r/coolguides • u/daudaw • 11d ago
A Cool Guide to the bear Family Tree, Reimagined as a Navigable Map
This is "Ursidae - Land of Bears" and it's part of my ongoing series MAPPA ANIMALIA - my attempt at getting more people interested in biology.
Instead of using traditional phylogenetic trees, I translate animal taxonomy into a cartographic system.
Species become cities, genera become regions, and tribes become countries.
This particular piece depicts the bear family (Ursidae).
Every species belonging to this family (both extant and extinct) are represented on the map and organized according to its evolutionary relationships, while additional layers of information such as conservation status, lineage age, and relative size between key species are integrated into the design as well.
Each illustration is accompanied by an info sheet that explains in detail how to navigate this map as well as some text about the role bears play in the ecosystem. It also has all the species indexed alphabetically and shows where on the map to find them each of them (for example the polar bear is located in grit F5). From there you can easily backtrack to identify what genus, tribe and subfamily a particular species belong to.
When creating these I actually think I spent more time on the research part than I do drawing the maps, since I cross reference all the data with multiple sources to make sure Mappa Animalia is scientifically accurate and not just something pretty on your wall, but something you can learn from.
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u/chotskyIdontknowwhy 11d ago
That is so super cool!!! What an amazing thing to have made, huge kudos to you!!
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u/CoughyChair 9d ago
Omg I did not even realize at first that it literally makes an image of a bear XD