Wildlife & Railway Art - Frédérique Lucas

Here's an interesting article from Nature. The title is a bit generic and makes it seem like there's nationwide dolphin attacks happening, but in reality it's about a single male Indo-pacific bottlenose dolphin that has been frequenting a bay for some years, seeking out human contact, and now there's increasing conflict.

Solitary sociable cetaceans are not a new phenomenon, they have been known for decades, and from all around the world. There's regular reports going back to the 1800's, and Pliny the younger even wrote of a solitary dolphin in 109 AD.

Wherever they go, these solitary dolphins (often bottlenoses) attract attention. In some rare cases a good, mutually beneficial relationship develops, as with Fungie the Dingle bay resident (who sadly passed away in 2020, aged over 40).

However, often things get out of hand, not in the least due to media attention and all manner of people seeking "that special bond" and "magical experience" of meeting a dolphin in the wild. They are so friendly and angelic and surely this one must love to interact with me because why else are they here?

But dolphins are wild animals, and they can and do regularly harm humans. Even when they seek out these interactions themselves, when both parties don't know how to conduct themselves around one another, injuries happen. Often, in the end, it's the dolphin that pays the price. Frequently their life is cut short by propeller blades, or they are otherwise injured by human activity. In rare cases there's a happy end, where either equilibrium is found, or the dolphin rejoins their conspecifics. I think it is an interesting observation (and perhaps 'antidote') in this time of "meeting dolphins in captivity = bad and they must hate people, meeting dolphins in the wild = amazing interaction with a free spirit that can't possibly go wrong".

For further reading, here's an interesting overview of known cases of solitary sociable cetaceans, and some of the concerns.

And if you want to read of a very interesting individual case: here is an initial report of attempts to "educate" JoJo the solitary bottlenose dolphin from the Turks and Caicos Islands, on proper human interaction etiquette. The intervention was successful as JoJo continues to live there to this day, and has been assigned a personal human guardian who is trained to provide him with the social interaction he needs. This way his aggressive and sexual interactions with other people has been mitigated.

Look guys here's a really cool commission I recently got to work on. Someone asked me to create a speculative illustration of a hybrid between a False killer whale and Pacific white-sided dolphin. A very fun mental exercise with a little sleuthing involved!

The intended hybrid does not exist as far as we know, however both Lags and Pseudorcas have hybridised with - you guessed it - our favourite free-for-all baby maker the Common bottlenose dolphin. By looking at those hybrids I could see how the different colour patterns interacted, and try to sort of "filter out" the middle man. Lucky for me, Pseudorcas have a very similar colour scheme to bottlenoses, so I could make some inferences there too.

I'm quite pleased with the end result! Of course I can't say whether this is truly what a hybrid between these species would look like, but I do think it's a well informed guess. Makes for a pretty dolphin!

Do you remember my motley of marine friends from earlier this year? They were (indirectly) for Project UK, which aims to raise awareness and help fishers better reduce and identify bycatch, especially endangered species.

The full guide - including my illustrations - is out now! You can see it HERE. And here is Project UK's website, outlining the work they do. I think it's pretty neat to see the good work being done, and my artwork out in the wild, hopefully contributing!

91° South

A painting based on a dream I had, from no less than 7 years ago. Honestly I don't really remember the dream itself anymore, but in the morning I'd immediately scribbled down these weird white killer whale-esque creatures and that's all I had left of that original vision. All I remember well is that they were completely off-white with big square foreheads and little nubbins, and lived in the Antarctic. But the scribble sat unfinished for years because I just couldn't paint what I saw in my head. Now I finally could! It's been really fun tinkering away at this and I'm very happy to have finished a "real" painting again. I hope you'll enjoy these blorbos from my head.

Original scribbles from 2017 under the cut!

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.

White-beaked dolphin (Lagenorhynchus albirostris) My friends! Behold! A new friend!!! After more than a year (no joke) without a proper commission, I had a lovely new project to work on these past weeks.

It's for Mindfully Wired Communications, a company in the UK that translates scientific information to the general public through all sorts of means. They're currently collaborating on a project to reduce bycatch in UK fisheries, and part of that is creating an ID guide for the fishermen of animals they might encounter at sea. Really important work which I'm happy to contribute to.

Most of the illustrations they needed I already had lying around. But a few had to be made anew, one of which this handsome fellow, the White-beaked dolphin! Markings wise, they are one of my favourite species of dolphin. I love the way everything on their body just flows. Also they have great whopping dorsal- and pectoral fins, and, irony of ironies, often black-marked beaks as adults.

For some reason it was quite a struggle to make him look right, but in the end I'm happy with the result. I hope you like it too, and the other friends will follow soon!

Early 2018 I made daily drawings for a little while. Photo studies scribbled in the edge of my notebook, with a short something about the day. I wasn't in the best of places back then. A few days ago I came across that notebook again. I still love those drawings so I wanted to share some with you. Perhaps they can mean something to you too.

“Faces from the Black Sea”

A series of drawings I started in 2018 and, of course, never continued. The idea was to practice my pencil work through several photo studies of Black Sea bottlenose dolphins. They have the most beautiful faces and markings, so a lovely subject for a study series like this. Alas, something or another came along and it never got further than these two drawings. Even though they’re older works I still very much like them! And I hope you will, too.

The original photograph references are here and here.

Perhaps! No one knows for sure. There has been no definitive proof from DNA samples of wild animals, nor has it ever been confirmed in captive animals. However, there is much reason to believe it is plausible, and one possible hybrid has been observed.

Let me take you to The Bahamas. Specifically, Great Bahama Bank and Little Bahama Bank. They're sprawling sandbanks surrounding the islands, and many Atlantic spotted dolphins as well as coastal Common bottlenose dolphins make their home there. The spotted dolphins have been studied for more than 30 years by Denise Herzing and her associates. While by far the most encounters are with single-species groups, there have been dozens of mixed species encounters as well.

Many of these are aggressively sexual in nature, with males of both species sparring and trying to enter each other. Male bottlenose dolphins often seem to dominate the smaller spotted dolphins during these encounters, though the spotted dolphins have been seen retaliating, and it is speculated they don't actually experience the harassment as very negative. Since much of the action is male-on-male or involves juvenile animals not yet sexually mature, it seems in many cases the nature of these encounters is more social than sexual. However, multiple cases of interspecific male-on-female copulation have been observed.

With so much going on, the potential for hybridism is great. And since the two species are morphologically quite similar (especially when young), a hybrid could easily fly under the radar.

In February of 2003, Herzing and her team observed a female spotted dolphin with an unusual looking calf. The calf had a shorter rostrum than is normal for spotted dolphins in the area, but it was longer and more elegant than that of a Bahamian bottlenose. Herzing assumed it could be a hybrid calf. However, since no DNA testing was done and the calf was only observed for two days, this can't be confirmed. In 1989 and 1996 there have also been observations of female spotted dolphins mothering over bottlenose dolphin calves. In one case the calf was emaciated, and the spotted dolphin swimming with it wasn't lactating, so most likely the calf died. In another case it was only a temporary association and the bottlenose calf returned to their real mother after a while.

So a lot of interesting things going on. The studies are still ongoing. To my knowledge no large scale DNA testing has been done, nor any new "suspect" animals observed. Perhaps in the future a hybrid will be confirmed! Or perhaps it turns out this is one of those mixes that just doesn't work.

I highly recommend you read the study the photo comes from: "Interspecies interactions between Atlantic spotted dolphins, Stenella frontalis and bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, on Great Bahama Bank, Bahamas". And many of the other studies done by Denise Herzing's team can be read for free here: https://www.wilddolphinproject.org/media/scientific-publications/

Everybody, sound the alarm, I FINISHED A THING. It’s a bit sad actually. I have painted here and there this year but never finished anything. The first half of the year was full on train-school of course, but even now with driving trains “only” 3 days a week, free time seems to elude me. Not all in bad ways though, I bought a second car and am having a lot of fun restoring her. But maybe I just need to sit down and devote some time to drawing because I do miss it.

Anyway have a look at this cute fellow. You might remember his mom from last year, as she was part of one of the big commissions. However, the commissioner recently asked me if I could paint a juvenile Atlantic spottie too, and I was happy to oblige. As most of you probably know, all spotted dolphins are in fact born spotless. In the Atlantic’s case they look rather like bottlenose dolphins when young, but they have a longer beak and more elegant facial markings. I fear my illustration ended up a bit too bottlenose-y looking, though, even if I’m not sure why. Better luck next time. I hope you’ll like him!

The Eclectic Electra

Alright then. One last illustration, one last far-fetched alliteration. Couldn’t bear to leave the lonely Melon-headed whale unpublished just because I hadn’t thought to put it in with any of the others. Not just for completionist reasons, but also because they’re very nice dolphins and I like how this illustration turned out. I got my fair share of Melon-headed whales (or “peps”, as the client called them) in my painting “As above, so is below” which holds no less than 57 unique individuals. And unique they are, with their long, pointy pectoral fins, quite severely dipping cape, and funny blunt heads with huge bandit masks. I think they have a friendly look to them.

Their scientific name is interesting too. Genus Peponocephala was created in 1966 by Nishiwaki and Norris, however the scientists made a small mistake. They thought “Pepo” meant melon, but in fact it translates to pumpkin. Wrong fruit. So, the Pumpkin-headed whale then. Nonetheless the name has been accepted and the common name kept intact. What the beautiful specific name electra refers to (they are also known as the Electra dolphin) is less certain. Most likely one of two Electras in Greek mythology; favour falls to Electra the daughter of Agamemnon who mourns her slain father. Perhaps the dolphin’s dark colours and “cape” on the back reminded of someone in mourning.

The little lads (+ friend)

Hey everybody. I've been down with the sickness as well as super busy with learning to drive trains, so a bit quiet again. But here’s some more friends from last year’s big commissions: a couple of little lads which I was glad to paint because a) they’re cute b) beautifully marked and c) for some reason I rarely get to paint them.

The Haviside’s dolphin has a funny story because it was actually misnamed. Captain Haviside first brought a specimen to the UK for study. The species was supposed to be named after him, but the zoologist studying the dolphin thought it was surgeon John Heaviside who’d brought it in (he did a lot of collecting too). Alas, scientific names may not be changed willy-nilly and so Captain Haviside remains forever miscredited. Common names, however, are flexible - hence my use of ‘Haviside’s dolphin’, even though ‘Heaviside’s’ is more common.

Commerson’s, our favourite oreo dolphin. There’s two subspecies: the South American which is black-and-white, and the Kerguelen, which is shown here and is more black-grey-white. I think they’re cool cause it shows there’s actually a colour pattern hidden in there. They also have serrated leading edges to their pectoral fins which is weird.

The Southern right whale dolphin is a bit shoe-horned in here (they’re not that little) courtesy of their bff relation with Dusky dolphins. For some reason the two species very often travel together and have even produced hybrid offspring.

A plethora of pilot whales

The alliterations continue, as well as the uploading of illustrations from last year’s two big project. This time, pilot whales. A big and impressive relative of the killer whale, which come in two species: the Long-finned (Globicephala melas) and Short-finned (Globicephala macrorhynchus). Ironically pectoral fin length isn’t always a good identifier, but shape is a good call: in Short-fins the pectoral fins have a continuous sickle shape, whereas in Long-fins the pectoral fins have a single bend, and then taper out very straight.

Within the species there is diversity too. Long-finned pilot whales are the colder water species of the two, and thus their range is divided into a northern and southern population. Northern animals are quite plain black aside from the white anchor marking on their chest and belly. However Southern animals bear very striking white eye- and saddle patches, a bit reminiscent of killer whales.

Short-finned pilot whales live in warmer waters and Japanese fishermen had long known of two different types. Recent research showed these to be two distinct global subspecies: the “Shiho” form, living mostly in the Eastern Pacific but also off Northern Japan, and the “Naisa” form, living in the rest of the Pacific Ocean, as well as the Indian and Atlantic. They can be told apart by their saddle patch: the Naisa form has a long saddle patch reaching almost the end of the peduncle, whereas the Shiho form has a very short one. I only illustrated Naisa animals, but all pilot whales currently living at Seaworld are of the Shiho form and you can see the difference in saddle patch length.

Within the Naisa form there’s yet more differences. In the Pacific and Indian Ocean, Naisa’s have very muted colouration, as shown by the bottom illustration. It can be hard to even spot their saddle patches at all! However Atlantic animals are very brightly coloured with beautiful creamy markings sweeping up from behind their eye and into their prominent saddle patches.

The Killer whale (Orcinus orca)

Some more illustrations from my current project; everyone’s favourite murder dolphin. They were a bit basic though (I think everybody knows what these guys look like by now) so I decided to turn them into something of an infographic, like with the Australian bottlenose dolphins. I do really like how these turned out though. Nice standard killer whales.

Fraser’s dolphin (Lagenodelphis hosei)

As promised, here are the full illustrations for the Fraser’s dolphin. They are such a stunning and unique looking dolphin, lots of fun to paint. Even though they look rather outlandishly different from what we’re used to, they actually showcase the very same colouration units that, say, a bottlenose dolphin wears. Just distributed differently. Most striking is the male’s bold black stripe. Females wear it in a medium grey while in young animals it is so light as to be almost invisible, making them look much more like ‘normal’ dolphins. Also, their fins are absolutely tiny. I love how silly it looks.

This species has their whole history captured in their names, which I think is beautiful. In Dutch, this species is also known as the Sarawak dolphin - the species was first described from a skull found on the island of Sarawak, Borneo, in 1895. Its Latin name ‘hosei’ honours the man who found it: Charles Hose, while its English name honours the man who examined the skull back in London: Francis Fraser. Fraser concluded the skull bore similarities to both the Delphinus and Lagenorhynchus genus and so the new genus was dubbed Lagenodelphis. It would take almost a hundred years before the species was first recorded in the flesh, in 1971. Imagine that. Just 50 years ago. It’s not a long time to get to know someone.

The Atlantic spotted dolphin - Stenella frontalis

This is without a doubt my favourite illustration for this project so far. I love Atlantic spotted dolphins, with their sociable personality, elegant faces and beautiful colouration - and these in particular. You see, while the Common bottlenose dolphin’s coastal and oceanic populations are best known, there’s more dolphins with a similar division amongst their ranks. Spotted dolphins (both the Atlantic and Pantropical) have offshore and coastal populations as well, which vary in colour. 

In case of the Atlantic, coastal animals - like those found in The Bahamas - are most heavily spotted. Adults can gain so many spots over the years that in the end, their colour pattern is reversed. White above, black below. Illustrated however, is an oceanic-type Atlantic spotted dolphin; and they hold on to their stark white bellies. The amount of spots varies between individuals, some are quite heavily spotted, others snowy white below the sides - but never is the belly covered. The white spots are also finer than those in coastal animals, and while I painted my animal with quite a lot, some have no more than a fine dusting of white.

Exquisitely beautiful animals if you ask me, and I am immensely happy that the spotting finally turned out to my liking (painting spots is harder than it seems).