There are wolves here in Norway, and it is an insane controversy. It would have been really funny, if it was not so tragic. Here is the gist: the wolf is red-listed here. That is to say, on a national level. This means it is threatended, on the brink of extinction, there isn't enough individuals and enough variety in the genetic material to sustain a healthy population. So we should work for a sustainable gene pool, right? The wolf has been pretty much non-exsistent in Norway since the 60-ish. This means that farmers, primarily sheep farmers, have gotten used to the practice of letting their sheep roam freely in the woods ...

Biomimicry is about mimicking nature. Humans have tried for thousands of years to conquer and control nature. But we tend to do this in a very heavy-handed way: pour concrete over it, set up miles and miles of fencing, and if we cannot fence nature in, we erect walls around ourselves to keep nature out. The answer to troublesome deer is higher, electric fencing. The solution to flooding is more concrete walls and spillways. Thing is, as they are finding out in the UK, another solution to flooding is to have beavers create wetlands. Deer can be kept out of gardens by certain smells ...

2016 has been an absolutely shait year, so I am not going to do a list of main events. I think we better get seriously drunk and forget the sorry business. However! As every year, new species are discovered, and not all of them tiny bacteria, gray mushrooms, or minuscule fish from lake Malawi. I found a bunch of them, and they are delightful! It is said, convincingly, that the most likely place you can discover a new species, is in your own back yard. Every year, new insects and vertebrates are discovered. Problem is, of course, that to know you have found a new critter, you need to intimately know ...

Theodor Kittelsen was a Norwegian painter and book illustrator (1857-1914). He illustrated the Scandinavian bestiary of legend and fairy tales, and his work has scared countless children (myself included). He drew and painted trolls, the black death, sea monsters, nøkken ("water spirit"), and anthropomorphised natural phenomena such as the echo. His work can be rather subtle at times, and require a closer study to reveal the monster in the frame. I saw a lot of his paintings in an exhibition years ago, and it is a shame that all the pics on the internet does not show the frames: they are artwork in themselves. Trolls Kittelsens' images have defined how we ...

The Eurasian lynx is a medium-sized cat, native to Siberia, Central, East, and Southern Asia, North, Central and Eastern Europe. It lives in the wild close to where I live, but after decades of hanging out in the woods, I have never seen anything but a set of footprints in the snow. Once. They are extremely shy, stick to steep, rocky terrain. You could pass one a metre away and you would never know. But up in the mountains, there is a farm and wildlife park called Langedrag that does some extraordinary things. Their lynx, with one exception, are remarkably tolerant of people. Though far from tame – they are wild ...

There is a fairy tale here in Norway, called the twelve wild ducks. The story is not really important, it a fairly classic good versus evil, patience, purity and deceit. I think it is a pretty convoluted story, and I always found it dissatisfying that there is no attempt at explaining why the princes are turned into ducks. As for magical shape-shifting, that just seems rather lame. I include the fairytale at the bottom of this post, should you be interested. The point is; I was doodling one day, and made stylized birds. Sort of. It was never intended to be birds, but three emerged. I started another one, and the problem with ...

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was at a beach, and among some rocks found a fairly decomposed duck. Basically, a big pile of feathers, mainly no flesh, but sinews and – cough – bits of unidentified biohazard. The skull was delightfully intact, with sinews holding it all nicely in place and (thankfully) brainless. What to do? Clearly, action is needed! I dashed home and picked up some plastic bags and a jar. I filled the jar with water and gently teased the skull in there. Now what?? I know very little about cleaning bones, except that you can use insects. I do not have any flesh-eating maggots around, ...

Scientific illustrations by Carim Nahaboo Carim Nahaboo is a London based illustrator specialising in accurate depictions of natural history subjects as well as more imaginative, conceptual themes. So says his bio on his webpage, and who am I to argue? I am in awe of his work; this is old-school scientific illustration: art, design and science. Feast your eyes and tell me that we should not keep the deep understanding and ability to inquire that is the essence of scientific illustration and curiosity. And recognise that it takes time. Hours, weeks, years. Scientific illustration is a skill that should not be lost; it is a philosophy, an art, a craft; it ...

“A fox (Canis fulvipes (Lycalopex fulvipes)), of a kind said to be peculiar to the island, and very rare in it, and which is a new species, was sitting on the rocks. He was so intently absorbed in watching the work of the officers, that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, to knock him on the head with my geological hammer. This fox, more curious or more scientific, but less wise, than the generality of his brethren, is now mounted in the museum of the Zoological Society.” ... and so Darwin helped to bring the aptly named Darwin's fox a little closer to extinction. “Amongst the Batrachian reptiles, I ...

A murmuration of robots, a huddle of penguins. Swarm behaviour is a sticky problem. Scientists are twisting their brains to come up with self-organising systems. The murmuration of starlings, the behaviour of slime moulds, ants and corals are examples of nature being waaaay ahead of us. Here, Harvard University has created a self-organising system, consisting of 1024 (magic number!) tiny robots. They are a long way away from the sterlings, but there is something really adorable about seeing those little robots getting in line. Basically, what these robots are doing, is a version of the emperor penguins' "huddle": to keep themselves and their chicks warm in the depth of winter, the (male, ...

Kjell Aukrust was a legendary artist, humourist and illustrator. He is most famous for his wacky stories from a particular part of rural Norway, full of bizarre and hilarious people, inventions and creatures. They make little sense to people from other countries, the Danes certainly do not get it at all. I grew up with his work, and always loved the strong graphic language. I saw his ink drawings in a museum when I was a kid, and was struck by the fact that he used liberal amounts of liquid paper for corrections: the drawings are not born perfect. The artists' privilege of changing his mind. His stuff is virtually non-existent ...

Axolotl. Ambystoma mexicanum. What is it? It belongs to the salamanders, but. A salamander is a creature that has some properties and life history. Your garden-variety salamander starts life as an egg, larvae, tadpole, metamorphosis, adult salamander. After metamorphosis the creature is an adult, crawls up on land and reproduce. That is the idea. But there is this magnificent mechanism in evolution.. if (over time) the environment for the adults on land is too harsh, the juveniles can develop the ability to reproduce. They skip metamorphosis almost entirely, and stay in a juvenile "prepubescent" stage that should not allow them to reproduce, and yet they do. This is called neoteny. Now this ...