Unwritten, but true and pure, the law of the animal kingdom is that any creature can be king, for a day or for a million years. Not by being the strongest, or the most intelligent, but by surviving, outliving the odds of an ever-changing realm to make it long enough to make a lot of love. All colors, skins, and shapes are fashionable and smart designs here, welcome and necessary to live the equilibrium together. Equipped with tricks for challenges and instincts for fears, all keep the grand apparatus in motion. Slaughter never had a place in this order, only the kill. But the way it was, it is no more. One predator takes it all without even making an appearance at the murder scene, a convenient alibi written on a supermarket receipt. Pulverizing the bedrock evolutionary course of action and reaction with tools of ignorance, indifference and cruelty, man is now mass-manufacturing unnatural extinction events, including his own. When nature finds a way, like it always does, elegantly, and life bounces back in beautiful abundance, will we still be, a witness to see?
These shots are in color. For a b/w animals gallery click here.
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collections
photos | animals
Evolutionary Kaleidoscope
discovering nature's blueprint-variety
Evolution is incredible, believe (in) it or not! It is the long and complex link between life's dawn in single-celled organisms and its awakening in human consciousness. So much change has happened along nature's journey, so many blueprints tried and altered and dismissed and reinvented... see more
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a glimpse
glimpse: UNIMPRESSED | Self-what now? Self-drive safari? That didn’t sound right. I mean we’re talking wild animals here, above all the ones with wheels for legs. Weren’t these African national parks afraid that some ruthless safari human ran over a lion or a dung beetle? Nope. And wouldn’t the quadrupeds attack cars? Yebbo. Ask my friend how he learned that lionesses can open car doors with their teeth. Or let me draw you a front row picture of a charging elephant, forcing an entire lineup of vehicles into a comical polonaise of reversing cars. But the DIY-freedom is hard to pass up and as long as the interaction is respectful, the grey giants are utterly unimpressed with human presence, ambling in front of these most curious intruders without a worry in the world.
glimpse: REV | "Revving the engine is enough to lure them," explained our captain. Then he fed them anyway. Right off Belize's Caye Caulker, nurse sharks live alongside stingrays, eagle rays, manatees and other neighbors in an oceanic vicinity known as Shark Ray Alley. Local boat operators use bait in preparation of a touristic snorkel encounter with the harmless animals in the shallow and crystal clear Caribbean waters. The ethically dubious feeding practice has conditioned the sharks to line up in front of the boats by the mere sound of an outboard and raises the question of how this unnatural dependence and behavior will affect the animals in the long run.
glimpse: SENTIENCE BORDER | Looking down from the lofty top of the food chain, we feel like all other animals are at our disposal. Fellow evolutionary contenders serve us as food, entertainment, company, decoration or guinea pigs without having a say in it. That none of them speak our language is truly convenient, because we probably wouldn’t like what they’d have to say. Animals can’t tell us about their experience, but reading between the lines it’s easy to tell that many are sentient and some even self-aware in ways similar to human consciousness. The border we draw between sentient and insentient beings is mostly arbitrary and based on our comfort – a conscience just feels lighter when the ocean creature we cage for home décor doesn't feel. Yet, while the sentience of fish is still disputed, science has continuously revised the sentience border with concluded findings like the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, so that the circle of acknowledged perceiving and feeling animals has grown a lot bigger. Of course, humans feel pretty indifferent about that.
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Addo Elephant Park / South Africa · 2017 bird's eye view
Kerala / India · 2015 beetle extravaganza
Tokyo / Japan · 2016 Koinnichiwa
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related
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photos | essays
Disposable Nature
human agency in the enslavement of nature
...equipped with consciousness we are quite possibly the only animal around that has a notion of tomorrow and certainly the only one capable of actively shaping our future days together... see more
countries | Central America | Belize
Caye Caulker / Inflate-Burst-Flux of a Clichéd Island Bubble
the bond of a moment’s fun
...not much of you or anybody else can stay there, too little the ripple, too constant the stream. A moment’s fun is the bond and doesn’t ask for any more or less... explore
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