Design Crush

According to photographer Yathin S Krishnappa, this is a Namaqua chameleon in threat display in the Namib desert in Namibia. The chameleon was in the middle of a highway and was approached to be moved off the road. The chameleon then changed its color to black and displayed its brightly colored mouth as a threat display.

While I’m sure the display can be threatening in certain situations, he still looks like a lizard giving a really big smile to me! :D

The Namaqua chameleon (Chamaeleo namaquensis) is a ground living lizard found in the western desert regions of Namibia, South Africa and southern Angola. They are one of the largest chameleon species in southern Africa, reaching up to 25 inches (63.5 cm) in length. [source]

The chameleon has evolved several adaptations to cope with desert conditions; they excrete salt from nasal glands to conserve water, and dig holes to aid in thermoregulation. They also use their ability to change colour to aid in controlling temperature, becoming black in the cooler morning to absorb heat more efficiently, then a lighter grey color to reflect light during the heat of the day. [source]

The original

Used and abused, Eylül Aslan

escuyer:

Oberlausitzer Science Library in Görlitz (via Pin by Escuyer on Interior Design | Pinterest)

torontofoodphotographer:

Iron Wood detail of Ai WeiWei sculpture

Over the past decade, artist Rachel Sussman has researched, worked with biologists, and travelled the world to photograph continuously living organisms that are 2,000 years old and older. Spanning from Antarctica to Greenland, the Mojave Desert to the Australian Outback, the result is a stunning visual collection of ancient organisms for a book entitled, The Oldest Living Things in the World.

Sussman’s book spans disciplines, continents, and millennia; underscored by an innate environmentalism and driven by her relentless curiosity. These ancient individuals live on every continent and range from Greenlandic lichens that grow only one centimeter a century, to unique desert shrubs in Africa and South America, a predatory fungus in Oregon, Caribbean brain coral, to an 80,000-year-old colony of aspen in Utah.

Her portraits reveal the living history of our planet—and what we stand to lose in the future. These ancient survivors have weathered millennia in some of the world’s most extreme environments, yet climate change and human encroachment have put many of them in danger. Two of her subjects have already met with untimely deaths by human hands.

Her book contains 124 photographs, 30 essays on her 30 subjects, original inforgraphics, and contributions by New York Times science columnist Carl Zimmer and world-renowned curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. Photography edited by Christina Louise Costello of MoMA. The book is published by the University of Chicago Press.

For more information please visit:

- Rachel Sussman: Official Site
- The Oldest Living Things in the World: Official Site
- The University of Chicago Press

VIA: ARREST US

saatchiart:

Nude, Studio
Massimo Conti
United Kingdom
Original: $700