inconvergents plotter plotting a plot @inconvergent is a guy who makes magical, beautiful art with algorithms, heavily influenced by nature. In my endless ignorance, I did not think those two things could combine quite like that. I have of course seen wonderful things that nature do, like the amazing life of slime moulds, the murmuration of sterlings, the underground filaments of fungi; the fractals in nature. To wrestle from them rules and patterns seemed to me not quite doable. Nature is unpredictable, there are variables, kinks, errors, environments, weather and all sorts of influences that makes these natural systems grow and move in weird ways. And to me, that is a ...

Tyrian purple? Nope. Gentian violet. CORRECTION: the green powder is not from the sea snail. The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Hours of research threw up Gentian violet. And though this is far, far less interesting, it has the benefit of being true. I will leave this post as it is, though, as the story of Tyrian purple is fascinating anyway. You just have to mentally remove the idea that the green stuff is snail :) Why one of the pigments had the label "murix", I can only guess it refers to the colour, not the creature. You think purple is for hippies? Think again. Colours ...

Scientists don't pick flowers. They collect specimens. – myself :) Few people will identify with the term "naturalist". A lot of people love nature, go for walks, strolls, hike; do a little gardening. Gawking at majestic scenery; snowcapped mountains, endless deserts, dense rainforests. Munching on strawberries. Strawberries are not berries, by the way. Coffee beans are not beans, peanuts and coconuts are not nuts. A smirking biologist will tell you this. Admiring nature on a large scale is easy. But on small scale we are lost and we bow to the experts. We have to. Or we think we have to. Naturalists are enthusiasts. They are not professors of biology or have degrees in ...

Luidia sarsi. mer-littoral.org Here you are, minding your own business, and you come across a sea star (marine biologists will stab you in the hand with a fork for calling it a starfish). An orangy-white, five-armed rather unremarkable fellow, you might think. And you would be so, soooo wrong. Luidia sarsi turns sexual reproduction upside down. You might think: mammy-sea star, daddy-sea star, eggs, seamen, larvae, new sea star. Nope. All is well until larvae: it swims around like any other zooplankton, minding its own business, all while a new sea star is forming inside the larvae. Eventually, the sea star "migrates" to the outside of the larvae, and they part ...

This site is pretty much dedicated to the things we see, touch, record and create. But there are plenty of things people "see" that are not there. In troubled individuals, we call it delusions, hallucinations and we medicate. If enough people "see it" (and construct elaborate narratives around it) we call it religion. Elephant rock, Iceland. If you have never seen an elephant it would not mean anything. Photo: Diego Delso, Wikimedia CC To see the face of Virgin Mary in a tomato is hilariously amusing to us atheists. People could just as well find the face of Winnie the Poo in clouds, toast, wood-grain and crumpled textiles. It is a ...

I was once walking around Crystal Palace Park, waiting for a movie festival to begin, when a man approached me and my friend and asked us if we had seen the dinosaurs. We were confused at first, but he quickly pointed at some massive and frankly strange-looking sculptures that were spread around the park. Only later I found out that these dinosaurs were not modern additions, but had been there for almost two centuries, ever since the Great Exhibition of 1851. This international event took place in Hyde Park, London, and lasted over six months. It was organized by Henry Cole and Prince Albert, husband of the reigning monarch Queen Victoria, and attended by figures like Charles Darwin, ...

This article title is absolutely on point. About a year ago, I started a post but just filled in the headline. Naturally, I completely forgot about it until Bente asked me about the draft. What I didn't tell her was that by then I had no idea what the original intention had been, but I was pretty sure it wasn't literally about snails. It's time now to give this article a go, because after a little research I don't see what is NOT to be celebrated about snails. So, a few sciency facts about these little creatures: Basically, any mollusk that can fully retract into its shell -be it in water or on land- can be considered a snail ...

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647 – 1717) was a remarkable woman in many ways. She was a very talented scientific illustrator and had a passion for insects. According to David Attenborough, she contributed immensely to taxonomy in entomology and the understanding of metamorphosis, and she was the first person who travelled on purely scientific grounds. Though she was sometimes a little too creative with her images, the quality is astonishing – imagine sitting in tropical humidity in Surinam in 1699, painting. She was the first to create scientific images that in effect cross both space and time, and are essentially images of biotopes. This means that in the same image, the different ...

Ammonites are amongst the most popular fossil, and they have every right to do so. These beautiful spiral creatures are somewhat related to octupuses and squids, the only difference being that they went extinct 75 million years ago, along with the dinosaurs. When ammonites originated, they were planktonic and tiny. Less than 1mm tiny. As they evolved and developed their strong protective shell, they gained size rapidly - especially the females, up to 400%! Now, if you (like me) have always imagined these beauties as pacific, you might be in for a surprise. Ammonites were the predators of their time, feeding on almost any marine being including molluscs, fish and even other cephalopods. Because their ...

Here at the visual squirrels, we are not in the habit of promoting stuff, but Calamityware is simply too funny. Taking the classic language of cobalt and porcelain decoration, the artist Don Moyer adds – well – calamity. Volcanoes, robots, tentacles, and all manner of funny creatures hide in the china. The only problem with the whole thing, is that I did not have the idea first :) Pterodactyls, robots, flying monkeys, monsters, cats, pirates. What's not to love? ...

I made this infographic to show the (current state of things for) human evolution. Or quite current, because there have been some new discoveries, but they are still being debated. Feel free to download, distribute and change it, but please don't crop my name off it as it took me a long time to make it! Licence is Creative Commons 4.0. Message me if you'd like to have access to the PSD or the cropped skulls :) ...

A long time ago I made a geologic timeline as a (vector) brush in Illustrator, with .ai and .eps files free for anyone to use. The only thing I ask is that if you use it, let me see the result. Making the timeline was incredibly time-consuming and ludicrously fiddly. So, a while ago I got a message on Twitter from scientific journalist @CecileBonneauSV from the French magazine Science & Vie (Hors Série) asking if they could use it. Of course! I cannot say how much I appreciate people asking and letting me know. My French is pretty non-existent, but I get the general idea. Going over and beyond the call of duty, she ...