The Little Bestiary of Wonders, a book on quirky behavior in the animal kingdom by Dirk Steffens that I illustrated, was featured on a popular German TV late night show on November 12th. TV total, hosted by Stefan Raab, invited the author, also a TV host and a producer of documentaries about wildlife for Arte and ZDF television, to discuss his book, which unravels some of the weirdest and most outlandish mysteries nature has to offer.

Published by Rowohlt, one of Germany’s largest book publishers, my cover illustration shows a great many wild animals against a pitch dark background, while my one hundred black and white interior visuals in whimsical cartoon style, many in full-size, illustrate the individual chapters. The jacket cover was shown a number of times during the interview, and Raab himself recommended the book, yay :-)

(All screenshots (c) by ProSieben/TV Total)

Here’s an excerpt from the chapter on bonobos. I have worked with bonobos in the past BTW – this was in another life, of course (thank you for the happy memories, Gottfried Hohmann and Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt!) – , and so it’s been great fun getting to draw them after all these years.

Bonobo. Populärname: Zwergschimpanse, Bonobo. Wissenschaftlicher Name: Pan paniscus. Lebensraum: Kongo. Größe: Gut 80 Zentimeter. Kuriosum: Sexmonster.

Die Bonobos gleichen uns aufs Haar. 99 Prozent unserer Gene sind identisch, biologisch betrachtet gehören wir also wirklich zur selben Familie. Es scheint jedoch – leider! – ausgerechnet dieses kleine eine Prozent zu sein, welches völlig unterschiedliche Strategien der Konfliktlösung determiniert. Die Zwergschimpansen sind deutlich friedlicher als andere Primaten, und wenn sie doch mal aneinandergeraten, dann endet das meistens mit Sex. Unabhängig von Alter, Geschlecht und sozialer Stellung lösen die schlauen Tiere ihre Konflikte mit Zärtlichkeit.

Read an excerpt from the book in the original layout as a PDF file.

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This is one of my favorite images from a book on animals which has just gotten published by Rowohlt Verlag in Germany. With black coucals, apparently, it’s the female who’s got the saying at home ;-)

Here’re two more snapshots from the book:

(Interestingly enough, I used to work with bonobos waaaay back in the old days when I was thinking about doing a thesis on those creatures – but this is the first time I have actually gotten around to bringing them to paper!)

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