The 'spietskip', or 'impaler poultry' (Tabulae mortuae VIII, Archives XVIII)

 The ‘spietskip’ is mentioned in the Furaha book; the book contains a short section about the prehistory of the Furaha project, showing old paintings. The word ‘spietskip’ is a made-up Dutch word (the Dutch language allows everyone to make new words by stringing together existing ones). ’Spiets’ means to skewer or impale, and ‘kip’ means ‘chicken’: a ‘spietskip’ is therefore literally a ‘skewer chicken’, although ‘impaler poultry’ sounds more dramatic. 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

The painting shown above is really old. Over time the animal, with it bird-like plumage and overly reptilian head, fitted less and less within the evolving hexapod scheme. One solution in such cases was extermination, and the other was a redesign. The idea behind the spietskip appealed to me: a small carnivore, hunting from a hiding place among reeds, and catching prey with front legs that are fishing spears. I also thought at the time that The Book needed more scalates. There is ample room for adaptive radiation within every scalate group. Carnivores definitely needed more radiation, to show their range from mouse-sized squigglers to slow massive carrion eaters specialising on dead rusps.

So I had wondered whether redesigning the spietskip might work. An animal clinging to reeds need to have legs with a large movement range, and feet that can grab a reed from about any angle. That should not pose to much of a problem for the general scalate design.

 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

Here is a simple Zbrush sculpt showing a spietskip following the scalate redesign, including the distal and proximal neck with the neurocranium in between. I now think it is too bulky. It is often difficult to get a good idea of the mass of small mammals and birds, because their fur and feathers make them look much bulkier than they really are. If you see a wet cat, you can see how little mass it really has. Let’s just pretend that the Zbrush sculpt already includes its covering. As you can see, the limbs are very simple; that is because such sculpts were only made to help with perspective and composition, and details can simply be drawn later.

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

 

After importing the body into Vue, I played with limb positions, here simple cylinders, and the overall viewing angle, which was similar to that of the original painting. 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

 

I could easily have take this image as a rough background and could have started drawing over it, before finally sitting down to paint.

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

However, sometimes drawing without any such 3D aids resulted in livelier images, perhaps at the cost of some perspective mistakes. That’s why I also did a very quick sketch right over the adapted old oil painting. This sketch could also have been the starting place for a new drawing and painting. 

But around that time I realised that I could keep on designing new radiations forever, and that there already enough material for a book already. And that is why the evolution of the spietskip stopped. 

Perhaps I will pick it up again, some day. But first, I am preparing for DinoCon, where I will be selling The Book, images and some other stuff. There are also posts to write on the ever-intriguing theme of how many legs animals should have in speculative biology projects, and on colour changing. 

And for people in the USA, don’t forget that The Book will finally be sold directly in the USA through Simon and Schuster, starting on 28 July, 2026.    
           

'Wildlife on the planet Furaha' book: restocked next week, plus a TetZoo review!

 Just a quick newsflash this time.

As you may know, the Furaha book sold out within three months of appearing on the market. Luckily, Crowood Press, the publisher, quickly ordered a new print run (printed in 2025, as opposed to 2025 for the first print run). That new print run is almsot here; this is what the editor told me today: "Your book will be restocked next week (because of Easter we will lose this Friday and Monday)."

That is good news! So, if you are tempted to be the book after reading favourable reviews, do not be put off by 'out of stock' messages.      

Speaking of favourable reviews, Darren Naish just published a review of 'Wildlife on the Planet Furaha' that can be found here: https://tetzoo.com/blog/2026/3/30/gert-van-dijk-wildlife-on-the-planet-furaha   

In case you did not know, Darren is well known for his 'TetZoo' (Tetrapod Zoology) blog and tetZoo  conferences, and for being a scientific advisor for Prehistoric Planet. He is also an organiser of DinoCon, a dinosaur-based fun conference (read about the first one in 2025 here); the next one will be in Birmingham, on the 25th and 26th of July 2026. I recommend going!

Mind you, I will get back to writing regular blog posts soon. I expect to write more on how many legs you may expect on alien animals (together with Biblaridion), as well as about a SpecBio journal. I have also been thinking about what would allow larger animals to change colour quickly (I am not yet certain whether that is possible, but as usual there are no ready answers in the literature).

   

The Book is announced!

The Book is announced! 

Yes, I do mean my long-awaited book about Furahan wildlife; for me, this is not just a book, but 'The Book'. 

Before anyone becomes overexcited, let me start by saying that it is not available yet; you will probably have to wait until November to get your copy! 

The publishing process is advancing nicely and has now reached the stage where The Book is announced to booksellers. This means you can search for it on booksellers' websites, but it will not be mentioned in every country yet. Because Crowood Press, the publisher, is in the UK, UK sellers and sites are first to mention it. I recommend 'speculative biology furaha' as a search term to find it quickly. 

Mind you, the official price has not been settled yet, in spite of you may see! 

Here are the cover and accompanying text, with thanks to Dougal for the praise! 

 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

"On the planet Furaha, Gert van Dijk creates a biosphere on a new world along with its solar system. Evolution on Furaha found solutions to life’s problems that remained unused on Earth. There are in-depth accounts of habitats where marshland mixotrophs use bioluminescence to catch animals, where four-sided radial cloakfishes swim in tropical waters and where tetrapters flitter through the air, using radial flight. With over 180 stunning illustrations, this is a book that all fans of science fiction, biology and science will enjoy, and that will inspire artists to think beyond the limitations of our own planet. 

 'Major works on speculative biology are rare but Furaha is a welcome addition to the genre and gives a well-considered account of life on another planet, along with stunning illustrations. This is a must-read book, which I heartily recommend.’ ~ Dougal Dixon The father of speculative zoology"

'The Book' has found a publisher!

Just a short update on the progress of The Book. 

When I discussed this subject matter last, in my August post, I wrote that I was making some progress with getting acceptable colours from Amazon's self-publishing programme. My conclusion at present is that printed lighter colours are quite reasonable, but that dark portions come out dull and lack detail. It turned out that I included more dark portions in my paintings than I was aware of, so many paintings became disappointingly lacklustre. Light colours were much closer to what I had in mind. I also saw some self-published Amazon books that I liked, but I was never really satisfied with how my own paintings looked. I therefore decided that I would try to find a suitable publishing company again. I therefore sent off a proposal, along with synopsis and sample images, as requested. 

Well, I am happy to say that I have signed a contract with a UK publisher! 

I will not say much more now but can add that books from this publisher are readily available internationally, including through firms such as Amazon. I can also add that the actual production of a book takes a lot of time, so the projected publishing date is the third quarter of 2025. 

I know, it’s a long wait, but it's not as long as it has taken me to produce The Book. Should you ever wish to produce a book yourself, my advice is to just write a text and NOT add over 180 illustrations. Anyway, I aim to produce two more posts about feet in this blog in 2024 (one, certainly); that should help a bit!

New directions for The Book

This is the first post of 2024. It has been too long since the previous one. The explanation for the long delay consists in part of various things that have absolutely nothing to do with the Furaha project, but some other things were relevant. Quite relevant, in fact.

I visited TetZooCon in the beginning of December. It was great fun as usual: have a look at Darren's report here. I went there in part to speak with publishers or other knowledgeable people who might tell me more about my chances were of getting a publisher interested. I was lucky enough to speak such people, including a publisher. The discussions were open, and everyone was friendly, but the message was that there was hardly any chance of getting the book published by a large publishing house. That was disappointing, mostly because I had felt that getting a publisher to commit would be a sign that the work was good enough for that. Then again, as someone explained to me, even if you do get a publisher to print the book things can still go wrong: for instance, if those responsible for distribution put in little effort, nothing much will happen.

What it all boiled down to was that I might as well go for self-publishing. As one person said after seeing my sample part of The Book, now that I have already done most of the work, I should consider doing the rest as well.

I ruminated on that for a while, and finally decided that this is probably the way to go. At present I am thinking of Amazon, having seen an example of their quite acceptable print quality. Another advantage is that Amazon is accessible to most of my audience.

There are disadvantages too: a professional publisher should be able to prevent me making basic mistakes in book design, writing style or any other aspect of publishing.Without one, I am free to make all those mistakes! A major hurdle may be advertising: I will need a way to tell the wider world, once the time is there, that The Book is out. But those should be surmountable obstacles.

At present I think that The Book can, in principle, be available one year from now. I plan to have it published as actual physical books, not as e-books. Among the things you may expect in the coming months is a much-needed update of the Furaha main site, as well as posts about reworking some paintings for The Book' publication.            

I'll be back...

 

 

A sample of The Book (and a new painting)

It's time for a quick update. As you may know, The Book is ready to find a home with a publisher. Unfortunately, one or two of the publishers I would be very happy with warn aspiring authors away by saying that they pick their own candidates and have plenty of those to choose from, thank you very much. Others say they want submissions on paper, not digital, which might be a way to reduce the number of proposals they receive. If so, good, as perhaps my proposal may then have fewer others to compete with. Anyway, I had a few samples printed on good quality paper. Here is a quick view of the sample of The Book.

Some of you may have spotted that the name on the sample reads 'Nastrarruzzo', not 'Nastrazzurro'. I had to start an official business to market The Book, (and perhaps sell prints too), and wanted to avoid  possible problems with companies with similar names. That's why my firm is called the 'Nastrarruzzo Compagnie'. 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

While all this is going on, I do work on the occasional new painting. Actually, there are about four in various stages of completion, but that is usual for me. Here is a fragment of one I just completed. The animal is a hexapod arboreal species, a swobbler (it was originally a 'wobbler', but I made a typo while storing the file, and the unintended 's' made the name more interesting, so I kept it. The animal is not entirely serious...

You may be wondering what the things on its back are. Well, hexapod skins vary a lot, and part of their basic integument is a sort of hair, but hair that is flattened, and often with multiple filaments, so it can range from feather-like structures, but decidedly heavier than true feathers, to a fur-like covering. The structure lends itself well to leaf-like excrescences. As hexapods are not at all restricted to the restricted palette of Earth's mammals, there is room for weird and colourful protuberances. 

The fruit is a baignac, of course. Don’t eat them if you are a human.