Biblaridion's review of 'Wildlife on the planet Furaha'

 Yesterday, Biblaridion published a YouTube review of The Book, in part based on an interview with me. I guess most readers will know about Biblaridion because of his large and long-running video series called 'Alien biospheres', in which he methodically discusses the subtype of speculative biology that deals with life elsewhere than Earth. He has a whopping 155,000 followers, so I was very happy that he wanted to pay attention to the Furaha project. We have met several times in person at TetZooCons and DinoCon. 

I supplied Biblaridion with various images, most of which had not been published before. However, these unpublshed images are not new ones in The Book, because people should have a reason to buy that. I made a few new animations for Biblaridion, mostly of rusp skeletons. Rusps do not have a fixed length because of how the 'rings' in each segment are connected to neighbouring rings. Those connections functionally resemble springs at four connection points, so the rusp skeleton as a whole resembles a harmonica a bit. 

Here is a video showing 'torsion' of the rusp skeleton. Biblaridion shows another one depicting lengthening of the rusp skeleton. But before that one causes any misunderstandings I hasten to add that rusps do not become significantly longer or shorter. The mean distance between neighbouring segments stays the same, so if the left margins of two segments approach one another, the right ones will tend to move apart. The reason for this is that the overall volume of the beastie does not change and neither does the circumference of the segments. Think of an earthworm that becomes thinner when it becomes longer. If hat worm, for some reason, could not become thinner, it couldn't lengthen either. I exaggerated the harmonica effect in the animation for Biblaridion's video to clarify how the skeleton works, not as an illustration of how rusps would actually move. Rusp lengthening is however large enough to make it difficult for students at the Institute of Furahan Biology to measure rusp length... 

As an aside, human vertebral colmns do not have fixed lengths either. Our intervertebral discs become flatter during running or during the day and longer at night, adding up to a one or two cm difference.     

For those new to my blog, please have a look. The search function allows you to find items on many SpecBio subjects. 

Furthermore, there's my YouTube channel and an Instagram channel. If you wish to know how to order The Book, look here. If you order directly from Crowood and mention 'TCP10', you get a 10% discount. I'll also ask the publisher when the book becomes directly availble in the USA and elsewhere. 

 

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Addition 29 January: I asked the publisher; the UK distributor may not deliver to Canada and the USA; the distributor to do that may only do so after six months (the book was published on 3 December, so that would be early June then. Blackwell's apparently has free shipping for a while, but I don't know for how long.. 

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Wildlife-on-the-Planet-Furaha-by-Gert-Van-Dijk/9780719845710

New speculative biology book about future insects

One main playing field of speculative biology concerns life somewhere else than Earth, such as my Furaha project. Another describes how life on Earth might have evolved if some event in the past had taken a different turn, such as Dougal Dixon’s book The New Dinosaurs, and the third, the subject of this post, deals with life on Earth in the future.

Well-known examples are Dixon’s After Man and the French book Demain, les animaux du futur (see posts A, B, C, D and E). While these projects discuss various animal clades, one group of animals receives less attention than it deserves, based on ecological clout, numbers of species and of individuals: insects!
  
That changed with a new speculative biology book about future insects. Before you run to the nearest bookshop, you should realise that it is in French. At the time of writing the authors do not yet know whether there will be versions in other languages. The book is called Les insectes du futur, a title that should be understandable without knowing French. The subtitle is Petite entomologie post-effondrement, which means ‘small entomology after the collapse’. The book was published last September by Belin in France. The first author is Lucas Etienne, a researcher who designed the arthropods and made the illustrations. You may already know the second author, Jean-Sébastien Steyer, as he was one of the two authors of Demain, les animaux du futur ; he is a palaeontologist (see his book Earth before the dinosaurs) and has published various books popularising science. 

The book counts 163 pages and describes a large variety of insects and other arthropods, as told by two human researchers who make their way from Paris to Monaco in the year 2499. The protagonists make this journey after leaving the underground collection rooms of the Muséum d’Histoire naturelle where they sat out a nuclear war. They encounter many species of arthropods that are as new to them as they are to the reader. The book is divided into chapters that describe ecosystems and various biological principles, such as camouflage, symbiosis, parasitism, flight and adaptations to aquatic life. Let’s have a look at a few organisms.

Click to enlarge; © Belin Éditeur/Humensis, 2025

Nepa dendrobates
This animal may look like a tropical frog, but it is in fact an insect of the clade Hemiptera. The bright dazzling colours of the frog it mimics are a warning to would-be predators that these frogs are poisonous. The insect mimics the frog in colour and shape, so predators should mistake the tasty insect for a poisonous frog and stay clear. This is a nice example of Batesian mimicry, something than can be described as a sheep in wolf’s clothing. I wondered what happens if some predator that never eats frogs comes across such an insect. That predator would not be warned off by the colours because it never eats frogs, poisonous or otherwise. It would still not eat the insect as it wouldn’t recognise the insect as an insect, but as something inedible. Does that turn the effect into simple camouflage rather then Batesian mimicry? That sounds like a nice subject for a biology examination.

Click to enlarge; © Belin Éditeur/Humensis, 2025

Aquatic ants
Quite a few insects adapted to a life underwater, but never ants, or so I thought. I was wrong: there is an ant that dives into the fluid of pitcher plants to steal animals that fell in, and there is a mangrove species that allows its nest to be inundated by the tide. Etienne and Steyer developed their own aquatic ants. They developed gills, have grown considerably larger than any terrestrial ant and have become good swimmers. These ants are still colonial and still build their own housing, which in this case resulting in underwater ant cities. These marine ants developed symbiosis with corals, which is a very interesting idea, so altogether they paint a very intriguing picture.

Click to enlarge; © Belin Éditeur/Humensis, 2025

Abyssal wasp
This wasp descendant can grow to an astonishing length of 60 centimetres. It is bioluminescent thanks to symbiosis with luminescent bacteria. Unfortunately, the book provides little detail how it lives, although it is clear that it has lost its sting.

The story takes place in the year 2499, almost 500 years from now. That may be long enough for mankind to further change the climate and to damage or destroy many ecosystems, bringing about an overall collapse. But how much biological evolution can take place in that time? In other words, what is the maximum speed of evolution? That is probably complex. Factors that must play a role are how large the pressure to change is, such as due to a quickly changing environment and mixing species that were previously separated. The amount of genetic variability and the mutation rate would also be important modifiers of change. The morphological changes in the insect book are so large in such a short time that evolution here has jumped, something known as ‘saltation’.

One theory of saltational evolution by Goldschmidt described ‘hopeful monsters’ that came about through very large mutations, large enough to explain the advent of new species. This concept of saltational evolution was never wholly discarded and new papers keep on appearing on the subject. I do not know enough about it and cannot therefore afford a strong opinion on the matter. Readers of this blog will know about ‘punctuated equilibrium’, a theory stating that species do not change for a long time but may then suddenly undergo a major change. At present, there is evidence for both long periods of stasis as well as for evolutionary jumps. In short, the speed of evolution can vary. 

But the future insect book still forces a closer look at that speed. The fossil record does not exactly have a nice temporal resolution, with a complete fossil every hundred generations or so.

 

Click to enlarge; source: wikipedia

This Wikipedia graph neatly explains that gradual change over 10,000 years will show up as a qualitative jump if you only sample the record once every 10,000 years. But the graph is quite hypothetical. Very well, let’s hypothesise a bit ourselves. Making an insect look like a frog must involve changes to a great many genes. It seems extremely unlikely for all genes involved to mutate in the correct direction at the same time (but if this does happen, you might get an evolutionary jump). It seems more likely that weeding out any variant that reduces ‘frogginess’ requires untold encounters between predators, the insect and the frog. How many generations would that take? Likewise, adapting insects to water is likely to go through successive stages, perhaps starting with short dips to get food. From there, you can expect changes allowing the animal to last longer under water. I would not be surprised that breeding under water would be one of the last changes to take place. Again, it seems unlikely that all features would change in the correct direction at the same time.          
  
I understand the style figure of using human guides to show these new animals. The alternative would have been to move forward a few million years and to depict the animals as they are, without human interest. Would that have been better? That depends on what you want from such a book. The authors must have had great fun using their new arthropods to illustrate various biological principles such as Batesian mimicry. They did not in fact use the term Batesian mimicry; instead, they chose to teach by example, making their book highly accessible. That is an advantage and does not harm the fun. Come to think of it, showing how biology works is, for me, the essence of why speculative biology is fun.

The case of the Dancing Dune Spidrids: are they intelligent?

The second episode of my spidrid microdocumentary series has just been published on YouTube and Instagram and is now visible on this blog too. The YouTube version has the highest quality. 

This episode focuses on a species of spridrid in a dune habitat, but the episode is not so muuch about the habitat as it is about behaviour of the animals. That is complex, because any choice I make regarding animal behaviour immediately triggers many implications and assumptions. 

While making these videos, I quickly found that making a film requires a different focal point than the painting-plus-text approach that I used so far. For a painting to work, its composition, use of colour and of dark and light tones are of prime importance. I will go so far as to say that the subject matter comes second. In video, things need to happen, so the animals need to do something that forms a story. I started making spidrid animations with an initial emphasis on their radial build and their locomotion. This was the logical thing to do, but you cannot show some spidrid changing direction without rotating its body ten times and still expect people to remain interested. What can spidrids do, besides walking, that attracts interest? 

 

Well, in nature documentaries carnage always grabs the attention, but spidrids aren't big fierce predators, so no spouts of crimson blood there (greenish blue blood, actually, but never mind). There is also the fact that animating the spidrid's four mouth limbs as well as its central ventral beak on its tentacular 'neck' would require as much programming effort as the rest of the animal put together. 

There's also sex of course, but you may be surprised to learn that I focused on biomechanics to such a degree that I never gave any attention to whether spidrids produce eggs, live young, or something else. It works, that's enough for now. One fundamental matter here is that producing sperm cells is metabolically much cheaper than to produce all the material needed to build functional offspring. It should be much easier for large animals than for small animals to afford the high metabolic cost of that latter, female, route. And yet many male animals are larger than females, showing that other considerations, such as scaring off male competition, may be more important. Somewhere in that balance between costs there should be room for animals to change sex in accordance with their size as they grow throughout life. That was in fact what I thought when I designed the large spidrid in the video. That giant specimen in the video is one and a half time larger than the smaller ones, so it is at least three times as heavy (it has appropriately thicker legs). Its size ensures dominance, but the video leaves it open whether the animal is a male approaching females or the opposite. At any rate, you may safely assume that the giant has reproduction in mind. 

The third aspect that may attracts interest is social interaction, which the video focuses on. These spidrids use complex body movements and vocal cues to interact with one another. Their colours are probably also a social sign. The more animals there are, the more complex their interactions become. Does that mean they are then signalling to several others at the same time? That would make them rather clever. The existence of complex social interactions is probably tied to intelligence; the 'social intelligence hypothesis' even holds that social interactions were a major driver of human brain evolution. The same may well apply to other bright social animals, such as ravens and other smart birds. Could spidrids have a level of intelligence approaching or equalling that of birds? Why couldn't they? I for one do not believe that the obligatory requirements for intelligence throughout the universe include being an upright ape with opposable thumbs.

THE FURAHA BOOK HAS JUST BEEN PUBLISHED

 The book 'Wildlife on the planet Furaha' (ISBN: 9780719845710) has been published today, December 3rd, 2025. 

How do you get a copy? 

If you are in the UK, you should know that the book just arrived at Crowood's, so UK bookshops will need a bit of time to get it onto their shelves. If you wish to order the book, you can do so directly from the publisher, Crowood Press (link below), where it is available right now. Note that Amazon will not have stock for another week, so if you want one quickly, get your copy through Crowood Press. Ordering directly from Crowood is also much better for the publisher and for me, thank you very much! 

If you are in the USA or Canada, the publisher advises to use Blackwell's. Blackwell's will start sending out copies in just a few days once they get their copies. I am told they currently offer free shipping, which sounds good! 

Both Crowood and Blackwell's have a long list of countries they ship to, so that should take care of most requests from the rest of the world. 

 

Links to order the book 

Blackwell:  https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Wildlife-on-the-Planet-Furaha-by-Gert-Van-Dijk/9780719845710 

Crowood: https://www.crowood.com/book/wildlife-on-the-planet-furaha/

Last update before The Book is published

 I've been busy!  Well, no news there...

How about The Book? You will have noticed that publication was delayed from October or November to 8 December. The reason has nothing to do with the content of the book itself; that was ready many months ago. No, as I wrote earlier, the reason is far beyond the publisher's or my control. Political unrest in the Red Sea means that shipping companies may prefer the long route around Africa to travel from India to Europe, meaning from the printer to the publisher. The present date of December 8th is unfortunately not completely certain for the same reason. (If things do go wrong, this won't be the last update before publication.)  

The publisher is Crowood Press in the UK. If you are not in the UK, you can still order the book through internet booksellers and probably also directly from the Publisher.   

Anyway, I made a short video to help attract attention to the book; here it is. Feel free to link to the video on this blog or to a better resolution version on YouTube, or the one on Instagram!

What else was I busy with? Well, those microdocumentaries I am making are very time-consuming because they involve a lot of programming. I chose a sandy environment for the next documentary, so the beasties therefore needed to leave prints in the sand. That involved modifications of the terrain in the 3D rendering programming, and of course the various coordinate systems of the terrain and the rest of the imaginary world did not match up, which is something you only find out about the hard way. 

I am also busy with a completely different art project: I draw views of the city of Leiden in The Netherlands, where I live, in a variant of the style that was first labelled 'klare lijn' in Dutch and later 'ligne claire' in French (think Tintin). I do not know whether the name 'clear line' has caught on in English yet. I am preparing work for an art market next Saturday and for an exposition in 'Galerie Zone' in Leiden during the month of January 2026. If you are curious what sidetracked me from spending more time on Furaha, take a look at my drawing website here; it is in Dutch only because I only sell in The Netherlands at present (the words 'Lijn en licht' mean 'line and light').

So that's what I am busy with! I do have some nice posts planned, one about a nice magazine about speculative biology, two about French books, and one more about which kinds of animals may and may not develop colour-changing skin. The basic science on the latter subject proves difficult to find, but I will get there.                        

Furaha microdocumentary 1: The spiny desert slantie

Well, here we go: a Furaha microdocumentary. I gave it the number one, although that is not entirely accurate. I have made several videos in the past that might also be called 'Furaha microdocumentaries'. Those older videos reflected ideas about Furahan wildlife that are no longer current, with as the most obvious example the presence of ballonts. That is one reason to regard them as behind the times; another is that my new breed of microdocumentaries is of higher quality, or at least I like to think so. Finally, the new microdocumentaries tie in with the Furaha book and will hopefully increase sales. The Book is set to become available at the end of this month, October 2025, or next month. (The reason for the uncertainty is rather sobering: the books are printed in India and have to be shipped to the UK, but unrest in the Red Sea may cause a detour around Africa.)

  

Here it is! Blogger only shows videos at a rather small size, so I strongly recommend that you have a look at the video on my YouTube channel, where you should be able to see it in its full 1920 by 1080-pixel glory.

 I aim to produce more such videos, although they take a long time to produce. I thought beforehand that ray-tracing the images would take the most time, at three to five minutes per image for 24 images per second for something like a minute and a half. Although that amounts to about 144 hours, rendering can be done at night without paying much attention to the process. Programming the animals' movements takes devoted attention though, and that costs time, as witnessed by my previous post on such animations.             

If all goes as planned, there will be three or four microdocumentaries for each of the clades spidrids, cloakfish and tetrapters. Don't expect one every week! There will also be a general 'advertising video' out shortly.

As for the spiny desert slantie, its scientific name is Obliquambulator serratus. This is probably the first time I use the word 'slantie' in this blog; it occurs more often in The Book and represents a colloquial term for 'slanted spridrids', as described here first. In 'normal' spidrids, the legs move in a vertical plane and each leg segment is bilaterally symmetrical. In slanties, the plane of the leg is at an angle to the vertical and that angle is now part of the anatomy: slanties cannot in fact rotate their legs to become fully vertical. The slanting had no effect on leg shape early in slantie evolution, even though one side of the leg was now habitually up and the other side down. But later the legs segments evolved asymmetry, as shown clearly by the spines on the legs: these spines stick out in a horizontal direction, both on the top side and on the bottom side of the segments.

There is more to tell about slanties and spidrids. Making a video raises questions that paintings do not, such as whether the animals make sounds, what kind of sounds, and what they do, socially or otherwise. The video answers a few of those questions.                     

"Future Spidrid Microdocumentary May Feature Silly Walks"

 Well, there's a headline for you. This post contains a quick update on the evolution of the intended 'microdocumentaries' about spidrids, cloakfish and tetrapters. 

Why microdocumentaries? Because even animations of a few minutes take a long time to make if every frame is raytraced. Why spidrids and the other mentioned clades? Because seeing these animals move definitely adds value, compared to a diagram or a still image. There won't be hexapod microdocumentaries because my animation skills do not include such soft-bodied animal shapes. Not yet, anyway. 

The key elements of programming tetrapter movement are already there and I expanded the Matlab programmes that control cloakfish movement. I have almost completed work on programming spidrids, allowing visualisation of walking over uneven ground, separate movement of the abdomen and cephalothorax, slanted spidrid legs, and spidrid social signalling. I am considering having multiple spidrids walk about in a scene; that would be nice but is not essential.   

There was a very major snag along the way. I had intended to use Zbrush for 3D modelling, and had thought that I could use ZBrush, Sculptris, Photoshop or even Window's 3DPaint to paint body parts and produce texture maps. Unfortunately, Sculptris and 3DPaint no longer work well, maybe because Windows changed too much. Adobe abolished 3D painting in Photoshop because they now have a separate program for that. A glance at internet sources convinced me that ZBrush made texture exporting extremely complex, in true ZBrush style (for some reason the people at ZBrush keep clinging on to a horribly unfriendly user interface). What now? Well, with trepidation I turned to Blender, which had scared me off years ago because it was equally unfriendly. But the Blender user interface was said to have become friendlier now, so I downloaded Blender and selected the subjects of sculpting and texture painting for study. About 9 days later, I had modelled and painted all body parts of a new species of spidrid and had exported them successfully along with roughness and colour maps. I think that is telling, as I started with zero Blender knowledge. Mind you, Blender is still complex, because it does complex things; but there is a solid logic behind it.

 

So here is a try-out of a new spidrid species, produced with Matlab, Blender and Vue. There is a version with better resolution on my YouTube channel.  You may expect this species to feature in scenes of higher quality with sound, plants and more scenery.

 

 

And here is my rough starter species walking with a 'pronking' gait to impress potential mates. In this spidrid gait, two sets of four legs move together. It is an eight-legged version of the 'double tripod' gait used by insects, so I am calling it a 'double table' gait. In the pronking version, the body is held high and the legs are lifted much higher than needed. I think this walk is objectively silly, but you should ask the intended audience what they think of it, and that would be other spidrids, not me.       

By the way, I am trying my hand at Instagram too; you should be able to find me using 'J.Gert van Dijk'