michelle de bruin - natural history: the broom cupboard

When I first started researching my creatures for the broom cupboard, the platypus seemed the obvious place to start; being the most conspicious taxonomic misfit. An egg-laying mammal with a beak and a poisonous spur - the duckbilled platypus signals taxanomic confusion and features in the semiotic writings "Kant and the Platypus" by Umberto Eco

Ears that see, hands that fly... A great example of homologous and analogous evolution. Bats really are in a class of their own.
This is the smallest armadillo - he is really mixed up - with his scales and his fur. I like his name, which just seems to add to his muddled personality

see armadillos
Fish behaving like birds. It is not the experience at folk level to see how a whale bears a greater resemblance to a mammal than a fish. Equally, as any child knows - fish don't fly!
In a world full of creatures that live on the land but feed from the sea, the hippoptamus shines out with his rare lifestyle - where he lives in water (a river) leaving at night to graze on land. The philosopher Herbert Marcuse described this animal as the embodying the reality of the absurd

'The Other Tiger" - a fabulously predatory creature without claws or teeth, and a great example of an alien amongst us. The title refers to the poem by Jorges Borges also 'The Other Tiger' in which he laments the failure of language to adequately describe the real creature.

A star-nosed mole is just like any other mole, but what makes him really stand out is the star at the front of the snout. The sensitive star moves so quickly as it scans its environment, that it can find (and eat) 5 items of prey in one second. There is no known equivalent organ
Taxonomicaly speaking, as wolf would seem like any other 'dog thing'. But, its mythological status is legend.

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When I first started researching my creatures for the broom cupboard, the platypus seemed the obvious place to start; being the most conspicious taxonomic misfit. An egg-laying mammal with a beak and a poisonous spur - the duckbilled platypus signals taxanomic confusion and features in the semiotic writings "Kant and the Platypus" by Umberto Eco Ears that see, hands that fly... A great example of homologous and analogous evolution. Bats really are in a class of their own. This is the smallest armadillo - he is really mixed up - with his scales and his fur. I like his name, which just seems to add to his muddled personality see armadillos Fish behaving like birds. It is not the experience at folk level to see how a whale bears a greater resemblance to a mammal than a fish. Equally, as any child knows - fish don't fly! In a world full of creatures that live on the land but feed from the sea, the hippoptamus shines out with his rare lifestyle - where he lives in water (a river) leaving at night to graze on land. The philosopher Herbert Marcuse described this animal as the embodying the reality of the absurd 'The Other Tiger" - a fabulously predatory creature without claws or teeth, and a great example of an alien amongst us. The title refers to the poem by Jorges Borges also 'The Other Tiger' in which he laments the failure of language to adequately describe the real creature. A star-nosed mole is just like any other mole, but what makes him really stand out is the star at the front of the snout. The sensitive star moves so quickly as it scans its environment, that it can find (and eat) 5 items of prey in one second. There is no known equivalent organ Taxonomicaly speaking, as wolf would seem like any other 'dog thing'. But, its mythological status is legend. Thumbnail panels: