Elephas Anthropogenus

Romans brought elephants to England during their invasions in first century of the common era, but after that, more than a thousand years passed before another elephant was actually seen by people in Britain- or most of Europe. But travelers brought back tales, which artists tried to illustrate. For his masters thesis at the University of Arts in Berlin, Uli Westphal created a taxonomic tree of those illustrations called Elephas Anthropogenus. It was later published in Zoologischer Anzeiger - A Journal of Comparative Zoology.

Since there was no real knowledge of how these animals actually looked, illustrators had to rely on oral, pictorial and written transmissions to morphologically reconstruct an elephant, thus, reinventing the image of an actual existing creature. This led, in most cases, to illustrations in which the most characteristic features of elephants – such as trunk and tusks – are still visible, but that otherwise completely deviate from the real appearance and physique of these animals. In this process, zoological knowledge about elephants was overwritten by its cultural significance. Based on a collection of these images I have reconstructed the evolution of the ‘Elephas anthropogenus’, the man made elephant.

Westphal's interactive chart is posted here. Click on an elephant to see the drawing up close. There are also links to the originals, like the hoofed elephant from the year 1444 shown here, although many suffer from link rot. -via Metafilter

Update: You can see quite a bit of those medieval artworks in a gallery at Flashbak.


Comments (0)

Some people will accidentally set it off themself... it's bound to happen but when it will happen it will prevent the owner of the car from using his car for some time and ever prevent other people around to drive safely.

Just buy a cheap car that nobody like. They wont steal that.
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Seems as if it would work--car thieves and robbers of convenient stores always seem rushed, as if they're in a bit of a hurry for some reason.

What's the name of the band in that video?
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Nice touch with the Death from Above 1979 song.

But I'm not sure how a theif could set it off and the owner won't. Is it a matter of hitting the thing?
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this is old news , my neigbours had this in their home office 15 years ago!
coupled with deafening siren its total sensory deprivation.
and as for waiting for it to dissipate , i think the smoke kept pumping for ages.
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Yup, it works like a charm, the retail company i work for has them installed in every store. I've been in the store when they go off, it takes about 15 seconds for the air to be filled with a fog that prevents you from seeing so much as a foot in front of your face. It works very well if the theives don't know their way out thats for sure!
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