Category: Anole Art, Literature, and Humor Page 5 of 11

Illustration by Ainsley Seago.

 “You haven’t lived ’til you’ve seen little girls in tiaras & sashes racing their anole lizards & screeeaming.” A tweet like that demands attention, so Anole Annals looked into it. Turns out that as part of the Louisiana Corn Festival, held every year in Bunkie, Louisiana, there is a lizard race featuring anoles. Anole Annals learned of this yearly event in early June and sure enough, a quick look at thetowntalk.com confirmed that the event was on again this year: “Be sure to be on hand for the lizard races at 2:30 (bring your own lizard); and stick around for live music and street dancing.”

So, Anole Annals settled back and waited for the news reports and Youtube postings. The appointed day came and went. And…nothing. No googleable photos. No newspaper accounts. Not a single video. Surely there must be a record of this wonderful event somewhere. We’ll keep looking.

Many stunning photos have been presented on this blog, and the recent announcement of the 2012 Anole Photo Contest is sure to draw many more.  Many of these images also grace the covers of scientific journals and are frequently used for creating vivid figures in papers.  Certainly, the ability to easily capture and reproduce high-quality photos has provided great benefits for science, but sometimes it’s also worth remembering that scientific illustration played an important role in communicating findings to other scientists and the general public.

The Guild of Natural Science Illustrators describes science illustrators as “artists in the service of science” for whom “accuracy and communication are essential,” and, while we tend to think of photography as the most realistic way to represent an image, GNSI points out that “the skilled scientific illustrator can clarify multiple focal depths and overlapping layers, emphasize important details, and reconstruct broken specimens on paper — results unattainable through photography.”

A post on this blog last year pointed to the New York Public Library’s digitization of their scientific illustration archives, and it looks like other museums are following suit.  For instance, The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has digitized about 6000 images from their entomology illustration archives and a huge number of images from other collections as well. There are also independent websites popping up that are collecting digital images of classic scientific illustrations on all subjects (e.g. http://scientificillustration.tumblr.com/archive and http://vintageprintable.swivelchairmedia.com/animal/animal-reptile-amphibian/).

These are definitely worth browsing if you’re interested in the history of science or just enjoy viewing finely created artistic pieces of the animals we study.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xXPcYUnKRM

At least according to some. AA emailed the production team asking for the back story, but we still await a response.

And while we’re on the topic of anole flicks, here’s a video of an emaciated but alert and active female green anole slowing changing color.

Spoiler Alert: I’m about to discuss the central plot of Spiderman. I assume most readers are by now familiar with the movie’s central conceit, namely that a noble scientist valiantly strives to create a race of super-lizards with extraordinary powers to benefit all of humanity, but tragically is stymied by the movie’s villian, a pajama-clad arachnophile with psychological baggage that produces an unreasonable antipathy to all things reptilian.

I won’t go into the particulars, but suffice to say that until its tragic denouement, the work is a herpetological marvel, as well as an inspiration to what may be accomplished by the miracles of genomics. Particularly impressive was the scene in which the oversized saurian regenerates its tail–quite graphically and accurately–in real time. Admittedly, the CGI lizards (of which I can’t find any photos online) were not quite up to par, but not a bad effort. Moreover, the best character in the movie is the chief scientist, Curt Connors, who immediately upon entrance introduces himself as the world’s foremost authority on herpetology and, as if to prove it, has an office replete with herpetological items (ok, two that I noticed: a stuffed turtle and a sea turtle skull).

Dr. Curt Connors, the world’s foremost herpetologist.

But, you may be thinking, a movie featuring lizards is great in all, but what’s the connection to anoles? Admittedly, there was no lizard or superhero in the movie who could be identified as anoline (incidentally, Time magazine has a nice discussion of what actual lizards may have been the basis for these creatures). However, and you may consider this a stretch, there was one link to the anole world: Connors, the scientist, was a dead ringer* for Jonathan Roughgarden (vintage 20 years ago), a resemblance enhanced by Collins’ obvious theoretical brilliance. Now, of course, it was disappointing when Connors transformed himself into a Komodo-sized saurian that bore no resemblance to Anolis gingivinus or any other Lesser Antillean anole, or even any anole at all, but perhaps we can save that for the sequel (Spiderman II: The Anole Strikes Back), when Connor triumphantly re-emerges to vanquish the spider-people and save humanity.

*by “dead ringer” I mean “bore a slight resemblance, at least in my mind’s eye”

Scary? Try adding a dewlap and toepads!

From bird and moon comics: http://birdandmoon.com/threatdisplays.html

I spotted this on on Facebook thanks to Susan Perkins and Marc Tollis and new that it would be appreciated here at Anole Annals.

While filing old reprints, I came across a paper of unknown provenance by John M. Burns (Emeritus entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History) titled “Poems from the Natural History Seminar” containing poems that Burns composed to introduce speakers in the Wednesday noon seminars at the Museum of Comparative Zoology in the early 1970s.  One of them is relevant to anolologists and was used to introduce Robert Trivers, who presented a seminar on sexual selection in Jamaican Anolis lizards (8 December 1971):

Trivia for Trivers

The male of an anole named garmani / Is subject to sexual selection. / He seeks an existence of harmony / And the chances to make a connection.
To do this he must defend holdings / (Which are plots for becoming attractive) / By resorting to dewlap unfoldings, / Being robust, and generally active.
He must be a competitive wizard, / Yet succeed in enticing a friend / Who will mate him.  But being a lizard, / He does it by halves in the end.

If you enjoy biology-inspired poetry, Burns is also author of the book BioGraffiti (1981, W. W. Norton & Co.).

The Philip Hofer Prize for Collecting Books or Art “is awarded each year to a Harvard student whose collection of books or works of art best exemplifies the traditions of breadth, coherence, and imagination represented by Philip Hofer, A.B. ’21, L.H.D. ’67, founder and first Curator of the Department of Printing and Graphic Arts in the Houghton Library and Secretary of the Fogg Art Museum.”

One might think that the award always goes to magnificent collections of rare books or fine art, but apparently not so, as the second place award this year went to anole biologist Alexis Harrison, who established and curates the Collection of Herpetological Beer and Wine Bottles pictured above. Note that each specimen is tagged and catalogued, and the exhibits are arranged in systematic order. Moreover, the public exhibit rotates regularly, and most recently featured the Fisher Collection, on loan from San Diego, CA.

Get a range of bottle labelers https://www.greatengineering.com/ and pursue your passion of collecting and curating bottles in an orderly fashion.

Of course, the question on everyone’s mind: are there anole bottles? The answer is yes, but regrettably few. The best exemplar is a species–best guest: porcatus group–featured on Cerveza Lagarto from Cuba.

Also, even more regrettably, we must acknowledge that the collection has spawned a competing, mammal-themed collection exhibited in the next cabinet over. Lacking anoles or saurians of any kind, the collection is obviously substandard, but it does have its moments.