Why

An illustrated field journal of a fictional natural philosophers's travels through a fantastical-creature-infested area.

How

To spark interest in biology through whimsical and fantastical elements.

Sketches Option 1

Compile all sketches in one slide (delete this)

I am now in what I would consider to be the forest proper. I can reliably stretch my fingers to reach two trees wherever I stand now, and the ground is dark and damp. It was when I paused for my lunch that I noticed my environment had changed, though I suspect I was in the woods for a good deal of time before that. Today was rather less exciting than the last; the most interesting thing I saw was a multi-colored boulder sparkling in the light. There are a few mushrooms about, presumably from the rain two days ago, but none of them are special. It’s on days like this that I think of home. There’s not much in Alradeen that I love. I don’t mind sleeping close to the earth when it’s dry, so I’m impartial to my bed but preferential towards my roof. It’s physically more comfortable to draw and write at my desk, but I frequently find I have little to draw or write about. The smell of town is quite disfavorable to where I am now. The bodies and garbage and livestock and coal versus the grass and trees and water. I don't particularly care about most people in town.

Process Diagram

What tools were used in the fabrication of your device? (i.e. molds, fixtures, templates, jigs, etc)

Illustrate with 2D or 3D model (delete this)

The Honey Squid is a small mollusk which uses its powerful skirts to propel itself through the air between flowers, who’s nectar it drinks through one of its two long probosci, which curl into its body to prevent them from being damaged when it lands. In the much larger and heavier females, (which are usually 1 to 2 feet tall compared to the mature male’s 1 to 5 inches and 2 grams) the probosci also bend to be on the side of rather than underneath the body. When a female Honey Squid reaches maturity, it stops bouncing and starts walking around on it’s short bendy legs, which grow to be much stronger as part of the maturing process.

Honey Squid travel in large groups of many males and offspring and one female who protects the others with her size. The female lays her eggs onto the many sticky hairs on top of the males, where they are fertilized. The hairs also help keep the males afloat for longer. Adolescent females also have these hairs, but they stick and stay together in tentacle-like clumps over time, as they are not useful to the mature females and would only get in the way. This is where the squid part of the name comes from. 

When the eggs start to hatch, the male Honey Squid begins liquifying. The hatchings consume their father to get the nutrients that they need to get up and running. They then join the pack and get all of the food that they need for the rest of their lives from nectar. When a female Honey Squid matures, she leaves her pack in search of mates. This is the only time that a Honey Squid will choose to be without a pack. When she finds another pack, she will take all of its female’s mature male offspring as her mates. This is beneficial to the old females because she no longer needs to take care of the young male who can never be her mate. A female Honey Squid dies when she is too big and slow to run away from predators, or she cannot get enough nectar to sustain herself to the next patch of flowers. 

Honey Squid