How Japan Invented Daisugi, the Ancient Method of Growing Lumber Without Cutting Down Trees

in History, Nature | June 29th, 2026

Ask any­one, of most any age and in most any soci­ety, how we get wood, and you’ll hear one answer: by cut­ting down trees. It’s there­fore nat­ur­al that any method of lum­ber pro­duc­tion that leaves trees stand­ing will get a lot of atten­tion. Such has been the case with daisu­gi, the 600-year-old Japan­ese tech­nique we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. The Leaf of Life video above explains just what it involves: “Spe­cial­ly plant­ed cedar trees are pruned heav­i­ly. Think of it as a giant bon­sai.” While these oper­a­tions take place bien­ni­al­ly, “har­vest­ing takes 20 years, and old tree stock grows up to 100 shoots at a time,” pro­duc­ing a stronger and more flex­i­ble wood to boot.

Such an unusu­al method of cul­ti­va­tion, you may imag­ine, must have arisen in unusu­al cir­cum­stances. As the video explains, daisu­gi was orig­i­nal­ly invent­ed in the west­ern Japan­ese region of Kitaya­ma, well south of the Osa­ka-Kyoto-Nara conur­ba­tion.

Work­ing under a short­age of seedlings and flat ter­rain, the arborists of Kitaya­ma devel­oped this method of forest­ing that made it pos­si­ble to “reduce the num­ber of plan­ta­tions, make the har­vest cycle faster, and pro­duce denser wood as well.” More than a lit­tle of the demand for it owed to the four­teenth-cen­tu­ry elite vogue for sukiya-zukuri, an ele­gant form of res­i­den­tial archi­tec­ture much expand­ed from the tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese tea house.

For a more nuts-and-bolts — or rather, trunks-and-branch­es — expla­na­tion of how daisu­gi is done, have a look at the video just above from Roji Gar­den­ing. You first need a sugi tree, also known as a Cryp­tome­ria japon­i­ca or Japan­ese red­wood, whose fast growth makes it all work. When it reach­es six or sev­en meters, which takes about as many years, “you do some­thing West­ern gar­den­ers would nev­er dream of”: cut the trunk at the height of half a meter, prune back the remain­ing branch­es, and cul­ti­vate the buds that appear on the remain­ing “plat­form seed­er.” Con­tin­ue reg­u­lar­ly prun­ing the series of “per­fect­ly ver­ti­cal” new trunks into which they grow, even­tu­al­ly remov­ing every­thing but the top 30 cen­time­ters on each. With­in a decade, you’ll end up with a good source of wood, if you need it, but also an “ever-chang­ing, inter­est­ing state­ment tree” — that, as a bonus, will also look like some­thing out of a Ghi­b­li movie.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Daisu­gi, the 600-Year-Old Japan­ese Tech­nique of Grow­ing Trees Out of Oth­er Trees, Cre­at­ing Per­fect­ly Straight Lum­ber

The Art of Cre­at­ing a Bon­sai: One Year Con­densed Con­densed Into 22 Mes­mer­iz­ing Min­utes

The Biol­o­gy of Bon­sai Trees: The Sci­ence Behind the Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Art Form

What Makes the Art of Bon­sai So Expen­sive?: $1 Mil­lion for a Bon­sai Tree, and $32,000 for Bon­sai Scis­sors

A Dig­i­tal Ani­ma­tion Com­pares the Size of Trees: From the 3‑Inch Bon­sai, to the 300-Foot Sequoia

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Enjoy Three Hours of Free Nature Videos Narrated by David Attenborough

in Nature | May 22nd, 2026

For your week­end view­ing plea­sure, enjoy three hours of David Atten­bor­ough nar­rat­ing free nature videos from the BBC. Atten­bor­ough just turned 100 this month, and he’s still going strong!

via Kot­tke

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Download 435 High Resolution Images from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of America

in Art, Biology, Nature | January 15th, 2026

In our expe­ri­ence, bird lovers fall into two gen­er­al cat­e­gories:

Keen­ly obser­vant cat­a­loguers like John James Audubon …

And those of us who can­not resist assign­ing anthro­po­mor­phic per­son­al­i­ties and behav­iors to the 435 stars of Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca, a stun­ning col­lec­tion of prints from life-size water­col­ors he pro­duced between 1827 and 1838.

Our sus­pi­cions have lit­tle to do with biol­o­gy, but rather, a cer­tain zesti­ness of expres­sion, an overem­phat­ic beak, a droll gleam in the eye.

The Audubon Society’s new­ly redesigned web­site abounds with trea­sure for those in either camp:

Free high res down­loads of all 435 plates.

Mp3s of each specimen’s call.

And vin­tage com­men­tary that effec­tive­ly splits the dif­fer­ence between sci­ence and the unin­ten­tion­al­ly humor­ous locu­tions of anoth­er age.

Take for instance, the Bur­row­ing Owl, as described by self-taught nat­u­ral­ist Thomas Say (1787–1834):

It is delight­ful, dur­ing fine weath­er, to see these live­ly lit­tle crea­tures sport­ing about the entrance of their bur­rows, which are always kept in the neat­est repair, and are often inhab­it­ed by sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als. When alarmed, they imme­di­ate­ly take refuge in their sub­ter­ranean cham­bers; or, if the dread­ed dan­ger be not imme­di­ate­ly impend­ing, they stand near the brink of the entrance, brave­ly bark­ing and flour­ish­ing their tails, or else sit erect to recon­noitre the move­ments of the ene­my.

The notes of ornithol­o­gist John Kirk Townsend (1809 – 1851) sug­gest that not every­one was as tak­en with the species as Say (who was, in all fair­ness, the father of Amer­i­can ento­mol­o­gy):

Noth­ing can be more unpleas­ant than the bag­ging of this species, on account of the fleas with which their plumage swarms, and which in all prob­a­bil­i­ty have been left in the bur­row by the Bad­ger or Mar­mot, at the time it was aban­doned by these ani­mals. I know of no oth­er bird infest­ed by that kind of ver­min. 

The Com­mon Gallinule, above, sug­gests that there’s often more to these birds than meets the eye. His some­what sheep­ish look­ing coun­te­nance belies the red hot love life Audubon recounts:

… the man­i­fes­ta­tions of their ama­to­ry propen­si­ty were quite remark­able. The male birds court­ed the females, both on the land and on the water; they fre­quent­ly spread out their tail like a fan, and moved round each oth­er, emit­ting a mur­mur­ing sound for some sec­onds. The female would after­wards walk to the water’s edge, stand in the water up to her breast, and receive the caress­es of the male, who imme­di­ate­ly after would strut on the water before her, jerk­ing with rapid­i­ty his spread tail for awhile, after which they would both resume their ordi­nary occu­pa­tions.

Being that we are firm­ly plant­ed in the sec­ond type of bird lover’s camp, this ornitho­log­i­cal cor­nu­copia main­ly serves to whet our appetite for more Falseknees, self-described bird nerd Joshua Barkman’s beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered web­com­ic.

Yes, Audubon’s Indi­go Bird, aka Petit Pape­bleu, “an active and live­ly lit­tle fel­low” who “pos­sess­es much ele­gance in his shape, and also a cer­tain degree of firm­ness in his make” was sep­a­rat­ed by a cen­tu­ry or so from “Mood Indi­go”—we pre­sume that’s the tune stuck in Barkman’s bird’s head—but he does look rather pre­oc­cu­pied, no?

Pos­si­bly just think­ing of meal­worms…

Explore Audubon’s Birds of Amer­i­ca by chrono­log­i­cal or alpha­bet­i­cal order, or by state, and down­load them all for free here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

A Lav­ish­ly Illus­trat­ed Cat­a­log of All Hum­ming­bird Species Known in the 19th Cen­tu­ry Gets Restored & Put Online

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

The Bird Library: A Library Built Espe­cial­ly for Our Fine Feath­ered Friends

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

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300,000 Wondrous Nature Illustrations Put Online by The Biodiversity Heritage Library

in Art, Nature, Photography, Science | January 6th, 2026

Are we tru­ly in the midst of a human-caused sixth mass extinc­tion, an era of “bio­log­i­cal anni­hi­la­tion”? Many sci­en­tists and pop­u­lar sci­ence writ­ers say yes, using terms like “Holocene” or “Anthro­pocene” to describe what fol­lows the Ordovi­cian, Devon­ian, Per­mi­an, Tri­as­sic, and Cre­ta­ceous peri­ods. Peter Bran­nen, the author of extinc­tion his­to­ry The Ends of the Earth has found at least one sci­en­tist who thinks the con­cept is “junk.” But Bran­nen quotes some alarm­ing sta­tis­tics. Chill­ing, even. “Until very recent­ly,” he writes, “all ver­te­brate life on the plan­et was wildlife. But astound­ing­ly, today wildlife accounts for only 3 per­cent of Earth’s land ani­mals; human beings, our live­stock, and our pets take up the remain­ing 97 per­cent of the bio­mass… almost half of the Earth’s land has been con­vert­ed into farm­land.”

This state of affairs does not bode well for the mil­lions of remain­ing species get­ting edged out of their envi­ron­ments by agribusi­ness and cli­mate change. We learn from extinc­tions past that the plan­et rebounds after unimag­in­able cat­a­stro­phe. Life real­ly does go on, though it may take mil­lions of years to recov­er. But the cur­rent forms of life may dis­ap­pear before their time. If we want to under­stand what is at stake besides our own frag­ile fos­sil-fuel-based civ­i­liza­tions, we need to con­nect to life emo­tion­al­ly as well as intel­lec­tu­al­ly. Short of globe-hop­ping phys­i­cal immer­sion in the Earth’s bio­di­ver­si­ty, we could hard­ly do bet­ter than immers­ing our­selves in the tra­di­tion of nat­u­ral­ist writ­ing, art, and pho­tog­ra­phy that brings the world to us.

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library (BHL), an “open access dig­i­tal library for bio­di­ver­si­ty lit­er­a­ture and archives,” has for many years been mak­ing it easy for peo­ple to con­nect to nature through nature writ­ing and illus­tra­tion. On Flickr, you can find 319,000 care­ful­ly curat­ed images. The col­lec­tion itself is sub­di­vid­ed into dif­fer­ent pho­to albums drawn from his­tor­i­cal pub­li­ca­tions. For exam­ple, The Fresh­wa­ter Fish­es of the British Isles (1911), The Bird (1869), and The Insect Book (1901).

This image archive offers expan­sive views of human­i­ty’s encounter with the nat­ur­al world, not only through sta­tis­tics and aca­d­e­m­ic jar­gon, but through the artis­tic record­ing of won­der, sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty, and deep appre­ci­a­tion. Enter the archive here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra & Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Explore a New Archive of 2,200 His­tor­i­cal Wildlife Illus­tra­tions (1916–1965): Cour­tesy of The Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety

In 1886, the US Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sioned 7,500 Water­col­or Paint­ings of Every Known Fruit in the World: Down­load Them in High Res­o­lu­tion

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and

The Metic­u­lous, Ele­gant Illus­tra­tions of the Nature Observed in England’s Coun­try­side

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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When Two Filmmakers Make the Same Movie — and One of Them Is Werner Herzog

in Film, Nature | January 2nd, 2026

In 1991, the French hus­band-and-wife vol­ca­nol­o­gist-film­mak­er team Mau­rice and Katia Krafft were killed by the flow of ash from the erup­tion of Mount Unzen in Nagasa­ki. Inex­plic­a­bly, Wern­er Her­zog did­n’t get around to mak­ing a film about them for more than 30 years. These would seem to be ide­al sub­jects for the doc­u­men­tary half of his career, a large por­tion of which he’s spent on por­traits of eccen­tric, roman­tic, often fool­hardy, and more than occa­sion­al­ly ill-fat­ed indi­vid­u­als who pit them­selves, or in any case find them­selves pit­ted, against the raw ele­ments of nature. Their cou­ple­hood makes the Kraffts a slight excep­tion in that line­up, but it also makes them even less resistible to a more con­ven­tion­al doc­u­men­tar­i­an — not that a doc­u­men­tar­i­an could get much less con­ven­tion­al than Her­zog.

Hence, per­haps, the appear­ance of two entire­ly sep­a­rate doc­u­men­taries on the Kraffts in the same year, 2022: Her­zog’s The Fire With­in, and Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love. The Like Sto­ries of Old video above per­forms a direct com­par­i­son of the two films, both of which make heavy use of the vol­cano footage shot by the Kraffts them­selves.

Her­zog assem­bles it into word­less, oper­at­i­cal­ly scored, and some­times quite long sequences, inten­si­fy­ing their qual­i­ty of the sub­lime, which we feel in that aes­thet­ic zone where awe of beau­ty and fear of exis­ten­tial anni­hi­la­tion over­lap com­plete­ly. These do noth­ing to advance a nar­ra­tive, but every­thing to put forth what Her­zog has often referred to in inter­views as a sense of “ecsta­t­ic truth,” a dis­til­la­tion of real­i­ty that can­not be cap­tured by any con­ven­tion­al doc­u­men­tary means.

The video’s host Tom van der Lin­den describes Fire of Love as “much more fast-paced. Images come and go so quick­ly that they don’t real­ly have a chance to reveal that strange, secret beau­ty, to take the spot­light with their own mys­te­ri­ous star­dom. Instead, they feel sub­servient to what­ev­er pre­de­ter­mined emo­tion the nar­ra­tive wants you to expe­ri­ence,” as if the direc­tor is giv­ing you orders: “Be in awe. Feel the romance. And now the com­e­dy.” That hard­ly sug­gests incom­pe­tence on the part of Dosa and her col­lab­o­ra­tors, or any defi­cien­cy in her high­ly acclaimed film. But it does give us a sense of what becomes weary­ing about the tech­niques of main­stream cin­e­ma in gen­er­al, fic­tion­al, or non­fic­tion­al. The truth is that Wern­er Her­zog may be unique­ly well placed to appre­ci­ate not just the fear­some­ly enrap­tur­ing object of the Kraffts’ obses­sion, but also the dri­ving pas­sion, and flash­es of ridicu­lous­ness, in the Kraffts them­selves — who were, after all, fel­low sol­diers of cin­e­ma.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dream-Dri­ven Film­mak­ing of Wern­er Her­zog: Watch the Video Essay, “The Inner Chron­i­cle of What We Are: Under­stand­ing Wern­er Her­zog”

An Intro­duc­tion to the Paint­ing of Cas­par David Friedrich, Roman­ti­cism & the Sub­lime

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

Under­wa­ter Vol­canic Erup­tion Wit­nessed for the First Time

Two Ways To Shoot The Same Scene: A Com­par­i­son of The Shop Around the Cor­ner (1940) and You’ve Got Mail (1998) Shows How Film­mak­ing Changed Over the Decades

Wern­er Her­zog Dis­cov­ers the Ecsta­sy of Skate­board­ing: “That’s Kind of My Peo­ple”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Discover the Oldest, Weirdest Instrument On Earth: The Lithophone

in Music, Nature | October 1st, 2025

Sta­lac­tites hang tight to the ceil­ing, and sta­lag­mites push up with might from the floor: this is a mnemon­ic device you may once have learned, but chances are you haven’t had much occa­sion to remem­ber it since. Still, it would sure­ly be called to mind by a vis­it to Luray Cav­erns in the Amer­i­can state of Vir­ginia, home of the Great Sta­lacpipe Organ. As its name sug­gests, that attrac­tion is an organ made out of sta­lac­tites, the geo­log­i­cal for­ma­tions that grow from cave ceil­ings. Not long after the dis­cov­ery of Luray Cav­erns itself in 1878, its sta­lac­tites were found to res­onate through the under­ground space in an almost musi­cal fash­ion when struck — a prop­er­ty Leland W. Sprin­kle took to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion in the mid-nine­teen fifties.

“Dur­ing a tour of this world-famous nat­ur­al won­der, Mr. Sprin­kle watched in awe, which was still cus­tom­ary at the time, as a tour guide tapped the ancient stone for­ma­tions with a small mal­let, pro­duc­ing a musi­cal tone,” says Luray Cav­erns’ offi­cial site. “Mr. Sprin­kle was great­ly inspired by this demon­stra­tion and the idea for a most unique instru­ment was con­ceived.”

Con­cep­tion was one thing, but exe­cu­tion quite anoth­er: it took him three years to locate just the right sta­lac­tites, shave them down to ring out at just the right fre­quen­cy, and rig them up with elec­tron­i­cal­ly acti­vat­ed, key­board-con­trolled mal­lets. For the tech­ni­cal­ly mind­ed Sprin­kle, who worked at the Pen­ta­gon as a math­e­mati­cian and elec­tron­ics sci­en­tist, this must not have been quite as tedious a labor as it sounds.

The result was the biggest, the old­est (at least accord­ing to the age of the cave itself), and arguably the weird­est musi­cal instru­ment on Earth, a litho­phone for the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s hero­ic age of engi­neer­ing. You can see the Great Sta­lacpipe Organ in the video from Ver­i­ta­si­um at the top of the post, and hear a record­ing of Sprin­kle him­self play­ing it below that. In the video just above, YouTu­ber and musi­cian Rob Scal­lon gets a chance to take it for a spin. View­ers of his chan­nel know how much expe­ri­ence he has with exot­ic instru­ments (includ­ing the glass armon­i­ca, orig­i­nal­ly invent­ed by Ben Franklin, which we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), but even so, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play a cave — and to make use of its sur­round sound avant la let­tre — hard­ly comes every day. Here we have proof that the old, weird Amer­i­ca endures, and that the Great Sta­lacpipe Organ is its ide­al sound­track.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Archae­ol­o­gist Play the “Litho­phone,” a Pre­his­toric Instru­ment That Let Ancient Musi­cians Play Real Clas­sic Rock

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How 16th-Century Artist Joris Hoefnagel Made Insects Beautiful—and Changed Science Forever

in Art, History, Nature | July 2nd, 2025

In Eng­lish, most of the words we’d use to refer to insects sound off-putting at best and fear­some at worst, at least to those with­out an ento­mo­log­i­cal bent. Dutch, close a lin­guis­tic rela­tion though it may be, offers a more endear­ing alter­na­tive in beestjes, which refers to all these “lit­tle beasts” in which the artists and sci­en­tists of Europe start­ed to take a major inter­est in the late six­teenth cen­tu­ry. As was the style of that era, the mag­is­te­ria of art and sci­ence tend­ed to over­lap, a phe­nom­e­non nowhere more clear­ly reflect­ed — at least with regard to the insect king­dom — than in the work of Joris Hoef­nagel, a Flem­ish artist whose illus­tra­tions of beestjes com­bined beau­ty and accu­ra­cy in a man­ner nev­er seen before.


You can now see Hoef­nagel’s art up close at the exhi­bi­tion Lit­tle Beasts: Art, Won­der, and the Nat­ur­al World, which will be up at the Nation­al Gallery of Art in Wash­ing­ton, DC until ear­ly Novem­ber. If you won’t be able to make it out to the muse­um, have a look at the exhi­bi­tion’s web site, which shows off the splen­dor of Hoef­nagel’s work as pub­lished in The Four Ele­ments, a col­lec­tion of about 300 water­col­ors grouped into four vol­umes in the fif­teen-sev­en­ties and eight­ies, each one named for an ele­ment: Aqua con­tains water ani­mals; Ter­ra land ani­mals; Aier birds and plants; and Ignis, or “fire,” insects.

“We don’t real­ly know why Hoef­nagel put insects in the fire vol­ume,” says Evan “Nerd­writer” Puschak in the new video above. “Maybe because both fire and insects sym­bol­ize trans­for­ma­tion.”


“What we do know,” Puschak adds, “is that these insect minia­tures are mag­nif­i­cent­ly ren­dered.” Hoef­nagel even made improve­ments on the nature illus­tra­tions of his artis­tic pre­de­ces­sor Albrecht Dür­er, whose own abil­i­ties to ren­der our world with fideli­ty had been regard­ed as near­ly super­hu­man. One par­tic­u­lar work that sur­pass­es Dür­er is Hoef­nagel’s depic­tion of a stag bee­tle, which he accom­pa­nied with the Latin inscrip­tion “SCARABEI UMBRA,” or “the shad­ow of the stag bee­tle”: pos­si­bly a ref­er­ence to the unprece­dent­ed real­ism of the insec­t’s shad­ow as Hoef­nagel ren­dered it, but in any case a com­mon say­ing at the time about hol­low threats. For how­ev­er fright­en­ing the stag bee­tle looked, as Hoef­nagel well knew, the actu­al crea­ture was gen­tle — just anoth­er wee beast­ie after all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of Albrecht Dür­er Revealed in Four Self-Por­traits

Vladimir Nabokov’s Delight­ful But­ter­fly Draw­ings

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Cap­ti­vat­ing Col­lab­o­ra­tion: Artist Hubert Duprat Uses Insects to Cre­ate Gold­en Sculp­tures

Watch The Insects’ Christ­mas from 1913: A Stop Motion Film Star­ring a Cast of Dead Bugs

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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NASA Visualizes the Ocean Currents in Motion: A Mesmerizing View of Earth’s Underwater Highways

in Environment, Nature, Science | March 25th, 2025

The mes­mer­iz­ing video above lets you visu­al­ize the ocean cur­rents around the world. Using data from space­craft, buoys, and oth­er mea­sure­ments, the visu­al­iza­tion shows the ocean in motion, with the cur­rents cre­at­ing Van Gogh-like swirls around the globe.

Accord­ing to NASA, “the ocean has been [his­tor­i­cal­ly] dif­fi­cult to mod­el. Sci­en­tists strug­gled in years past to sim­u­late ocean cur­rents or accu­rate­ly pre­dict fluc­tu­a­tions in tem­per­a­ture, salin­i­ty, and oth­er prop­er­ties. As a result, mod­els of ocean dynam­ics rapid­ly diverged from real­i­ty, which meant they could only pro­vide use­ful infor­ma­tion for brief peri­ods.” This all changed, how­ev­er, when NASA and oth­er part­ners devel­oped ECCO, short for “Esti­mat­ing the Cir­cu­la­tion and Cli­mate of the Ocean.” “By apply­ing the laws of physics to data from mul­ti­ple satel­lites and thou­sands of float­ing sen­sors, NASA sci­en­tists and their col­lab­o­ra­tors built ECCO to be a real­is­tic, detailed, and con­tin­u­ous ocean mod­el that spans decades.” “The project pro­vides mod­els that are the best pos­si­ble recon­struc­tion of the past 30 years of the glob­al ocean. It allows us to under­stand the ocean’s phys­i­cal process­es at scales that are not nor­mal­ly observ­able.” Watch above as years of ocean data come to life in a crisp, com­pelling visu­al­iza­tion.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent 

132 Years of Glob­al Warm­ing Visu­al­ized in 26 Dra­mat­i­cal­ly Ani­mat­ed Sec­onds

What the Earth Would Look Like If We Drained the Water from the Oceans

A Fas­ci­nat­ing 3D Ani­ma­tion Shows the Depths of the Ocean

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