Fibonacci Film Friday!

The Fibonacci Spiral, or Golden Spiral, from Wikimedia Commons.

Happy Friday everyone! In the interest of getting some content out before the weekend, I figured I would share something with you all that really made my day. Digital artist and animator Cristóbal Vida has made a wonderful short film called "Nature By Numbers" in which he showcases the elegant relationship between mathematics and the natural world. Check out the project webpage here for an introduction, here for a look at the Fibonacci Sequence and background information, or here to view the video.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. If weather and time permit, try and get outside and observe math in nature for yourself!

Squamates in art.

No, not paintings of polychrotids nor sculptures of scincids, but plenty of photos of pythonids! Artist Guido Mocafico has two beautiful sets of photos of serpents of all shapes and sizes posted on his website (among other fantastic images). I highly recommend checking out the rest of the photos. If you're not a snake fan now, you will be after you see the grace and elegance of the limbless tetrapods highlighted in these photos. Well maybe not, but enjoy nontheless!

Gonyosoma oxycephalum © Guido Mocafico, 2003 (from his website).

Gotta clade 'em all!

My friend Peter has started his own blog (The Nameless Blog) about video games, and has published more posts in his first week than I did in my first month. If you're a gamer I highly recommend you check it out. But his writing has inspired me to write about one of my gaming experiences that, surprisingly, I can tie into the science/nature/education content I like to write about here at Superoceras.

I'm not going to lie to any of you. Back in the fall of 1998, my interests in speculative biology, video games, and collecting things all merged together in what I considered to be the coolest trend of the day: Pokémon. I probably shouldn't admit it, but I spent a great deal of time capturing, training, and battling those little "pocket monsters". I even did a phylogeny of the first 151 creatures as a gag with a friend of mine. I wish I could find it. Don't lie, you want to see it too.