owl pellet in the proventriculus thoroughly blocks the digestive system while it waits to be ejected, so pellet regurgitation must be quite regular in a healthy bird or it will starve. When the moment comes, like a cat getting ready to yerf a hairball, the owl will hunch up, appear momentarily uncomfortable, then extend it's neck up and out, open wide, and quite silently spit out a pellet (I've found 2 videos of this event - one featuring a young Barn Owl *I'd mute the commentary*, and one seriously impressive Snowy Owl).

*For more reading on owl digestion and the pellet process, check out this great overview - and much more info about owls of all types - on The Owl Pages website.

Predictably, pellets vary in size and contents based on species of owl and diet. Additionally, many other types of birds produce pellets besides owls: herons, gulls, crows and jays, are just a few. Falconers refer to the pellets their hawks produce as "castings" and monitor them closely, since regurgitation serves the additional purpose of scouring and cleansing the crop (the crop is a small pouch in the throat for food storage - owls do not have crops - and if it is not cleaned regularly through regurgitation, a raptor will quickly become ill from bacteria build-up). Of note, hawks have the ability to digest bone matter, so castings contain mostly compacted fur or feathers...

My morning in the cemetery was a fruitful one and I was able to collect many pellets, as well as many clean bones which had already been separated from their fuzzy fur-balls by the elements. A few of the photos above show the "raw" state in which some treasures sat waiting for me, though more fun were the lumps I got to dissect. Below is a record of some of my haul, laid out on a bone identification chart I made and printed out.


To my surprise, I discovered that there is an entire marketplace online for the owl pellet experience. Since it is such an entertaining activity for school children, there are businesses that source and sell pellets in bulk - pre-sanitized - for entire classrooms of eager young biologists to enjoy. There are many and varied bone ID charts (see very bottom of linked page) available for download, and even virtual pellets to dissect online (can't say as that I got anything out of that experience besides the novelty factor, but apparently - we have the technology!). Smart phone users can also download owl pellet ID apps, for quick reference in the field... 

Since my unusually critical attitude towards most "creative" science aides prevents me from being satisfied with most charts and illustrations I come across, I was compelled to create my own bone ID chart, based on reference I found online. I have included my chart here for download (just click on the image), should you be similarly irritated by poorly drawn anatomy, horribly compressed jpegs, and embarrassing composition and typographic labeling. And with that I'll just say - by way of the backyard, or a box in the mail, I hope everyone who loves science and wildlife as much as I do can find an opportunity to discover the wonder of an owl pellet. 

World Tapir Day 2012

Hello, FRIDAY! And for those not already in the know, there's another, much more novel reason to delight in this fine 27th of April, 2012... it's World Tapir Day!! Oh yes. You heard that right - today is World Tapir Day - a most fitting occassion (if one needs an excuse) to celebrate, raise awareness, and otherwise spread the good word about one of the coolest odd-toed ungulates to saunter the underbrush of equatorial rainforests: the TAPIR. *Don't be fooled by the 4 toes on each front foot - they only have three on the back! Taxonomically speaking, they are odd-toes, and all 4 species are simply amazing...

I've posted on tapirs previously, having been aquainted a few summers ago with the brilliant family of 3 living at the Franklin Park Zoo - Milton, Annie, and Tupelo are Baird's tapirs, and Tupelo, like all baby tapirs, was a heart-breakingly cute wee thing covered head to toe in spots and stripes when she was born (few things rival newborn tapirs on the squee scale...). Baird's tapirs are one of the 3 tapir species native to Central and South America, where they are the largest land mammal (Baird's are smaller than the Malayan, but larger than the Brazilian and Mountain species). The fourth species, the Malayan, or Asian tapir, calls Malaysia, Thailand, and Sumatra it's home. There is some size range between tapir species, though all fall somewhere between 300 and 750lbs in adult weight. Crepuscular or nocturnal forest dwellers, they spend most of their time forraging for vegetation with their great ungainly snout, and contrary to their somewhat dumpy appearance (and I use that term only in the most affectionate way), they are marvelous swimmers. Favorite food (in captivity, at least)? Bananas.

Below, a visual summary of Tapirdom:


In honor of this wonderous day - and the magical fantastical tapir! - I've designed a template to make your very own tapir mask out of paper! It's super simple - you just need paper to print on, scissors, glue (tape will work in a pinch, but it won't look nearly as dashing), and some string. Click the SINGLE mask graphic below for a SMALL template (will print on one 8.5 x 11 sheet and fit only a very small child's head... To make a mask of more adult-noggin proportions, click on the DOUBLE mask graphic for a LARGE template - this will print on 2 letter-sized sheet which can be cut, afixed together, then traced onto a larger, single sheet of paper before assembling). *You can print on any color paper (brown craft looks surprisingly "tapir-y") or print on white and then color to match your favorite tapir species... seriously fun stuff here - go to it!





*CONTEST EXTENDED*
And in the spirit of craft and contest - I'm going to add a twist - anyone who sends me a photo of themselves - or their little ones - wearing the above tapir mask, will be entered into a drawing to win a copy of my illustrated zoo book, Tropical Forest! Milton, Annie, and Tupelo are featured on page 5... so get crafting! Customization to resemble any of the 4 tapir species is encouraged... This contest will be open for 5 days 7 DAYS - I'll pick the winner at 12 noon EST next Tuesday THURSDAY! Please email your photo submission to: natalya (at) natalya (dot) com - OR tweet it to @natalya_zahn

...And for further reading/viewing: discover the tapir's propensity for "tantrums"; check out a (not too rosey... and I would 100% agree) review of the taxidermied tapirs at my beloved HMNH; and explore research and conservation efforts, because all 4 tapir species are highly endangered due to habitat loss and hunting. Most of all, have fun - tapirs are awesome!  

*For more paper tapirs, check out this Japanese paper-craft website (downloadable pattern), and this origami animal site. And oh how I wish I were better at knitting... HAPPY TAPIR DAY!

Primates for the Postman

It's been mail art central over here this week. Not all envelopes are being scanned and archived for posterity (one of the joys of the "you have 2 hours before the post office closes" game is accepting that a lot will go unfinished...). These wee fellows (Lemur catta) came out quite alright, however - lucky little buggers! Perhaps they've benefitted from my recent Ring-tailed kick... must be those cheeky tails... but wait, there's more!

Rebranding Eardog: Evolution of a Logo

I had a wonderful opportunity this winter to work with good friend Kimberly Wang on the development of a new logo for her media production company, Eardog. Eardog's current mascot is Kimberly's ever-faithful canine companion, Theo, and, among other important details, she wanted his likeness incorporated into the new mark. A fan of Kimberly's, a lover of dogs, and an illustrator with a distinct preference for animal subjects - I jumped at the chance to collaborate.

An artist in her own right, Kimberly had a strong vision for the look of the new Eardog brand, and though it took many rounds of refinement and tweaking to nail the finished mark, we are both thrilled with the end result. Eardog's brand new portfolio website and City Dog Country Dog blog were launched last week, incorporating the new logo - now that it's live, I thought it would be fun to put up a process post here, including a number of the steps involved in the evolution of the new logo. I have included a mere fraction of the project here - there were multiple directions explored at the start - but what I've collected here is a coherant stream of where the final idea began, and how it matured.


From the top: 1. Kimberly and I selected a handful of her beautiful photos of Theo, choosing one particularly dynamic image as a reference for the illustrated Theo. Since Kim has a real fondness for the influences of heritage, texture, and eclectic irregularity, I chose to generate original artwork by hand in black ink. 2. Our "mood board" was a bright collection of influences, including antique Chinese textile designs and contemporary logos that caught Kim's eye - a 60-second ballpoint pen sketch on graph paper sparked the melding of motiffs... 3. An inked first attempt at elaborating my sketch was converted to vector art and the emblem shape put through numerous stages of revision (notice the point at which Theo's scowl turns into a dignified, optimistic gaze - expression is everything!). 4. When a black & white design was finally approved, color exploration began... and eventually resolved in the black & periwinkle final at the top of this post. Voila!

Celebrate: National Day of the Horse

That's right - it's probably not on your calendar, but as of 2004, there is an official "National Day of the Horse", and that day is today, December 13th. Having grown up utterly horse-crazy (like 90% of adolescent girls) I find such a day of remembrance and appreciation very much well-deserved, and no doubt centuries overdue - human-kind simply wouldn't be where it is without the strength, speed, willingness, and impeccable grace of the horse.

The illustrations above I created in 2003 for a website devoted to the history of Frank T. Hopkins: fabled cowboy, endurance rider, and champion of the Spanish Mustang breed. While history rightly credits Spanish explorers with introducing the horse to the New World (and simultaneously forever changing Native American culture), a more accurate term for this action would be re-introduction. The evolution of the horse actually happened largely throughout the North American continent, just after the massive extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period (the one credited with wiping out our dear dinosaurian friends).

Roughly 54 million years ago, mere dog-sized Mesohippus slowly emerged from the forest and began sizing-up it's petit frame, lengthening it's limbs, eliminating most of it's toes (from 5 down to 1 per foot), and remodeling the structure of it's teeth, to handle the tough, fibrous new grasses of the expanding Great Plains. Eventually, the little woods-browser became what we know as Equus (a genus that would continue to evolve for many more millions of years) and the first horses made their way to Asia (along with various other American megafauna) via long-since-dissolved land bridges. Then, about 12,000 years ago (the end of the Pleistocene), for reasons still debated, Equus disappeared from North and South America, leaving it's Asian transplants to continue their development, and eventually intersect with the ancestors of modern humans. It would take those Spanish Conquistadores back in the late 1400s, crossing the oceans with domesticated animals in their ship's holds, to finally reintroduce the horse to it's indiginous continent of the New World.

The chart above is a visual comparison of today's Spanish Mustang next to two classic breed types: the Arabian Horse and the Quarter Horse. Compact, a touch coarse, and exhibiting a proportionately larger, more primitive head than his cousins, the Spanish Mustang reflects the same balanced but rugged anatomy that carried his ancestors through ice ages, extinctions, and much of human civilization - with strength, speed, and impeccable grace.

Here's to the one and only: the Horse.

Portrait of a Black Dog

I had a nice opportunity to work with a friend recently on an illustration for a product label. I will reveal the final design when that product is off to market, but for now, I think it's safe to share the artwork. The image is a portrait of a gone but not forgotten childhood best friend - a black lab named Damon.