“Charlotte’s Web,” the E.B. White childhood classic, ends with Wilbur the pig eagerly waiting for Charlotte’s baby spiders to emerge from their egg sac. When they finally crawl out, they do something that seems pretty amazing to anyone not familiar with how spiders travel long distances: they fly away. Here’s the passage from the last [...]

When you read the word “nature,” what do you think of? Maybe you imagine a dark wood with sunlight reaching a mottled floor of foliage, thrushes singing and chipmunks hopping. Maybe you peer through grassy dunes at sanderlings running back and forth in the surf , occasionally halting to frantically peck at the sand. Or [...]

In 2009 six weeks of wildfires in Victoria, Australia, killed 173 people and injured hundreds more, but the fires may have also led to the resurrection of a rare tree that was previously on a path to extinction. Only about 670 Buxton silver gum trees (Eucalyptus crenulata) were left in the wild before the devastating [...]

How a local program is changing the way families experience nature. Ten families hiked into Davidson College Ecological Preserve on a bright Saturday morning to get a glimpse of the kudzu-eating goats, usually off-limits to the public. The outing was part of an environmental education program, World of Wonder (WOW!), a partnership of the Davidson [...]

A highly controversial research paper on bird flu was released today by the journal Nature. It shows that a particularly troublesome strain of avian influenza, designated H5N1, which has been worrying public health officials for more than a decade, has the potential to become a human pandemic. In other words, H5N1 bird flu, which so [...]

It’s easy to find an online test that will purportedly tell you how happy you are. But how happy are the people of an entire nation? And which nation’s people are happiest? That’s hard to measure. So for decades world organizations like the United Nations that concern themselves with improving people’s well-being have used a [...]

In Raleigh, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences has been building its Nature Research Center, a brand new extension to the museum focusing not just on science but on how science is done. It’s all awesome, and it opens today, April 20. You could talk all day about it — and, full disclosure, as [...]

In Plugged In’s never-ending efforts to get you to use the latest technology to connect you to your world in a nontechnological way, I have recently run across two fabulous online undertakings focused on connecting you physically to your physical world. The first is this unbelievably lovely website called Wind Map, showing you a moving, realtime [...]

If you gave an infinite number of (or six) monkeys (and related, which I think means mammals) an infinite (also six) number of synthesizers, will they eventually produce Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, or ACDC’s Back in Black or, well, anything? Someone thought they’d give it a go as an advertisement for Voltfestivalen — The place [...]

Before everyone gets their feathers ruffled that this casting call is looking for a male, just know he is to be a co-host to a female. Now that that is clear….. SEEKING CO-HOST FOR MAJOR CABLE NETWORK Major Cable Network dedicated to Nature, Science and Exploration, is currently casting a Co-Host for new project examining [...]

Happy Mother’s Day! A molecular biology ditty for mom by Adam Cole, who has a pretty fun science video channel. You know I love this one! “Slightly more than half of me is thanks to you!!” From his description below the video come his lyrics and a quote by the wonderful Robert Sapolsky. Lyrics: To [...]

This is the time of year many of us instinctively turn toward heart-warming movies and TV shows. If you are one of those people, I have the perfect nature show for you. Airing December 17th at 8pm on Animal Planet, it is a sweet, warm, and humorous story about an unusual place: the Avarios Sloth [...]

The Southern Ontario Nature & Science Illustrators’ (SONSI) exhibit is on right now in Toronto. I used to be webmaster-blogger for this amazing group – and I would be hard-pressed to find a more professional, fun, and above all talented group of illustrators anywhere. These are the people you want illustrating your ebooks on biodiversity [...]

As I’ve pointed out before on Symbiartic, before the modern naturalist movement, nature lovers would shoot and kill the objects of their fancy to get a better look. Audubon himself would take dead specimens and pin them into life-like poses before drawing them and turning them into the prints that are so treasured today. But [...]

Last month, we posted a wide variety of science-art here at Symbiartic. We thought it’d be nice to post an overview in case you missed or wanted to revisit any. Enjoy!

Everyone loves a rebus!  It all began with a painting of crumpled paper and an eyeball. You’re welcome for this look into Lis Mitchell’s creative mind. – - Eye Heart Yew by Lis Mitchell / Pixelfish 2002, digital painting. For more about this painting, see Elizabeth’s DeviantArt entry. Portfolio Gallery Blog DeviantArt Twitter: @pixelfish – [...]

A well done science comic is one of the most effective ways to convey science communication. The visual hook of a narrative with lively (or in this case, sleepy) characters peppered with the facts creates a flow that a wall of text can’t match. This comic by Maki Naro of Sci-ənce is a perfect example. [...]

  A quick, 1 hour 30 minute watercolor sketch, SF/Fantasy Illustrator Jeremy McHugh‘s Fiddlehead is both an exercise in speculation about evolutionary adaptation and a wonderful example of how a daily warm-up sketch can open up an imagination for the day. – - Fiddlehead by Jeremy McHugh 2011, watercolor. See Jeremy’s blog post about it [...]

Sometimes here on Symbiartic we just need to share an amazing image. It’s important to slow down every once in a while an appreciate imagery and meaning in the hands of a skilled science artist. Here’s Star Map, a new painting by Diana Sudyka.   About the image, Sudyka says, “Volunteering in the bird division [...]

This guest post is by Stephen Di Cerbo, a natural science illustrator I know through the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators. Here, he describes the evolution of a relatively new art form from Japan called Gyotaku, or fish printing, and introduces us to its modern-day ambassador, Mr. Mineo Yamamoto. My first exposure to Gyotaku was [...]

If you follow the #scienceart hashtag on Twitter and G+, you’ll know that Michele Banks aka @artologica is one of the most active and vocal artists in this new movement. Symbiartic will have an interview and more in-depth talk with Banks in coming days, but in the meantime I could not wait to share this [...]

Pierre Brassault. Tillie Cheddar. Luk Khang. What do these artists have in common?  Their work is open source, and completely open to reproduce without copyright protection. This is not to say they are on the cutting edge of the Cory Doctorow-style “maker” business model.  Their work is free from copyright because these artists are not [...]