A sugary doorway to heaven if ever there was one.

These are commissioned pieces so while I generate the artwork they are heavily edited for production. I wanted more color, less heaven. Potential detail is also obviously a limitation. Something that looks relatively simple can translate all funky in embroidery. Note the ‘Early Bird’s’ unfortunate crest, he’s never going to get any ladies or cookie sales with a crest like that -and it’s all my fault. Alas.

Just in case you’re not familiar with the early bird: he’s a cookie selling role model, meant to be emulated with early cookie sales.

I have designed a few other patches for the Girl Scouts over the years. Predictably my favorite is the Mile High Space Camp patch:
At the tender age 8 of I followed in my fathers bold footsteps and became a Girl Scout.
To clarify that: my grandmother was the troop leader and as there were no boyscout troops in the rural area he grew up in, he was officially christened the troop ‘elf’.

I feel this portrait of the Founder of the Girl Scout Empire, Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low, accurately conveys her motivations for starting an organization dedicated to enabling women to be dynamic and self sufficient. Here we see young Juliet stuffed into a pink frilly mess, eyes silently begging to host a food drive or go camping in a sensible cotton uniform.

In 1912 Juliet made good on her belief that women should be let out of the house and pink frills once in a while when she founded the Girl Scouts of America. Girl Scouts was and remains run exclusively by women, for girls and women. Although my dad and I can both attest that they still accommodate the occasional rural farm boy and gender-bending little girl.

The aim of the organization is that girls develop to their full potential by: relating to others with increasing understanding, skill, and respect; developing a meaningful set of values to guide their actions and to provide for sound decision-making; and contributing to the improvement of society.

That’s good stuff.

My Girl Scout troop was the perfect forum for a lonely tomboy to learn by doing and to feel accepted.

The lessons learned,  friends made and patches earned were hugely formative for this lil’ Olive. -To this day I still love tying knots, eating cookies and starting fires!

Here’s a big shout out to The Girl Scouts of America, my troop leader (Hi Mrs. T!), my troop sisters (783 Represent!) and all those lovely lil’ girls (and the occasional rural boy) out there, who are realizing their full potential!

You can see from this picture there is one tube that is plugged with mud. This houses the larvae that will eventually populate the other compartments. If I’m lucky I may just get a rogue leaf cutter bee  (who is quite different from the leafcutter ant profiled in this article) or a resin bee who lines her nest with tree sap.

The vast majority of the world’s 20,000 bee species are solitary creatures. Solitary bees are the unsung heroes of the order Hymenoptera. Their nest building, elaborate mating rituals and dynamic pollination more than make up for what they lack with regards to honey production.

Still, you’ll have to fill your Hive Honey Set elsewhere.

Speaking of design; there is one little lady who embraces aesthetics as few other insects can.  For her, no drab mud or sap walls will do.

Osmia Avosetta lines her nest by sandwiching two layers of petals together with mud. She then fills the nest with pollen mixed with nectar and caps everything off with a mud plug.
Jerome Rozen, curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History discovered the unique nest-building habits while in the field in turkey. Coincidentally another team that was studying the bees in Iran made the exact same discovery on the same day, they struck a compromise by co-publishing their findings.

“They’ve found a way of protecting this immature stage by creating an environment with fairly high humidity,” Rozen said. “The humidity is high because the chamber is constructed with two layers of petals with mud in between, which means the food will not dry out while the larvae feeds. Meanwhile the outside becomes very hard like a nut. This makes it very comfortable and very safe because nothing’s going to come down and crush them. Anything that wants to eat them from above is going to have a hard time.”

As these bees only hail from semi arid climes, I’m going to have to content myself with mason bees and dreams of curling up in a petal cocoon of my very own.

Thanks dad!

My home is now filled with beautiful bones, tusks, horns, teeth and preserved animals. My jewelry, sculpture and hair often employ their graceful functionality, and they are my drawing subject of choice.

So when I stumbled upon Cetology by Brain Jungen I was immediately enamored. The transformation of something as inane as a crappy plastic lawn chair into something that can even guess at the impact of a whale skeleton is positively sirenic -at least it is to the kind of girl that designs for mermaids.

Conceptually it’s in the vain of Marcel Duchamp’s readymade Fountain, but rather it’s a reversal -a readyunmade if you will. If you’re not familiar, Fountain is DuChamp’s most famous readymade in which he simply signed a urinal with a fabulous pseudonym and called it art. In so doing he was questioning the validity of the elite art community and shunning the traditional standards of beauty and aesthetics. One could argue that he set the stage for the rise of conceptual, progressive design as well.

In mirroring (and thus reversing) this ostranenic endeavor, Jungen’s work starts a conversation about the nature of beauty, the limits/adaptability of mass manufacture and the place of mass production, indigenous art and biology in the modern art world.

oh, and it's fantastically beautiful as well.

plastic bone shadows

Read more about white things and whales here!

Prototypes of New Understanding, 2002 is another series of readyunmade masks and tribal patterns that are eerily well suited to a strangely jarring medium. They re-conceptualize Pacific Northwestern tribal art through the Defamiliarization of Nike sneakers. Who knew Nikes could be so freakin’ beautiful?!!

He has a ton of interesting work which you should most definitely check out, but I’m going to wrap up this feature with

Crux (as seen from those who sleep on the surface of the earth under the night sky), 2008

Surely by now you will be familiar with his signature defamiliarization. This time we are presented with a colossal mobile made from altered luggage which depicts five different Australian animals, all of which are complete with impressively realistic gesture.

If only all emu could rollerskate!

Perhaps you’ve heard of them?

First published in 1896, House Beautiful is the oldest continuously published magazine in what is known as the “shelter magazine” genre.

In keeping with their impeccable taste and timeless sensibility, House Beeautiful has featured the one and only Hive Honey Set on page 124 of the April issue. You’ll note it is accurately listed among the BEST! items for the kitchen:

Feel free to run giddily through the streets waving your copy wildly about and telling everyone that you knew about it first. -I’ll back you up.

They’re kinda like unicorns, but real and not pictured on nearly so many ironic t-shirts. Also akin to unicorns their body parts are wrongfully thought to posses magical powers.

That’s just not true folks!

The only magical power they posses is the ability to stun with their beauty. Except for the few albino sorcerers out there (you know who you are), but their magic stops once you kill ‘em. So lay off!

I for one, think everyone needs to treat this exotic genetic subset like the angelic anomaly that they clearly are. Or failing that, like exceptionally beautiful everyday people.

The genetic mechanics of Albinism are just like any other genetic mutation which was so humorously covered in Mutato, Mutahto. This inherited genetic mutation results in genes that do not make the usual amounts of a pigment called melanin. There are two different forms of albinism in humans; a partial lack of the melanin is known as hypomelanism, or hypomelanosis and the total absence of melanin is known as amelanism or amelanosis.

The good people of Olney Illinois have the right idea. They have encouraged [what they claim is] the largest population of albino squirrels in the nation.The town has laws that give the squirrels right-of-way on every street & heavy fines for anyone that may try to run off with one. This is somewhat a point of contention in Marionville, Missouri as they have a similar law to protect the displacement of their Albino squirrel populace, which they claim is the original stronghold for this fluffy white community. They even go so far as to claim that The Olney Illinois population was squirrelnapped from their town.

This is some serious albino squirrel drama, I feel like it could be a reality tv show or a creepy miniseries.

Logically all this rivalry has led to the creation of The Albino Squirrel Preservation Society (ASPS). I’d like to ask you to take a moment, climb a tree & solemnly dedicate yourself to this cause by taking their pledge with me: “I pledge to uphold the objects of the Albino Squirrel Preservation Society, to foster compassion and goodwill towards albino squirrels, and to dedicate myself to the protection of all squirrels, especially those that are albino.”

Albino animal activism at it best.

Moving away from squirrels and on to the bible, here’s a little know sorta-fact: Noah, captain of that legendary biblical pleasure cruise (you know they didn’t wait for dry land) ….was an Albino!  I hope he had a good sun hat for those high seas.

As taken from Chapter 106 of the Book of Enoch:  “…after some days my son Methuselah took a wife for his son Lamech, and she became pregnant by him and bore a son. And his body was white as snow and red as the blooming of a rose, and the hair of his head and his long locks were white as wool, and his eyes beautiful. And when he opened his eyes, he lighted up the whole house like the sun, and the whole house was very bright.” He was said to be feared as being “the offspring of the angels.”

Likewise in The Book of Revelation (verse 1:14) Jesus seems to have returned as an albino:  “The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire.”

Of course Moby Dick was inspired by the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick. My only real issue with the epic story of Moby Dick (outside of all that whale hate) is the sentiments of  Ishmael (the book’s narrator) towards albinism. Suffice to say he’s pretty mean & hates on all albinos as the “colorless all-color of atheism”. Um. Shall we ask Albino Jesus what he thinks about that one Ishmael?

& now, without further ado, I give to you an extensive collection of Albino Aminal pictures to love:

Click on the Albino Honey Bee!

The famous white bison of Jamestown, North Dakota. Her name is White Cloud and she's pictured here with her calf who I'm gonna call cumulus 'cause I can't find any record of her name

This lion has starred in many epic fantasy adventures. True story.

Why yes, they are in alphabetical order. Thanks for noticing!

If you thought that was the end, just chill out cause I saved this ALBINO FREAKIN’ REDWOOD for last!!!

At the tender age of 17, I discovered what would remain [to this day] my first choice in hiphop: anticon records
At the time Anticon had just barely produced the first album from Deep Puddle Dynamics. Sole, Alias, Doseone and Slug took me away from the mostly silly work of Ugly Duckling and Jurassic 5, never to look back.
While DPD appealed to my danky dark inner cosmos, the boys soon evolved into a new group which seemed tailor-made for my increasingly academic & scientifically oriented tastes. Within the multifarious layers of cLOUDDEAD I found whole new form of flow. One which employed stream of consciousness poetry, heavy with biological reference.
They are inspiring not just in their skill set, but also in their success at bringing an abnormal interpretation of hiphop to an increasingly formulaic genre.
So tonight I was walking around with my customary cLOUDDEAD compliment to the chaos of NYC, when Rifle Eyes came on and inspired me to write a blog entry about the mostly unsettling culinary proclivities of animals ….and fish teeth.

You’ll notice that cLOUDDEAD makes the point that minnows have teeth in their throats.
This is indeed true. In fact; carp, goldfish and minnows all have pharyngeal teeth in their throat, which are used to grind food against a hard pad at the base of the skull. They’re so fascinating ….& creepy.

In contrast crocodiylians have mouths full of very big teeth which aren’t necessarily used for mastication.
Generally their teeth are given the task of catching prey which they consume whole. Sure, if their prey is too big to swallow whole, they’ll rip up their meal into more manageable bite-sized morsels and their teeth act like a nutcracker on hard-shelled creatures, but generally to expidite the feeding frenzy it goes down in one foul chomp.

Since crocs are so impatient they have to swallow stones or gastroliths to aid in the post-digestion processing of their prey. As an added bonus the stones act to ballast them in the water.
Neato huh?
The crocodile stomach is divided into two chambers; the first one contains the gastroliths and is very muscular for crushing that which the teeth have not. The second stomach has the most acidic digestive system of any animal, and will breakdown just about everything they throw at it. Including bones, feathers, and horns.

Moving right along to happier climes, we have the Red Squirrel!

In addition to having the best ears in all of squirrledom, it knows the value of a tasty breakfast. When winter nut stores run low, it is known to bite & scratch at the side of maple trees to harvest the sweet mapley goodness that drips from within. Thankfully, they have the good sense to wait until the syrup has dried, because a sticky red squirrel is an easy target and they’d certainly look sillier than they already do. Apparently the sugar rush makes a more memorable impression than all those forgotten acorn stashes because the red squirrel will return to lick the sweet residue all winter.

Now lets look at the less appetizing habits of the Northern Shrike:

These beautiful lil’ songbirds are mostly found in southern Canada and the northern United States.
When not serenading in the snow; the Northern Shrike is known to capture insects and really adorable teeny-tiny mice, which it then skewers onto thorns, spiny stalks or even barbed wire fences. The Shrike enjoys a leisurely meal and will eat small pieces then return later for more. According to Cornell University, the shrike also uses this method so it can eat poisonous insects. After sliding its victim onto the skewer, it waits a few days for the toxins to dry out and then returns to feast on its catch.

cLOUDDEAD is right to be fascinated with the Leafcutter Ant.

In addition to looking like it’s wearing an african mask when carrying leaves, leafcutter ants are the only animals known to cultivate their own “crops”. Adult ants cut leaves from trees with their scissor-like mandibles and feast on sap that is produced in the process. More importantly though, they carry the leaves back to their colony where they are piled into what basically amounts to a compost heap. Worker ants then add feces or saliva to the leaves, creating a fertilizer that encourages the growth of a special fungus which they feed to their larvae. Yummy-kins!

The Burying Beetle’s food preparation method is so unique, it was named for the process:

The beetle is able to keep food fresh while halting the growth of bacteria with a technique that is similar to how a human might preserve food through canning or you know, bodies through embalming… When the beetle finds a dead bird or rodent, it immediately sets about preparing a warm nutritious meal for its young. First, it covers the carcass in oral secretions that are antibacterial and antifungal to slow the decaying process. Next, the beetle digs a hole for the carcass and lines the area with the fur or feathers stripped from the dead animal. Then, it puts the preserved carcass in the tomb and digs a conjoining nest for its larvae so they can feed easily. The entire preservation process only takes about eight hours and makes Surströmming look somewhat appealing.
You’ve probably had enough ick already, so I’ll spare you the pictures.

And last but most certainly not least: of course we have the honey bee.
This striped beeauty is the only insect that produces food available for human consumption and sanctioned for storage in the Hive Honey Set!
In order to make honey, foraging bees collect nectar from flowers and return to the hive where they engage in nectar transfer (ie: lesbian bee kisses!) with nectar receiver bees. In the hive the bees use their honey stomachs to ingest and regurgitate the nectar a number of times to add enzymes which expedite water evaporation and thickening of the nectar sugars. Eventually the semi-digested nectar puke is stored in uncapped cells which the bees fan with their little bee wings until over 80% of the nectar’s water is evaporated and only sweet sticky honey for their (and your) rumbly-tumbly tummy remains.

…not that you’ll be hungry for a while.

Occasionally though, even the Enterprise misses it’s target. When flawed code survives and is allowed to replicate, genetic mutations result. Occasionally they prove beneficial and become a dominant trait among a given populace. Lactose tolerance is a good example so you should take advantage if you have it and fiendishly consume Armenian Stringcheese.

Sometimes these mutations give an evolutionary advantage and so often though they do just the opposite. One example of mutations gone horribly awry is when sun exposure changes the DNA makeup of skin cells so that their replication mechanisms are unable to turn off, creating skin cancer. The incredible humans that fueled the freak show circuit of the 19th and early 20th century and arguably much of the worlds ancient myth and lore are another example of genetic mutations. An example that I think is quite bewitching in it’s exotic rarity.

In today’s world normalcy is all the more relative & hotly contested than ever before. What was once a counter culture is now a predominant youth movement. While, somehow being normal has become unusual & mysterious howbeit mundane.

Anyway, I can think of no single culture wide scenario that embodies our manipulation of relative normalcy better than agriculture. Starting with the Green Revolution of the 1960′s the US Government and the The European Economic Community (the wayward predecessor to the EU) aggressively redefined what could be accepted as normal and salable food.  Until 2009 the EU strictly enforced some pretty persnickety rules concerning the size, length, color and texture that qualified produce as legal to sell.

For instance:

• Class 1 cucumbers had to be “practically straight” and their maximum bend presenting a gradient of no more than 1/10

• Carrots could not be forked. They had to be smooth and regular. Any measuring less than 20mm (0.79ins) in length were to be called “early” carrots.

• An onion could only be sold if two thirds was covered in skin
• With regard to leeks the white part had to ‘represent at least one-third of the total length or half the sheathed part.’”

• & where do I even start with bananas?

Obviously these are the terms under which I shop for food. Then again I never leave home without my caliper …and I’m completely bonkers, so you know.

Fortunately someone figured out that a good 20% of the annual harvest was being thrown away in Britain to comply with EU regulations. Adding a calculated 40% to the price of some vegetables. Further, the malformed produce couldn’t even be given away to soup kitchens or low income families.

Though the grading system is still intact for select produce, fruits and vegetables are now allowed to be sold in any shape or size. Excepting of course: the Banana. The bend of which must still be “the thickness of a transverse section of the fruit between the lateral faces and the middle, perpendicular to the longitudinal axis, it must be at a minimum of 27mm(1.06ins).

We’ve got to have some sort of standard for normalcy in this mad mutant filled world, right?

This seems like an appropriate time to start ranting about genetically modified foods and how I don’t wanna eat round-up ready anything. Maybe some other day though. I’m already weary with culinary worry.

Instead lets look at some pretty pictures by Uli Westphal! He may be old news, but he’s new to me and his stunning photographs document one of my [many] favorite things on the whole planet: sexy mutant produce.

When will you understand that being normal isn’t necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage.

While we’re on the subject I’d like to entreat you to join the Crazy Plant and Mineral Appreciation Society on facebook. It’s mostly a bunch of sex starved nerds photographing naturally occurring approximations of genitalia, but I’ve posted some more wholesome entries and anyway you know you love naughty produce.

I haven’t had the opportunity to justify putting a link to my store in this post, but it’s my blog and I don’t have to justify anything so HA!

For the most part though, nothin’ gets me goin’ like a good example of intricate micro-efficiency …and a sexy exoskeleton. So hawt.

To this end, I’ve already got next years work/stay vacation on this incredible Costa Rican Butterfly Farm all worked out -except for the money part, but that will come. On that note, buy my designs!

Where was I going with this…? Ah yes. Bugs. I can’t get enough of em. The oft misunderstood order of Mantodea is my all time favorite, but Hymenoptera and Coleoptera are tied at second. That’s mantids, bees and beetles if you’re not a big show-off.

I could talk for hours about bees and their fascinating social dynamics, but I’ll save that for another titillating posting. Suffice to say those Hive Honey Sets have gotta hold something. You know where I’m going here, right?! No? That’s cool, I’m used to it.

Colony Collapse Disorder is where this post is going. It’s nothing new. Starting in late 2006, commercial beekeepers along the East Coast of the US began reporting sharp declines in their honey bee colonies. Nationwide, the number of managed honey bee colonies dropped an estimated 31.8% in 2006/2007, 35.8% in 2007/2008, 28.6% in 2008/2009, and a stunning 40% in 2009/2010. That’s some scary stuff.

In 2010 entomologists joined forces with the US Army to complete an epizootiological study to better characterize CCD. FYI: In addition to being a really great word, epizootiology is the study of disease in animal populations.

Basically what they found was a whole bunch of different factors and variables that seemed to add up to colony collapse disorder. 61 quantified variables to be exact. These ranged from adult bee physiology, pathogen loads, pesticide levels, parasites and of course stress from the postmodern condition. However no single agent emerged as the most-likely cause of CCD. Strange and improbable? Well, yes. How would so many factors suddenly produce such a prevalent, highly distinctive, and unusual disorder?

Not surprisingly pesticides seemed the most likely & widely spread culprit. Specifically PONCHO was a prime suspect.

No, not that stylish fashion underdog that made a big comeback in 2005. This is an insidious chemical named Clothianidin sold as the lighthearted PONCHO since 2003. Once Bayer Crop Science successfully eradicated Jiminy Cricket; having a conscience was no longer an issue, so they passed off a flawed field study to expedite those all important profits with nary a second thought. The field test evaluated the wrong crop, over an insufficient time period, with inadequate controls.

Really though, who reads those things anyway? The EPA has better shit to do, that’s for sure.

BUT WAIT! The plot thickens. ‘Cause it turns out that pesticides are only a part of this equation. They’re the part of the equation that weakens the bees, leaving the door open to sporulating-parasites and rainbow-viruses. …It sounds more magical than it really is.

Firstly, spore-forming [fungi-related] unicellular parasites named Nosema Apis and Nosema Ceranae reared their many tiny angry heads. The most notable symptom of which is dysentery. Infected bees may also have an increased girth of the abdomen, missing sting reflex, an inability to fly due to disjointed wings, and early supersedure of the queen. If the queen is infected, her ovaries degenerate and ovum production drops due to atrophy of the ova, after which she is likely to be superseded

*thanks again for the vivid accuracy, wikipedia*

As if these little ladies didn’t have it bad enough, an Invertebrate Iridescent Virus Type 6 or IIV-6 appeared on the scene. IIV-6 hails from the family Iridoviridae. The word Iridoviridae is derived from Iris: the ethereal Greek Goddess of the rainbow. This is due to the “rainbow like” iridescence observed in heavily infected insects [below left]. I should note here that this beautifully grotesque iridescence is not found in bees.  At least not as far as my exhaustive research [read: 4 whole hours of clicking around science journals] turned up.

You probably already know what this is, but just in case you don’t: pictured here [on the right] is a paracrystalline array of virus particles within an infected cell. Light reflected from such an array interferes with incident light, resulting in the characteristic iridescent phenomenon.

Anywho, long story kinda short? This is really bad and getting worse. You should care & now you’re informed, even if only in grossly simplified, cut/paste terms.

Here’s the part where I tell you we can all make a difference and feel better about inadvertently contributing to humanity’s viral-like annihilation of the earths ecosystems with armchair activism! Please take a second and electronically sign these petitions to save the bees:

The one that really matters: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/save_the_bees/?cl=901798856&v=8137

Petition to the EPA: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5986/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5833

Petition to stop PONCHO in his tracks: http://www.change.org/petitions/stop_poncho_from_killing_honey_bees#?opt_new=t&opt_fb=t

Petition the Boy Scouts to reinstate the Beekeeping Badge: http://www.experienceproject.com/beepetition

There are times I feel that my heart is pumping the very concrete I am surrounded by. That the angry traffic beats in time with my erratic pulse. My too fast stride keeping pace with streams long ago conquered by asphalt.  You can’t help but marvel at this corrupted ecosystem, digesting itself as ecosystems do. Symbiotic and no less fragile than all the others.

I used to feel more comfortable held by trees and books than societies whims and wonders. None the less, here I am, in the place that probably best embodies what our modern world has become. And I in turn, have slowly come to embody it, forgetting my true self.

Still, I can’t help but love this city -as any biologist loves their specimen. I peel back the layers and snip the tendons to allow for a methodical dissection of each organ. Eventually obliging the dermestid beetles to consume the flesh and properly preserve the skeleton.

It’s not so much a study of death, as of life. -A way to better understand oneself in relation to body, time and space.

Then, just when I’ve almost accepted this strange oppidan physique, I stumble upon something that makes my heavy urban heart scream with song. “Adorn me in feathers and frame my valves with branches and leaves, so that we may fly from this messy jungle!” She pounds in my ears. “You don’t belong among these umbrella spiders, growling cabbies and flocks of suits!”

My insides know it better than my outside.

Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa is exactly that sort of something.

Infinitely beautiful and pure do these bright souls seem. Enhanced & decorated with so much more than just a collective whim. These fashions are meant to attract a mate, camouflage, designate status & embody other spirits -be they ancestral, animal, vegetable or mineral. So much can be conveyed with the simple act of affixing a seed pod to ones head and playing with mud!

I oft wonder if our consumption driven fashion is really that different? Fashion or the lack there of is still our primary means of conveying interests and occupations; familial and social values; status; politics; even sexuality.

These wild Ethiopian souls are at once exceptionally familiar and utterly other-worldly. For me they serve as a reminder of all life’s fundamental yearning (even a biological imperative) for beauty. An aspiration that unites and divides, mixes and filters.

Hans Silvester’s breathtaking photographic exploration of tribal fashions features the Surma and Mursi tribes from the Omo Valley in Ethiopia -loosely referred to as the Omo People. The artist strives to “save…as much as possible of this truly living art, which is mobile, changing, subject to infinite variation, and whose constituent elements…form a link between man and nature.” His documentation underscores  “the beauty and purity of nature…taken out of context, you’re reminded again how beautiful a seed pod, a mushroom or a flower is.”

Instead of posting a zillion pics I’m just gonna put up this video compilation from the book. Watch it full screen for maximum inspiration of awe:

What they do have going for them is pretty great though.

Breast feeding on the go? They invented it.

Break dancing in trees? Just try and stop ‘em.

Longer arms than Mister Tickle? Naturally.

Gnome babies? But of course.

The list goes on, but I can see you’re suitably impressed, so I’ll stop finding excuses to put up pictures of these guys and get to the point:

A recent study published in the BMC Evolutionary Biology journal has found that Crested Gibbons have Regional Accents! Researchers analyzed the singing of more than 400 gibbons from 92 groups in 24 different locations across Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, covering six of the seven species. They then compared mitochondrial DNA from gibbons at 22 of the 24 locations. The subtly different songs changed with genetic diversity (which of course corresponds with location), so those species most closely related had the most similar accents.

Identifying gibbons by their songs is preferable to identification with genetics because obtaining physical samples is obviously pretty difficult (they tickle on sight), whereas the songs are constantly being emitted and can travel over long distances in thickly vegetated areas by having a single frequency.

All seven species communicate by singing. Their song defines their territory and facilitates their (generally monogamous) couplings. Interestingly couples sing duets to strengthen their bond.

Kinda like Bollywood couples, but fuzzier and less contrived.

Now more Crested Gibbon pictures!