Day 2 Doodles

Since my friend thurinus is doing it also, I'm doing this 30 day drawing challenge thing [link] where you're supposed to draw something from the assigned topic each day for a month. Day 2 was "your favorite animal."

I grew up with a fondness for nature and biology and cannot pick one species of animal to claim as my favorite. So I just did an abstract doodle encompassing a few major groups that I find beautiful and interesting.

There's a made-up (doesn't actually reflect a real species since I can't draw that technically yet) species of Urania moth, a made-up species of Dendrobates (poison dart frog), and a representation of a Praya dubia.

The Praya dubia is a deep sea colonial animal made up of bioluminescent countless small animals called siphonophores connected together, groups of which specialize in different activities like catching food, defense or mobility. The collection can grow to be longer than even the body of a blue whale (the largest living animal on Earth) and is sometimes said to be the longest animal on Earth.

It really makes you think about what the difference is between an animal and a colonial animal, since we're all really collections of so many different individual living pieces (all of the cells in our body, and all the bacteria and protozoans that live inside us that we need) that couldn't live without the other.