Avatar 2 The Way Of Water, or do skimwings tip the scale?

Many readers will by now have seen the second film in the Avatar series, 'The Way of Water' (TWOW). I felt that the story of the film resembled that of the first film a bit too much, but never mind that; this is not a blog about cinema, but about speculative biology. Luckily, TWOW offers new species to enjoy, to watch again and to think about. I used the book ‘The Art of Avatar TWOW' by Tara Bennett to write this post. There will probably be two posts on TWOW; this one will be about the skimwing, chosen because it has a lot to offer from a biomechanical point of view. It  will be a long post and there are equations at the end, so you have been warned...

That book contains quotes and explanations that confirm a conclusion I had drawn from viewing the first film, and that is that the shapes and form of the life forms on Pandora  are primarily governed by audience appeal, with biological plausibility taking a definite second place. I deplored that second place when I wrote my post about the first film, posted 13 years ago to the day. I still do, but now accept that the people in charge of making films think this is what the audience wants. They may be right; but I, and I guess many readers of this blog, are not typical in this regard. We like our science well-done, not rare. Relegating plausibility to second place is acceptable as long as film makers do not claim that the life forms they present are biologically sound. I got the impression that they did make that claim for the first film, but for TWOW the book acknowledges that the director's opinion of audience appeal came first. 

Click to enlarge; copyright 20th century studios

The goal: can we answer the question whether skimwings can 'taxi' as shown?  

 The skimwing is basically a gigantic flying fish: it has a long slender body and two fins that double as wings. Like flying fish, the skimwing is fast enough to partially leave the water, with just the tail in the water to propel it. Flying fish use this stage to accelerate and leave the water altogether, but skimwings do not do that; they just taxi along.
    Could the skimwing as shown really taxi in the way flying fish do? That is not an easy question because of all the factors that are involved. Let's consider the problems.
 

1. While taxiing, the animal's tail provides thrust propelling the animal forwards, but the tail may also produce some upwards force. If so, the wings need to provide less lift than if all the upwards force is due to lift. In this post, I will assume that the tail only provides forward thrust, so the wings are responsible for all the upwards force. But I will get back to this matter in the end. 

2. As for lift, we will use conventional equations. See this post for an introduction. We are not on Earth, so lift is altered by the higher atmospheric density on Pandora, where the story takes place (1.2 times that of Earth).

3. The animal's weight is also other than it would be on Earth because the gravity constant of Pandora is lower than the one of Earth (it is said to be 0.8 of that of Earth). 

4. A more difficult effect to deal with is the 'ground effect', which means that flying objects (animals and aircraft) experience extra lift if they fly close to the ground. The literature makes it clear that flying fish use the ground effect, and the book states that skimwings do so too. 

 

Click to enlarge; copyright 20th century studios

5. Finally, there is a literally enormous difference between skimwings and flying fish: flying fish are only about 35 cm long and I estimate skimwing length to be 12.2 to 13.5 meter. I derived that estimate using the image above, in which the skimwing appears to be 4.5 times as long as an adult Na'vi. The internet tells me that Na’vi are 2.7 to 3 meters tall. I used a skimwing length of 12.5 m as a reasonable estimate.      

I am not an aeronautical engineer, so what follows should be seen as nothing more than a layperson's attempt to understand how all the above factors might work together.  But first, what do we know about flying fish?     

 

Click to enlarge; from Wikipedia

Flying fish can swim, 'taxi' and glide
 
Flying fish are often said to take to the air to escape predators (Socha 2015). That may well be true but has not been proven; other animals jump out of the water for a variety of reasons. Squid may glide above water to escape predators too but also to catch prey (Socha 2015);  whales apparently breach to impress other whales, while dolphins may do so to achieve greater overall speed. As jumping out of the water must take a lot of energy this seems a strange way to save energy, but moving through air obviously offers less resistance than through water, so that gain may offset the additional energy needed to leave the water. 

There is another odd effect going on here, and that is that swimming just below the surface of the water costs more than swimming in deeper water. Why? Well, all swimmers push water out of the way to make room for themselves, but in shallow water some of that displaced water moves upwards, which costs more energy than if the water only moves sideways. That additional energy cost may just tip the balance, making leaving the water more efficient than pushing all that water up (Socha 2015).
    
Taxiing
Flying fish accelerate under water, break though the water's surface, and then accelerate some more with only their tail underwater, from 10 to 20 meters per second (Socha 2015). That's from 36 to 72 km/h. Calculations show that they need 350 Watt to swim underwater at 10 m/s, but only 36 Watts while taxiing; taxiing is therefore quite efficient (Deng 2019). So far so good!
    Flying fish then leave the water and glide, held aloft by their two or four wings (some species use both pectoral and pelvic wings, others just the pectoral wings). Although some papers describe the flight path as relatively flat (Fish 1989, Socha 2015), meaning at a constant height above the surface, this can only be an approximation. The reason is that flying fish have no propulsion while in the air, so the glide is either completely passive or else lift is helped in some way. In a true passive glide losing height is physically unavoidable (Socha 2015).
     This suggests that their lift is indeed helped. Updraughts can help (Fish 1989) and so can the ground effect. In fact, the relatively flat trajectory itself suggests that the ground effect does help (Socha 2015). Wind tunnel experiments with stuffed flying fish (Really? Yes, really) showed that the ground effect reduced drag (let's say that ‘drag’ is the force impeding forwards motion) by 14%. As lift stayed the same, the so-called lift-to-drag ratio was improved, which is not bad at all (Park 2010). Remember that number of 14%, because we will need it later.
     As flying fish know their physics they do come down to the water and may repeat the procedure: taxi, glide, land, etc. They may cover distances of some 400 meters in 30 seconds (Park 2010), suggesting a mean speed of 48 km/h.       
    
Gliding
The wings proved to be like bird wings, in particular as regards wing loading. 'Wing loading' is calculated as the area of the wings divided by weight of the animal, so it tells you how much kg a square m of wing carries. A low value makes flying easier. The wings of flying fish  are designed for high lift and low drag (Fish 1989). The four-winged species have lower wing loading, pointing to increased lift at low speeds, than the two-winged species.

Scaling flying animals

Now it gets more complicated. But not that much, so hang on! I have discussed scaling winged animals before, but I will repeat the main thoughts here. What we will do is to take Earth’s flying fish, scale them up, export them to Pandora to accommodate the different atmosphere and gravity, calculate their weight there, and then see whether they can produce enough lift to keep that weight aloft in Pandoran air.
   
Lift is proportional to just three relevant parameters (there are two more: angle of attack and a constant, but if we keep these the same throughout we can ignore them).

• density of the air (D), in kg per cubic meter
• area (A) of the wing, in square meters
• square of speed (S^2), in meter per second (I cannot use superscript, which is why I used '^2' to indicate a squared speed)

LIFT = D x A x S^2

If a flying animal flies at a stable height and does not sink, the amount of lift it generates must equal its weight. We can calculate weight W as the product of the gravity constant G and the mass of the animal M.

WEIGHT = G x M

So remember this for stable flight:

LIFT = WEIGHT

Now we need another look at scaling; (see here for flying and here and here for an introduction). Suppose we take an animal with length L and make its length, height and width all twice as large as before (that's called 'isometric scaling'). Its length becomes 2L. However, the area of the wings is the product of length and width of the wings, and as each became twice as long, the area becomes four times (2x2) as large. However, the volume of the animal has three dimensions, so that becomes eight times (2x2x2) as large. The mass corresponds to the volume and also becomes eight times as large. The lesson here is that mass increases more than area, and that is a problem. 

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

Weight becomes eight times as large, but the four times larger wing area will only get you four times the lift. To fly stably, lift must equal weight, so we must find a way to achieve eight times the original amount of lift. In the scheme, above, the first way to do so is labelled 'Enlarged flying fish 1'. In that option, squared velocity was made twice its original value. To do that, velocity itself needs to become 1.4 times larger (1.4 is about the square root of 2). Hence, the larger animal has to fly faster if its wings stay in proportion with the body. But to land and take off, the animal needs to be able to fly at low speeds too: you cannot fly fast all the time.

Is flying faster the only solution? No, we can also choose to have the enlarged animal fly at the same speed as its predecessor ('Enlarged flying fish 2'). We still need to achieve eight times the lift, so we need to make the wing area eight times larger. If we make the length and width of the wing each 2.83 times larger (2.83 is about the square root of 8) we get that. Mind you, this solution will reach a dead end at some point because the enlarged wings will also add weight, which needs to be lifted, etc. I discussed how much weight such larger wings will add to the animal in an earlier post (here); it is dramatic! 
         
To conclude, we have a choice of achieving more lift for the larger animal by either enlarging wing area or flying faster; either solution will reach a limit at some point. On Earth, larger birds combine larger wing area as well as higher speed to achieve that higher lift. That combination can only be an evolutionary compromise between the costs of high speed (difficulty in taking off and landing) and large wings (more weight). There must be a physical limit where flight is no longer feasible for an animal. Does scaling up the skimwing tip the scales? (Sorry for that one, but I could not help myself) 

The case of the skimwing

The length of a skimwing is at 12.5 meter 35.7 times larger than that of a flying fish. If we multiply the dimensions of a flying fish by 37.5, its wing area becomes 1275 times larger and its mass becomes about 45,500 times larger. Wow!

We now need to do an analysis as explained above, but the animal gets to be not twice the size, but 37.5 times. The results of this thought experiment are in the appendix, for those who want numbers. If we choose to scale the animal isometrically, meaning that the proportions of the animal stay the same, then it must taxi not at 20 m/s (72 km/h) as the flying fish manages to do, but at a staggering 351 km/h. That is wholly unrealistic; for one, the Na'vi sitting on top would be blown off…

How about the other approach, meaning making the wings larger? Well, isometric scaling made the wing length and width each 35.7 times larger. It turns out that we need to make each 174 times larger instead! I did not bother calculating how much weight that would add.

Save the skimwing!

But the animal might derive part of the upwards force from beating its tail. True, but there is a good reason why tail walking dolphins are not large. It is, once again, scaling: the force needed to push against the water depends on the cross section of the muscles, meaning area, and needs to equal the animal's weight. It is the exact same problem as before: force increases with the square of length and weight with the third power. Turning to tail walking instead of gliding trades one unsurmountable scaling effect for another.

But how about the ground effect? Well, in flying fish that reduced drag by 14%. While that is not the same as increasing lift, it may be treated that way. The appendix shows that a gratis 14% increase in lift still do not result in a viable animal, and neither did halving the mass of the skimwing: that won’t fly (sorry for that one too).

Conclusion
 
What a pity. It seems that the designers did not realise how much that third power puts a brake on scaling up animals. Admittedly, those effects are not immediately obvious, but it's not rocket science either. The simple conclusion is that 12.5-meter-long taxiing flying fish are too large to work, even under Pandora's favourable gravity and atmosphere.

Does it matter? The science in TWOW seems fairly typical for how Hollywood treats science, meaning with rather limited respect for plausibility or accuracy. That's not good news; actually, it's not news at all. However, there is good news: the film shows a very profound love for the natural world. If that helps make people care about nature, I'm all for it. 

As far as that love for nature is concerned, consider this: the skimwing differs in only one important aspect from flying fish: its size, and it is exactly that difference that makes the skimwing impossible. But everything else that makes Pandoran skimwings fascinating was already fascinating about flying fish, right here on Earth.     

Acknowledgement

Abbydon made insightful comments on a first draft of this post. He also added remarks about wave effects that would make using skimwings as public transportation rather unreliable.   

 
Selected references
FE Fish. Wing design and scaling of flying fish with regard to flight performance. J Zool Lond 1990; 221: 391-403
Park H, Choi H. Aerodynamic characteristics of flying fish in gliding flight. J Exp Biol 2010; 213: 3269-3279
Deng J, Wang S, Zhang L. Why does a flying fish taxi on sea surface before taking off? A hydrodynamic interpretation. https://doi.org/10.1101/765560
Socha JJ, Jafari F, Munk Y, Vyrnes G. How animals glide: form trajectory to morphology. Can J Zool 93: 901–924 (2015) dx.doi.org/10.1139/cjz-2014-0013  
Sullivan TN, Meyers MA, Arzt E. Scaling of bird wings and feathers for efficient flight. Sci. Adv. 2019;5: eaat4269 

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Appendix

 

Abbreviations and parameters

            FF                    Flying Fish

            SW                   SkimWing

            Length             L

            Area (wings)     A

            Volume             V

            Mass                M

            Weight             W

            Speed               S

            Density of air    D

            (local values for Pandoran SW and Earth FF)

                                    D_SW = 1.2 ∙ D_FF

            Gravity constant G (local values for SW and FF)

                                    G_SW = 0.8 ∙ G_FF

            Lift                   LIFT

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Take the length of the animal of the FF as base value of 1; the SW is 35.7 times longer.

            L_FF = 1

            L_SW = 35.7 ∙ L_FF

This results in the following for area and volume for SW:

            A_SW = (35.7)² ∙ A_FF         or         A_SW = 1275 ∙ A_FF

            V_SW = (35.7)³ ∙ V_FF        or         V_SW = 45500 ∙ V_FF

For weight we get:

            W_SW = V_SW ∙ G_SW                   Pandoran values

            W_FF = V_FF ∙ G_FF                        Earth values

For lift we get:

            LIFT_FF = D_FF ∙ S_FF² ∙ A_FF

            LIFT_SW = D_SW ∙ S_SW² ∙ A_SW

We can now start filling in values for Pandora using Earth parameters, not altering wing area A and speed S on Pandora yet:

            for lift:              LIFT_SW = (1.2 ∙ D_FF) ∙ S_SW² ∙ A_SW                     

            for weight         W_SW = V_SW ∙ G_SW

                                    W_SW = V_SW ∙ (0.8 ∙ G_FF)

                                    W_SW = (45500 ∙ V_FF )∙ (0.8 ∙ G_FF)

                                    W_SW = 36400 ∙ V_FF ∙ G_FF

                                    W_SW = 36400 ∙W_FF

If the flight is stable, weight must equal lift, so it follows that:

            LIFT_SW                                     =          36400 ∙ LIFT_FF

            (1.2 ∙ D_FF) ∙ S_SW² ∙ A_SW     =                 36400 ∙  D_FF ∙ S_FF² ∙ A_FF

             S_SW² ∙ A_SW                                                        =                 30333 ∙  S_FF² ∙ A_FF

 

We have SW parameters on the left and Earth FF parameters on the right and can play with this relationship.

 

Variant 1 assumes isometric scaling, making  A_SW = 1275 ∙ A_FF

             S_SW² ∙ 1275 ∙ A_FF                  =                 30333 ∙  S_FF² ∙ A_FF

             S_SW²                                                 =                 23.8 ∙  S_FF²

We know that the speed of FF = 20 m/s, so

            S_SW²                                                   =                 23.8 ∙  400  = 9516

            S_SW                               =          97.6 m/s or 351 km/h           

This is obviously a ridiculous speed and cannot work. Perhaps larger wings may do the trick if we abandon isometric scaling.              

 

Variant 2 starts a few steps back.

            S_SW² ∙ A_FF                                      =                 30333 ∙  S_FF² ∙ A_FF

If we assume that the skimwing has the same speed as Flying fish, then  S_SW² = S_FF²

            A_FF                                                      =                 30333 ∙ A_FF

This means that the width and lengtn of the wing have to increase by the square root of 30333, meaning they become 174 times larger instead of the original 35.7 times. This is ridiculous, and the real situation would be worse because the arger windg wopuld weigh a lot more, which he haven’t accounted for yet!

 

Are there ways out?

 

The ground effect seems to reduce drag by 14%. That is not the same as increasing lift by 14% but assume that lift is indeed increased by this amount. 

            S_SW² ∙ 1275 ∙ A_FF                    =                 0.86  ∙ 30333 ∙  S_FF² ∙ A_FF

            S_SW²                                                   =                 20.5 ∙  S_FF²

            S_SW²                                                   =                 20.5 ∙  400  = 8200

            S_SW                               =          90.6 m/s or 326 km/h           

or

            A_FF                                                      =                 26086 ∙ A_FF

The wing's length and width have to become 161 times larger. Ground effect does not save the skimwing, and that holds for an isometric as well as for a non-isometruc approach.  

 

What if we make the skimwing relatively more slender than the FF, by halving the volume of its body? This results in:

            S_SW² ∙ A_SW                                    =                 15167 ∙  S_FF² ∙ A_FF

            S_SW² ∙ 1275 ∙ A_FF                    =                 15167∙  S_FF² ∙ A_FF

             S_SW²                                                 =                 11.9 ∙  S_FF²

We know that the speed of FF = 20 m/s

            S_SW²                                                   =                 11.9 ∙  400  = 4758

            S_SW                               =          69.0 m/s or 248.3 km/h           

If we assume that the skimwing has the same speed as Flying fish, then  S_SW² = S_FF²

            A_FF                                                      =                 15167 ∙ A_FF

This means that the length and width of the wing must become 123 times larger instead of the original 35.7 times. This is still preposterous.

The RETURN Of The NIGHTSTALKER!!

The Nightstalker is, as most readers will know, one of Dougal Dixon’s creations presented in his 1981 book 'After Man', a book that proved fundamental for speculative biology. In that book, he presented completely novel themes, such as penguin whales and terrestrial cephalopods or bats; for more on the 1981 setting, see an earlier post here.

Click to enlarge; copyright Dougal Dixon

The image of the nightstalker in the 1981 version of After Man was later changed by Dixon, who did not like the original one very much. The new version is shown above and is published in recent editions of 'After Man', such as the '40th anniversary edition' (which has new information too!).  

The nightstalker descended from bats that were among the first animals to arrive on the newly emerged volcanic Batavian Islands in the Pacific. Facing no serious terrestrial competition, the bats lost the ability to fly, became fully terrestrial and diversified. Once other mammals arrived as well, a bat species started to hunt them and evolved into the nightstalker, a formidable bipedal predator of one meter and a half in height, or as tall as an 11-year old child.

Nightstalkers are blind and use echolocation to find their prey in the night, ‘screaching and screaming through the Batavian forest’. This may mean that the nightstalker uses echolocation at sound frequencies we can hear too, although the text does not literally say so. The screeches might also be used for communication within the pack, leaving ultrasonic sound for echolocation. In either case I wondered whether its prey can hear the echolocation sounds too, which would make life more difficult for the nightstalker.  I have compared the relative merits of vision and echolocation in three posts (one, two, and three). It turned out that echolocation is like someone shouting at the top of their voice ‘WHERE ARE YOU!?’. Provided the prey can hear the sounds used in echolocation, echolocation is the opposite of stealth.

The nightstalker is bipedal, with the interesting twist of walking on its front legs. That makes sense in that the wings of bats are much larger and stronger than their hind legs. The animal uses claws on its hind legs to help overcome it prey, to which end the hind legs pass the front legs on the outside. In my 'review with hindsight' of After Man, posted in 2018, I wondered whether it would make more sense if the hind legs moved forwards between the front legs. I asked Dougal at the recent 2022 TetZooCon if he would mind me writing a blog post about this particular revision of the nightstalker. He did not, so here it is. I could not help myself thinking some more about terrestrial bats. I do not doubt that bats could evolve to walk efficiently again, as there are bats alive today that not only walk, but run too. 

Researchers managed to get vampire bats to run on a treadmill, and the animals obliged by using a unique hopping run. That is the video above. That odd gait must be due to the extreme difference in size between front and hind legs, which poses an unusual problem. During walking, legs that are on the ground at the same time must all propel the body over the same distance in the same time, or else the shoulder would walk faster or slower than the hip. From this it follows that the shorter leg will be on the ground for a shorter period than the longer leg, so the shorter leg only supports the body for a short time. That may be impractical, which suggests three different evolutionary solutions.

The first and weirdest solution is to have the hind legs move twice in the time the front legs move once. That is definitely possible, at least in theory. I know that because I was once requested to program such a gait to help visualise a terrestrial shark, posted here. The videos above show the result. This solution does not seem the most likely one though...

Click to enlarge; copyright Marc Boulay / Jean-Sébastien Steyer

 The second adaptation would involve quick enlargement of the hind legs, which appears altogether sensible and straightforward. the result would be very similar to the Steyer/Boulay terrestrial bat shown in ‘Demain. Les animaux du futur’ (and discussed on this blog here and here).
 
The third possibility means the animal no longer uses its hind legs for locomotion, so they can be used for something else, such as being weapons. If front limbs are liberated from their walking role, I would call that ‘centaurism’ (see here for the first mention of the principle). But the nightstalker freed its hind legs, so we probably need another name than centaurism; 'reverse centaurism'?

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

Of the three, the second option seemed the most straightforward one, and I considered stopping alternate evolution right there. Then again, the result wouldn’t be a proper nightstalker! I suppose a bipedal animal can still evolve from the enlarged hind limb version, so there you are: a bipedal terrestrial erstwhile bat with reverse centaurism.

What else did I change?

• I made the ears smaller than in the original. When animals species increase in size, organs do not necessarily scale linearly with body size. Eyes, for instance, are relatively small in large animals. Beyond a certain size an organ's function may not improve noticeably, so there is no point in making the organ larger than necessary to do its job. I am not certain this also holds for echolocating ears but assumed this to be the case.
• The skull and face are less bat-like than the original, because I assumed that the larger size would require a sturdier build. Bats have many pointy needle-like teeth, useful to catch insects. But an animal the size of a large dog would need teeth that can handle larger stresses.   
• I kept the leaf-based nose because it is part of the basic package of vampire bats. However, it seems very vulnerable.
• The eyes are still there because eyes seemed much too useful to abolish altogether. They are still small though, but useful for unforeseen circumstances.
• There are no fingers, just thumbs. Bats fold their fingers, that support a large part of the wing membrane, out of the way when roosting and walking. They use their big thumbs to hang from. What will happen to the fingers if the wing atrophies during evolution? I foresee the fingers disappearing completely, and not coming back as toes. The thumb has grown and now extends towards the midline to support the body underneath the centre of gravity. Normally animals place their feet close to the midline for that purpose, but the nightstalker needs room under the body for the hind legs. The thumb could help support the body directly under the centre of gravity by extending towards the midline. The two stubs you see on each hand do not have nails or claws, because they are not fingers! They are pseudo-fingers, supported by former wrist bones.                
  

So here we are: an alternate nightstalker with its hind legs between the front legs. When I look at the result, it looks much less like a bat then the original, which may not be good from a didactic point of view. The image serves to illustrate an evolved bat, so people who see it should immediately associate it with bats. My revised version probably does that less well than the original. Mind you, my first version had smaller ears, no leaf nose, a longer snout and sturdier teeth, so it looked even less like a bat than the one you see now. The version shown above was 'batified' on purpose, but it still doesn't shout 'bat'. That raises the interesting question of balance between  presumed biological underpinning and what the image is supposed to evoke. It is fun to play with both aspects, and adds another layer of speculation to speculative biology.

Epilogue

The above was all seen by Dougal. His response to reading the text was this:

"I claim it is an example of speciation in the Batavian archipelago! A new species on one of the newer volcanic islands in the "hot-spot" conveyor belt island chain. Shared ancestor with Manambulus perhorridus rafted across from the Big Island at a time of its early appearance along with its potential prey species."

And so it shall be; the new species deserves a new name though, and I think the differences are too large to use the same genus.  I therefore present Condylovador terriloquus! (from condylus: knuckle; vadere; to go or to walk;  terriloquus: uttering frightening words)

Astrovitae: a magazine about speculative biology

Once upon a time there was so little material about speculative biology that I used to search the internet for speculative biology works. I was looking for works with a fair number of creations, a biology that made sense, and artwork that was a pleasure to look at. Sometimes I found nothing of interest, and at other times I found one or two projects. When I liked the project enough, I contacted the author which usually resulted in a blog post.

As time passed, speculative biology more or less exploded, and my searches began to reveal so many projects that I did not know which ones to pick. Later I gave up, or otherwise I would never get to work on Furaha.

But now, someone had the nice idea to produce a magazine about speculative biology. You will not find printed copies on your local newsstand, but it exists all the same, as an online pdf magazine. I am talking about 'Astrovitae'. The four issues that have been produced so far look very professional, and it wouldn’t hurt to see them in print. You can find those issues here, on the magazine's website. As mentioned on the website, the magazine aims to connect speculative biology artists around the globe. It is produced by the founder and chief editor of the magazine, Domenic Pennetta, whom I asked a few questions. 

Click to enlarge; from #1; Copyright John Meszaros

Because the magazine looked so good, I began by asking Domenic why it was free; I thought it was because you can download the issues without any bother from the site. Domenic was quick to correct me that hosting the site does cost money, and there is also his own time to consider. Right now, there are enough readers and contributors who care enough to help fund web hosting. Domenic points out that he wasn't initially sure how well the magazine would be received, and that played a role in deciding to ask for voluntary contributions only. 

Click to enlarge; from #2. copyright Lorenzo Battilani

My next question was also inspired by the professional look of the magazine: is Domenic a graphic designer by profession? He did not consider himself to be one at the time, but the project helped him hone his designing skills, and he eventually got a job as an assistant designer because Astrovitae looked so good! Domenic added that he hopes to help other artists by publishing their work in Astrovitae.      
    
I wondered whether publishing Astrovitae was just a hobby or the start of something bigger? Domenic wrote:

"I think this is a great question! It may help to briefly explain the origin of the magazine to fully answer this. When I first became involved in the genre and started my own speculative biology project, I quickly met other artists online who were interested in the same topics. We began forming small gatherings over social media, like Instagram groups or discord servers. All of us would periodically meet to discuss the genre, critique each other's art, and explain or explore scientific concepts with each other. I saw a lot of interaction going on, but despite so many like-minded artists in one space, no one was really collaborating to our fullest extent when it came to art. So, I had an idea to start some sort of publication, likely something small, that would feature work from all amateur artists interested in the genre. I felt that by doing this, I could inspire my fellow artists to work together more closely."

Click to enlarge; from #3. copyright ND Cebula

For Domenic, Astrovitae is a way to bridge a gap between different social media, hoping that artists from every corner of the internet could become familiar with each other’s work. He adds:

"I also have a background in scientific illustration. I love the natural world and learning about the biology of living organisms, depicting how they work or what drives them to behave, and also taking obscure organisms and bringing them alive through art. To me, even though speculative biology is heavily analytical and aligned with science, it is also associated with art. I think most scientific illustrators feel the same as me and believe art and science are indistinguishable from one another—they go hand in hand. Art is a form of communication that is useful in explaining complex ideas, like the concepts found in biology and other sciences. Starting a magazine would allow me to further influence the genre into an art-affiliated direction. This would allow the community to further explore and convey the speculative animals and biology we imagine.

So, in conclusion, I do believe that Astrovitae is something bigger. It is a tool to connect creative minds, facilitate collaboration, get artists published and seen, and better communicate speculative concepts we explore within the genre."

Click to enlarge; from #4. Copyright Paul Drenckhahn

Well said! As someone with a very similar interest in science and art I can only agree, and I hope that Astrovitae magazine will grow to become what Domenic envisioned. 

You can read Astrovitae magazine online here. Additionally , if you are interested in participating in the magazine, feel free to contact Domenic at astrovitae@gmail.com or see www.astrovitae.com/submissions for details.

I hope I whetted readers' appetites enough to go and have a look at the four issues available at present. To help you decide (and make this post more exciting) I used a double page spread from each of the four issues to illustrate this post. I will not discuss the creations on these pages at any length; that's what the magazine is for!

Back from TetZooCon 2022

 TetZooCon is over. It lasted two whole days instead of one and could have lasted longer as far as I am concerned. From what I heard people say, they felt it was a big success.

There were interesting talks or events about a wide variety of subjects, covering zoology, palaeontology, palaeoart, and last, but not least, speculative evolution. Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of TetZooCon is that hard science and art are received with equal enthusiasm and humour. For me, that is not only a defining characteristic of TetZooCon but also my main reason for going.

To give you an idea about the zoology content, we were treated to talks about platypuses ('the best animal ever') by Jack Ashby, and a talk by Jennifer Colbourne about tool use and intelligence in birds, touching on the question whether theropod dinosaurs might have been capable of tool use. Probably not.   

Palaeontology was of course well represented, with Dean Lomax showing examples of his book 'Locked in Time' and an excellent pterosaur session with items such as dealing with how to CT-scan a pterosaurs, how to describe a species scientifically, and an insightful roundtable discussion.

John Conway showing how Paolo Uccello painted dinosaurs around 1450

Palaeoart was very well represented, with a talk by Steve White on how to publish a palaeoart book and as well as an extra talk by John Conway about his new tongue-in-cheek book illustrating the history of Western art through selected dinosaur paintings by famous painters. Or at least how John imagined the old masters might have done if they had only bothered to paint the occasional dinosaur. It is a fun book; I showed it to my wife, who is much better at telling painters apart than dinosaurs, and she attributed most paintings correctly at once; recommended!

John, Darren Naish and Memo Kösemen also talked about their book 'All Yesterdays' on the occasion of its tenth birthday. In that book they had fun with the idea that someone (or something) in the far future would come upon remnants of present-day animals, without knowing that mammals had fur or that birds had wings. The resulting 'reconstructions' were deliberately wrong in many ways, making the reader wonder about the accuracy of our present-day reconstructions. That is of course a fair point; you only have to look at how much images of Tyrannosaurus changed over the years to realise how much guesswork they contain. 'All Yesterdays' had fun with exploring shaggy pelts or unexpected behaviour, such as Protoceratops climbing trees. Apparently, the book seems to have led people to conclude for a while that anything goes in reconstructing dinosaur appearance or behaviour.

Speculative biology was represented by a one-hour roundtable discussion, with Darren Naish, Jennifer Colbourne, Joschua Knüppe, Dougal Dixon, Adrian Tschaikovsky and me. I do not think the session was recorded, at least not officially. The discussion could easily have lasted another hour. 

Dougal showing a Greenworld model. Adrian and Joschua are looking on.

Here is Dougal, showing a model of 'Greenworld', still only available in Japanese. Read more about Greenworld here, here and here. There may be a new version of the book with higher production quality, but that one will still be available in Japanese only, I'm afraid.

I spoke with Adrian before the session. It turns out that he was present at the speculative biology sessions at LonCon3 in 2014. Actually, he said that those sessions made him include more speculative evolution in his science fiction novels. That makes me very happy, as I had proposed those sessions, in which Darren, Dougal, Memo, Lewis Dartnell and I spoke about speculative biology. If you do not yet know Adrian's work, but you do like SF with biology in it, have a look. In his 'Children of…' series you will find intelligent cephalopods and spiders. Their biology is not a simple prop to make them look nonhuman, but it shines through in their senses, thought patterns, and even in the way they are aware of self. The books are called Children of Time, Children of Ruin, and Children of Memory is just out.           

A few of my prints at the Art Exhibition

Finally, the Art Exhibition. Many artists participated, and I hope that an Art Exhibition will return in future TetZooCons. I had brought 12 prints of 40x60cm and sold five, even though they were not advertised as being for sale. I think people liked them and think I will bring more at next year's TetZooCon. 

More on Furaha at TetZooCon 2022

As usual there are many other things going on (nice ones, I'm happy to say!) so I am behind with blogging. But I do have some nice subjects almost ready, of which the one that must take precedence is the upcoming 'TetZooCon'!    

There will finally be a real live Tetrapod Zoology Convention again: TetZooCon 2022, on 3 & 4 December 2022! Have a look at the programme, which looks to be as fascinating, if not more so, than previous versions. If you like your biology mixed with some art and are not afraid to visit the outer regions of  biological disciplines, have a look. I have very fond memories of my earlier visits.

The art in question is 'palaeoart', meaning 'Palaeontological Art'. I have never written about Palaeoart before (or 'Paleoart'; I'll stick to 'Palaeoart' because I've set my spelling checker to the version of English closest to me, which happens to be British English). The simple reason for me ignoring palaeoart is that this blog is about the part of speculative biology that deals with life elsewhere, as reflected in the title 'Furahan Biology and Allied Matters'. I guess I could stretch the 'Allied matters' some more, and in fact I did when I showed my attempt at dinosaur sculpture. That doesn't mean I do not like Palaeoart; far from it! I love it. Palaeoart is blossoming these days, thanks to an explosion of interesting new discoveries that need to be depicted, and to a parallel explosion of talent all over the world. If you want to have a look at what is happening, please take a look at the book 'Mesozoic Art: Dinosaurs and Other Ancient Animals in Art' by Steve White and Darren Naish.

 

Click to enlarge; copyright White and Naish

I just received my copy and think it is excellent. Mind you, the two earlier books by Steve White on a very similar there are also excellent, with a large format and high printing standards: Dinosaur Art (2012) and Dinosaur Art II (2017).

There will be a Palaeoart workshop at TetZooCon, run by John Conway, as well as a Palaeoart Exhibition. I will show some Furaha prints there for only the second time ever. Mind you, when I learned about this exhibition, I wasn't aware yet that it was about palaeoart, so I applied, and now I realise that I am a sort of intruder there, showing work that isn’t 'palaeo'. Perhaps I should call it 'AllothenArt' ('Elsewhere') or PlagioArt ('Sideways'), but I don’t think those words will catch on…

The prints in question will show works, or versions thereof, that I have never shown in public before, apart for the exhibition in the Netherlands two months ago. So, if you are curious, you know where to go.

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

Here is a painting for those who cannot come to London. It shows a tetrapter, with the common name 'Red Baron' ('Dicella Gampsonyx', meaning 'pitchfork with crooked claws'). As you can see, it is a highly derived Tetrapter with several predatory adaptations. The red wing spots tell you that this is a female: have a look at the illustration here. By the way, I am learning how to preparing to sell and send prints over the internet, in particular involving selling prints abroad and outside the EU.

Back to TetZooCon: there will be a roundtable discussion about 'Designing Aliens', chaired by Darren Naish and me, with Jennifer Colbourne, Joschua Knüppe, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Dougal Dixon. If you like biology, science fiction, speculative biology, or preferably all three, I think you are going to love this.

Se you there!

Furaha at TetZooCon 2022

In my previous post I mentioned that there would probably be a TetZooCon again and that Furaha would probably be there, but now I can tell you that it's going to happen. 

TetZooCon 2022 will be on 3 and $ December, 2022, In London. 

For more news, have a look at the following sites:

https://tetzoo.com/blog/2022/9/13/tetzoocon-2022-is-go

https://tetzoo.com/convention

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/646899722011712

Furaha at a Leiden Art Exhibition: 24 & 25 September 2022

 The following will mostly be of interest to Dutch readers: I have been asked to exhibit some paintings of Furahan lifeforms in an art gallery in Leiden, where I live.

The occasion is the 'Leiden Art Route', a yearly happening in which art galleries open their doors to present a variety of art. This year, the galleries open their doors on 24 and 25 September. I will be present in person to answer questions and to explain some of the background ideas during the afternoon of both days.

I was invited by Charlotte Lemmens, the owner of the Alien Art Gallery. That name tells you that my work should be right at home there. The gallery usually shows the work of Vincent Icke, an astronomer who uses his scientific knowledge to inspire his art. As I try to base my animal creations on biological science, our work has the combination of science with art in common. Personally, I think the two go well together, but I would think that, wouldn’t I, being a scientist.
       
The Leiden Art Route is organised by Museum De Lakenhal. Although the museum does have a website in English, the pages about the Art Route ('Kunstroute') are in Dutch only. Here is the page of the Art Route devoted to the Alien Art Gallery. Here is a specific page in the context of the Art Route about my work, in Dutch again.  

The Alien Art Gallery has its own page, also in Dutch, but you can see the work of Vincent Icke on its English page here.   

So there you are. The exposition represents a departure from my earlier stance on showing recent work. I had chosen to keep that mostly under wraps, wishing to keep the work fresh until the publication of The Book. However, perhaps a limited exposure will in fact help prepare the ground. I have produced high-quality prints of about 12 paintings; such prints will be for sale and can be ordered during the exhibition. There will also be a 36-page booklet, showing these paintings along with some of the additional illustrations and text written for The Book. This booklet is a much-abbreviated version of The Book, serving serves as a catalogue to the exhibition. It will also be for sale. But, as this is a local Dutch affair, 'The Booklet' is in Dutch, in contrast to The Book.     

Click to enlarge; copyright Gert van Dijk

As part of the PR process postcards were produced of four paintings. I added a text 'Greetings from Furaha', but in Dutch ('Groeten van Furaha'). You can see a stack of them above. The postcards are at present available free of charge in several book shops and at museum De Lakenhal in Leiden.   

Finally, to have something for speakers of English too, some other news. As things stand, there is a chance of a Furaha presence in London, next December. That would be the Tetrapod Zoology Convention (TetZooCon), but nothing is final yet! I will certainly announce any news about that here, but you may also read about it on the TetZoo blog.