h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Here are a few more of my recent sketches:

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo45/WillemvdMerwe/My%20Artistic%20Creations/Troupand1b.jpg

This is a European Roller. We get them here in Summer, this is where they come when it's Winter in Europe. I'll see about adding colour, it's quite a beautiful bird with delicate blue and turquoise colours.

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo45/WillemvdMerwe/My%20Artistic%20Creations/Vlakoink2b.jpg

A warthog. I improved it a bit in the sketch, enlarging the tusks.

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo45/WillemvdMerwe/My%20Artistic%20Creations/Waterbokkie2b.jpg

A young Waterbuck. These antelopes are shaggy-haired, very fluffy when young. They are among the largest of our antelopes and can exceed 500 lbs in bodyweight. They dwell near water and flee into it when threatened, and their meat has an unpleasant flavour as well making them unpopular with predators.

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo45/WillemvdMerwe/My%20Artistic%20Creations/Swartwitpens2b.jpg

A Sable Antelope. These are rare but spectacular antelope, also among our biggest. Bulls are black and white, females and young tawny-brown. There is a Giant subspecies in Angola, with especially long horns. This subspecies was almost wiped out largely as a result of the war I speak about in the Principles thread on Dmitri's Lettres de Cachet entry. It is only recently that it was discovered that there are some left ... perhaps less than a 100, making it extremely threatened still. (Poaching remains a serious problem.)

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo45/WillemvdMerwe/My%20Artistic%20Creations/Seekoeie2.jpg

A mom and baby Hippo.

http://i360.photobucket.com/albums/oo45/WillemvdMerwe/My%20Artistic%20Creations/Seekoei2b-1.jpg

A bull hippo yawning. They can open their mouths wider, in terms of jaw angle, than any other mammal - that I know of, but I think I know of most. Sabretoothed tigers might have beat them back in the day. Hippos have frightening tusks and there are stories of them biting crocodiles in half. Hippos kill more humans than any other mammal in Africa.

I really like the warthog --he is a thing of beauty in your sketch. However I am glad that I wouldn't encounter one in my back yard. Hippos as well, I don't think Americans have any idea how dangerous they really are in the wild. We are just used to seeing them in zoos and stupid cartoons.

I also am suprised by how many different antelope species there are. We have pronghorn antelopes in the Western US and maybe 4 or 5 types of deer, but all those in Africa are really amazing.

Oh I heard that a farmer in Zimbabwe developed Holistic Management which fights desertfication by rotating grazing ---so the land recovers and the soils stay put. They are incorporating this into the western US to preserve the prarie. Here is a pdf file on it:

http://www.achmonline.org/Resource/Holistic%20Management%20of%20African%20Rangelands.pdf

It is a great idea,because with the population rising, no one can afford to lose arable land.

Those are amazing pictures, Willem. I am agog at the hippo yawning.

The Waterbuck is beautiful - those eyelashes!!!

Hi folks, thanks for all the comments! Elektra, funny you should mention the pronghorns. While the USA only has one species NOW, that used not to be the case. There was an amazing diversity of pronghorn species in the not-so-distant past (well, geologically speaking ...) of a variety of different sizes but most amazing was the diversity of horn/antler configurations they had! I'll perhaps do some sketches. The sad thing is we don't know exactly what the horns looked like, since only the horn cores are preserved, not the horn sheaths that covered them. But comparing those to the horn cores of the existing pronghorn it is clear that some of them must have had some amazing cranial appendages.

Actually there are two groups of pronghorns, the more 'primitive' having branched horn cores, perhaps covered with skin rather than horn sheaths. One of them, Ramoceros, is very unusual in having had large antler-like branched horn cores ... but the one side being MUCH larger and more intricately branched than the other! It's one of the most asymmetric mammals known.

Here's a nice mounted skeleton of one being chased by the skeleton of an Amphicyon, or 'bear-dog', another thingy of which none remains today but that used to be quite common and diverse.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17019885@N00/5374199668/

But anyways, 'in the day' pronghorns in America were almost as diverse as antelopes are currently in Africa. By the way, they constitute a family - currently containing just the single surviving species. Related to antelopes, deer, and giraffes, but distinct from them.

Antelopes now ... extremely diverse here in Africa. We're still discovering new species over here believe it or not, the most recent being a new species of duiker. I'll see about making a list for a journal entry just to give you the beginnings of an idea. There's more to it than mere species. Some species are currently in the process of actively diversifying so that you get races/subspecies that vary tremendously, examples being lechwes and hartebeests.

I love the skeletons.

That would be a great guide entry, Willem. Who knew? (Well, besides you, obviously.)