Wildlife & Railway Art - Frédérique Lucas

Arctic Odontocetes

And here's the three other Icelandic whales poster illustrations. All true Arctic species, roaming the frigid water of the high north. While Atlantic white-sided dolphins can occasionally be spotted along European shores, Narwhal and Belugas roam the true ice seas.

Narwhals are famous for their rather striking dentition: the huge, up to 3 meter long tusk, is hard to miss. It's actually their left canine tooth - every once in a while the right canine erupts too, making for a double-tusker. It's usually only males who are so adorned, as only a very small number of females (15%) bear tusks.

The exact function of the tusk is still debated: originally thought to be a simple weapon, now it is mostly thought to serve as a secondary sexual characteristic, inducing status in the bearer. The bigger the tooth, the sexier the man. However, researchers suspect they may have many more functions. Through the tusk run thousands of nerves which enable Narwhals to sense differences in water temperature and salinity. On top of that tusks have been observed to aid hunting and social interactions between males, and perhaps more. And the occasional Narwhal has been found with a broken tusk embedded in their cheek. So perhaps some good ole fashioned fighting happens after all, though no one has ever observed it happening.

The tuskless females survive just fine without them though and often live to be even older than males (up to 115 years!), so the advantages can't be that critical. Nevertheless it's fascinating to think about. Somewhere out there in the ice cold seas where we would freeze to death in an instant, swim whales - fellow mammals - sensing the waters with their 3 meter long canine tooth, occasionally slapping a fish unconscious. A wholly alien experience lived by an animal not so essentially different from us.

Atlantic white-sided dolphins may be far less mysterious, but nevertheless amongst my favourite delphinids. They've such beautiful markings. And the beluga... no doubt well known too as living marshmallows. I must say that youtube videos of their melons and fatty flabs being wobbled is great watching material.

Also - the "Whales of Iceland" poster is officially up for sale! You can nab one at Pappyr's website here. Not sponsored or anything, I just think the poster turned out super neat.

I’ve been so busy with the illustrations.. I all but forgot to keep you guys updated on them! Six new cetaceans have joined the ranks of the MARS (Marine Animal Response Society) commission: five bulb-headed friends and one beauty ;) Although, they’re all beautiful if you ask me.

Most species will be by represented by a single image, but a few have separate illustrations for males and females, when the sexes differ significantly from each other. The northern bottlenose whales here are the first example of such a species. Today it’ll be the turn of another beaked whale pair, and a third illustration featuring another species.

“Diversity”

Compared to other groups of animals, there aren’t all that many mammal species. But Cetacea, the order of the whales, with its mere 80-90 species is unusually small, even by mammal standards; primates for example have almost 400 species, and the order of the rodents has about 2200! And yet, despite their small numbers, there is such an incredible diversity between the whales, from the big and mighty bowhead whale to the small and sleek harbour porpoise. Not only do the depicted species illustrate this broad diversity in shapes and sizes, they also occur in a single geographical location for at least part of their ranges.

This is a really old drawing, but I still quite like it!

“Mother’s Love”

A little beluga whale has just been born in the relative warmth of a river estuary. His mother, an old and experienced female, is only joined by a young nursemaid who will help keep watch over the newborn calf for a while. Most mothers don’t sleep for several weeks after the birth of their calf. Too busy they are with ensuring its safety, keeping it away from predators and making sure it doesn’t wander off. Although perhaps the nursemaid’s watchful eye will allow this mother to sleep for a few short moment nonetheless.