First, we brought you RoboZoo. And while mechanical animals are cool, we still love paper. So we rounded up an ark-full of origami bears, birds and bugs.
Wildlife biologist Bernie Peyton has been working with origami for more than 50 years, almost as long as he's been interested in conservation. Peyton, who has a doctorate in zoology from the University of California, Berkeley, wants to enliven environmental issues for the masses, and origami, he says, appeals to people of all ages.
"I write a lot of boring [academic] articles nobody reads, but conservation also has to appeal to the emotional side," Peyton told Wired. "That's why I do art."
He chose origami because its fragility complements "the ephemeral nature of our world," he said. Plus, he uses his experience as a field biologist to inform how he molds paper into cacti, bears, kangaroo rats, snakes and polar bears, all of which he's spent considerable time with.
"I don't fold anything I don't have a personal experience with," he said.
"The decades I spent as a field biologist enabled me to breath life into my own creations," he writes on his website.
He recently showcased some of his creations during the Bay Area Science Festival Nov. 1 and 2 at a gallery in Berkeley. Enjoy.
Peyton's walrus trio shows the blubbery mammals as they're often found, in groups. Both males and females have tusks, which they often use to pull themselves out of the water. The males use them to fight off other bulls and to protect their females.
Peyton's piece is part of a larger group of origami sculptures depicting the effects of climate change on Arctic species as they struggle with melting ice.
All origami images and designs: courtesy of Bernie Peyton.
"I have a love affair with polar bears," said Peyton, who has spent time in the Arctic. "They're so majestic."
Polar bears, like walruses and harp seals, depend on ice to rear their young. As the planet warms and this cold commodity becomes scarcer, polar bear populations could decrease, according to a 2011 report in the journal Nature Communications. Polar bears are listed as a threatened species.
"What's happening with the polar bear is just a total tragedy," said Peyton. "I wanted to celebrate their uniqueness and wonderfulness."
Leaf Cutter Ants
Peyton refers to these red ants as the first farmers of the world. They cut up leaves, take them to their burrows and cultivate mold on them, which they use to feed. They don't actually eat the leaves, but as they transport them, they fertilize them with ant poop to make sure mold grows on them well. These ants live in South American rain forests, where Peyton did field research.
Peyton's ant sculpture, entitled Survival of the Fittest, is a commentary about the suburbanization of America. The leaf cutter ants are harvesting a map of Levittown, New York, one of the first housing developments in the country. "It's a comment about who was going to survive on this planet, ants or humans," he said.
He seems to be placing his bets on the six-legged bugs.
Bottom image: Leaf cutter ants. Wikipedia.
Short-nose kangaroos are more like squirrels than rats, Peyton says. "They have the best kidneys in the world," he said. "They come out at night and get all their water from dry seeds," after spending up to 22 hours in their underground burrows.
These long-tailed creatures live in deserts and can jump several feet off the ground to avoid predators like owls, foxes, or coyotes. These furry animals have little pouches on their cheeks in which they haul seeds back to their subterranean lairs.
Peyton studied these mouse-sized critters in California's San Joaquin Valley during graduate school at UC Berkeley.
He recalls waiting two years for a permit to study these rodents, until federal and state officials granted him permission to radio-collar five. "When later I was refused permission to live-trap and release [kangaroo rats], I had to come up with a study plan that relied on passive technology," he said. "Instead of monitoring the animals, I needed to wire up the environment, and let the animals tell me how they used it."
He hid buttons under 48 seed-filled trays connected with kilometers worth of wires. The wires were hooked up to a data logger that measured how long kangaroo rats spent digging for seeds and the time of day. This way, he could study how location, the presence of predators and the seed amount affected kangaroo rats.
"The tens of thousands of feeding events I recorded provided answers to more questions than I originally conceived," Peyton said. "Origami helped me think outside the box...[it] saved my dissertation."
Bottom image: Kangaroo rat. Wikipedia.
Male anolis lizards head-bop and extend a large-flap of skin under their jaw to establish their territories. This behavior signals to other males to stay out and that all the females in their proximity are off limits to other suitors. But when they do that, "they're very visible and can get eaten," said Peyton. He placed his paper reptile on the edge of a plant limb to depict this vulnerability.
Other researchers are using robo-lizards to study how anoles communicate using these signas.
Bottom image: Anolis lizard. Wikipedia.
"Those are the foxes that ate my kangaroo rats," said Peyton.
These animals live in deserts and get the water they need from the furry creatures they eat, like hares, squirrels, lizards and kangaroo rats. These bushy-tailed mammals are mostly nocturnal and not very territorial.
Bottom image: Kit fox. Wikipedia.
Eyelash Pit Viper
This "fairly common and highly poisonous little snake hangs around in the mid-canopy" of rain forests of Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Honduras, said Peyton. He often encountered them during field expeditions.
"When I was cutting train in the field, I had to worry about them because they're right at neck level," he recalled. He never got bitten.
These snakes have tiny horn-like projections on their eyes resembling eyelashes, from which they get their name.
New York City is often referred to as the city that never sleeps. Perhaps part of the reason is its recent bedbug epidemic, which even hit the United Nations and SoHo's Hollister store. During the day, they hide out in beds, upholstered furniture and even walls and appliances.
Peyton says he visited New York for an origami conference at the peak of the bedbug infestation, so he thought it would be a great idea to have an origami bedbug display at the convention.
"We sent that to Mayor Bloomberg's office," said Peyton. "I don't think he appreciated it."
Peyton's probably right. These tiny, reddish brown insects are an absolute nightmare. They're hard to get rid of because bedbug populations can double every 16 days. People who have them often throw out their mattresses, which means these pests can hitch a ride to a new home on unaware passers-by. The City even started handing out fines to people who didn't cover their mattresses before putting them on the streets as a way to stem their spreading.
Guided by the carbon dioxide people breathe out, bedbugs crawl atop their sleeping hosts at night to feast on their blood. The at-first unsuspecting humans then wake up with groups of two or three itchy and scratchy bites, often termed breakfast, lunch and dinner.
"The risk of encountering bedbugs increases if you spend time in places with high turnovers of nighttime guests — such as hotels, hospitals or homeless shelters," according to the Mayo Clinic website.
While they might wreak havoc on your sleeping habits and sanity, these bugs don't seem to carry diseases.
To Peyton, cacti "sort of look like people," he said. Their shapes remind him of human arms and legs. He spent a lot of time with these plants in Peru and often watched the bears he was studying climb them. Cacti live in varied environments ranging from Patagonia in Argentina, Mexican deserts, up to western Canada.
These spiny plants have gained popularity as decorative objects, so much so that there seemed to be a black market for high-end cacti. "The problem is so bad that surveillance cameras have gone up near large concentrations of cactuses in urban landscaping, and authorities expect to implant microchips into the barrels soon to track their whereabouts," the Los Angeles Times wrote in 2008.
Pacific salmon swim upriver to lay their eggs and then they die and float downstream.
"The upriver salmon migration is one of nature's most exciting dramas. But to the five species of Pacific salmon (chinook, chum, coho, pink, and sockeye), it is a long, strenuous, desperate race against time, with every obstacle taking its toll," according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).
Many salmon populations are threatened by the "four H's": habitat destruction, hydroelectric dams, over-harvesting, and competition with hatchery fish, according to the FWS. Some stocks are even listed as endangered or threatened species.
"They're a really important species," said Peyton. "I wanted to celebrate that."
The world's frog populations are going extinct because of fungal infections, Peyton said. The rain forests where he used to work were home to hundreds of species, some of which are no longer there. He says he often ponders whether he brought some parasitic fungus himself.
"I have some responsibility there," he said.
He thinks frogs are often alone in the world, and so he wanted to depict them that way in his art.
Red-eyed tree frogs hunt insects by night.
They're not endangered, but their habitats in the tropical lowlands of Mexico and Central and South America are.
Peyton studied spectacled bears from 1977 to 1985 in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. He also did some black bear trapping in Idaho, Arizona and Montana. His job was to figure out where they lived and how best to protect their populations. He mobilized youngsters to do research on bears and helped create national parks for them around the world.
His "Lying Bear" sculpture, which is influenced by Inuit art, he says, depicts a happy and relaxed bear resting.
"My brother was having problems with red foxes eating his chickens, so I made this for him," he said.
These animals are not picky eaters. They'll eat chickens, rodents, rabbits, birds, and almost anything else that's in their surroundings. These foxes hunt solo and live in forests, deserts, mountains and close to farms. They can carry diseases such as rabies, but seem to also help decrease the spread of Lyme disease by eating mice that carry the bacteria that causes it.
Peyton modeled his owlets after the burrowing owls that ate the kangaroo rats he studied during graduate school in the San Joaquin Valley.
These predators are considered an endangered species in Canada and the state of Minnesota and are listed as a species of concern in California, Montana and Oklahoma, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Bald eagles, especially baby ones, are among our favorite predatory birds. They mate for life and build nests measuring up to 10 feet in diameter and weighing 1,000 pounds. They lay between one and three eggs each year, which take about a month to hatch.
Peyton's bald eagle origami shows two of these birds fighting over the U.S. during the 2000 election. One symbolizes former Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore and former President George W. Bush.
Peyton has chosen piranhas as symbols for the 2012 presidential race.