Zombie Ants

By Bora Zivkovic | February 18, 2013 |

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Image of the Week #80, February 18th, 2013:

From: Art of the Living Dead by Alex Wild at Compound Eye.

Source: Hashime Murayama (1934)

Like a game of artistic broken telephone Hashime Murayama’s 1934 painting of army ants shows that for scientific illustrators, reference materials matter as much as our observational skill. Inaccurate references lead to illustrations which in turn become new references. In Alex Wild’s post Art of the Living Dead on Compound Eye, Wild shows us the distinct features that change in insects after death, and how a skilled illustrator ended up painting zombie army ants – enough to give anyone the shivers.

About the Author: Bora Zivkovic is the Blog Editor at Scientific American, chronobiologist, biology teacher, organizer of ScienceOnline conferences and editor of Open Laboratory anthologies of best science writing on the Web. Follow on Twitter @boraz.

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The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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