The Death Watch Beetle is famous for making an annoying ticking sound when death is near. He hides where people can’t find him while ticking, so they cannot ward off death by squashing his fat, squat shiny black body with a shoe or hard cover book. Some believe he has a stopwatch in his bloated stomach, which is insatiable and distended with greed. Others think he is merely bloated with old fashioned malice. He often smells of spilled wine and widow’s tears. He is also considered a wretched mooch who hangs out at every funeral party he can find and eats all the egg salad and watercress sandwiches, pretending to be sympathetic when really all he’s thinking is “Haha, tick tick tick, you should have listened”.

Submitted by Kate Freuler

A massive dull brown / dark grey / reddish lizard with a forked tongue which kills its prey with a venomous bite. Its skin has a leathery appearance particularly around the neck where it kind of sags down and stretches when it turns its head. They hunt in packs and also scavenge for food. They have massive claws and sharp serrated teeth. It has a rounded snout strong limbs and a muscular body and tail.

Submitted by Gordon Bain

I drew this flower myself a few years back. I read about it in Aesop’s Fables it is a mythical flower that never fades.

here is the tale:
The Rose and the Amaranth


A Rose and an Amaranth blossomed side by side in a garden, and the
Amaranth said to her neighbor, “How I envy you your beauty and your
sweet scent! No wonder you are such a universal favorite.” But the
Rose replied with a shade of sadness in her voice, “Ah, my dear
friend, I bloom but for a time: my petals soon wither and fall, and
then I die. But your flowers never fade, even if they are cut; for
they are everlasting.”


“Greatness carries its own penalties.”

Submitted by Sasha

The numbat (Myrmecobius fasciatus), also known as the banded anteater, is a marsupial found in Western Australia. Its diet consists almost exclusively of termites. Once widespread across southern Australia, the range is now restricted to several small colonies and it is listed as an endangered species. The numbat is an emblem of Western Australia and protected by conservation programs.   The numbat genus myrmecobius is the sole member of the family myrmecobiidae; one of the three families that make up the order Dasyuromorphia, the generalised marsupial carnivores. The species is also known as the walpurti.

The numbat is a small, colourful creature between 35 and 45 cm (13-18”) long, with a finely pointed muzzle and a prominent, bushy tail about the same length as its body. Colour varies considerably, from soft grey to reddish-brown, often with an area of brick red on the upper back, and always with a conspicuous black stripe running from the tip of the muzzle through the eyes to the bases of the small, round-tipped ears. The underside is cream or light grey; weight varies between 280 and 550 grams.[2] Unlike most other marsupials, the numbat is diurnal, largely because of the constraints of having a specialised diet without having the usual physical equipment for it. Most ecosystems with a generous supply of termites have a fairly large creature with a very long, thin, sticky tongue for penetrating termite colonies, and powerful forelimbs with heavy claws.[3] Like other mammals that eat termites or ants, the numbat has a degenerate jaw with 52 very small non-functional teeth, and is unable to chew. Nonetheless, numbats do have a similar dental formula to many other marsupials: The species is not closely related to other extant marsupials; the current arrangement in the dasyuromorphia order places its monotypic family with the diverse and carnivorous species of Dasyuridae. A closer affinity with the extinct thylacine, contained in the same order, has been proposed.
Numbats are insectivores and eat an exclusive diet of termites. An adult numbat requires up to 20,000 termites each day. The only marsupial that is fully active by day, the numbat spends most of its time searching for termites. It digs up termites from loose earth with its front claws and captures them with its long sticky tongue. [4] Adult numbats are solitary and territorial; an individual male or female establishes a territory of up to 1.5 square kilometres (370 acres)[3] early in life, and defends it from others of the same sex. The animal generally remains within that territory from that time on; male and female territories overlap, and in the breeding season males will venture outside their normal home range to find mates. While the numbat has relatively powerful claws for its size,[3] it is not strong enough to get at termites inside their concrete-like mound, and so must wait until the termites are active. It uses a well-developed sense of smell to locate the shallow and unfortified underground galleries that termites construct between the nest and their feeding sites; these are usually only a short distance below the surface of the soil, and vulnerable to the numbat’s digging claws. The numbat synchronises its day with termite activity, which is temperature dependent: in winter, it feeds from mid-morning to mid-afternoon; in summer, it rises earlier, takes shelter during the heat of the day, and feeds again in the late afternoon. Despite its banded anteater name, ants are not a major component of their diet. At night, the numbat retreats to a nest, which can be in a hollow log or tree, or in a burrow, typically a narrow shaft 1-2 metres long which terminates in a spherical chamber lined with soft plant material: grass, leaves, flowers and shredded bark. The numbat is able to block the opening of its nest, with the thick hide of its rump, to prevent a predator being able to access the burrow.[5]   Until European colonisation, the numbat was found across most of the area from the New South Wales and Victorian borders west to the Indian Ocean, and as far north as the southwest corner of the Northern Territory. It was at home in a wide range of woodland and semi-arid habitats. The deliberate release of the European red fox in the 19th century, however, wiped out the entire numbat population in Victoria, NSW, South Australia and the Northern Territory, and almost all numbats in Western Australia as well. By the late 1970s, the population was well under 1,000 individuals, concentrated in two small areas not far from Perth, Dryandra and Perup. The first record of the species described it as beautiful;[6] its appeal saw it selected as the faunal emblem of the state of Western Australia and initiated efforts to conserve it from extinction.[5] It appears that the reason the two small Western Australia populations were able to survive is that both areas have many hollow logs that may serve as refuge from predators. Being diurnal, the numbat is much more vulnerable to predation than most other marsupials of a similar size: its natural predators include the Little Eagle, Brown Goshawk, Collared Sparrowhawk and Carpet Python. When the Western Australia government instituted an experimental program of fox baiting at Dryandra (one of the two remaining sites), numbat sightings increased by a factor of 40. An intensive research and conservation program since 1980 has succeeded in increasing the numbat population substantially, and reintroductions to fox-free areas have begun. Perth Zoo is very closely involved in breeding this native species in captivity for release into the wild. Despite the encouraging degree of success so far, the Numbat remains at considerable risk of extinction and is classified as an endangered species.

Submitted by artist Kassie McMahon

The Bilby, Macrotis lagotis, is an Australian species of nocturnal omnivorous animal in the Peramelemorphia order. The common name Bilby usually refers to this species, but is distinguished from Macrotis leucura (the Lesser Bilby) that became extinct in the 1950s by the name Greater Bilby. It is also referred to as the dalgyte or pinkie. The Greater Bilby lives in arid areas of central Australia. Their range and population is in decline. Once widespread in arid, semi-arid and relatively fertile areas, the Greater Bilby is now restricted to arid wastelands and remains a threatened species. It makes its home in a burrow that spirals down, making it hard for its predators to get in. The Bilby prefers arid habitats because of the Spinifex grass and the acacia shrubs.^[3] Bilbies have the characteristics of long bandicoot muzzle and very long ears. They are about 29–55 centimetres (11–22 in) in length. Compared to bandicoots, they have a longer tail, bigger ears, and softer, silky fur. The size of their ears allows them to have better hearing as well. At 1 to 2.4 kilograms (2.2 to 5.3 lb), the male is about the same size as a rabbit; although male animals in good condition have been known to grow up to 3.7 kilograms (8.2 lb) in captivity. The female is smaller, and weighs around 0.8 to 1.1 kilograms (1.8 to 2.4 lb). The Greater Bilby has an excellent sense of smell and sharp hearing. Its fur is blue-grey with patches of tan and it is very soft. The tail is black and white with a distinct crest. The Greater Bilby has strong forelimbs and thick claws, which it uses to dig for food and make burrows. Unlike bandicoots, they are excellent burrowers and build extensive tunnel systems with their strong forelimbs and well-developed claws. A bilby typically makes a number of burrows within its home range, up to about a dozen; and moves between them, using them for shelter both from predators and the heat of the day. The female bilby’s pouch faces backwards, which prevents her pouch from getting filled with dirt while she is digging. Bilbies have a very short gestation period of about 12–14 days, one of the shortest among mammals^.
Submitted by artist Kassie McMahon

The tiger quoll (Dasyurus maculatus), also known as the spotted-tail quoll, the spotted quoll, the spotted-tailed dasyure or (erroneously) the tiger cat, is a carnivorous marsupial native to Australia. It is mainland Australia’s largest, and the world’s longest (the biggest is the Tasmanian Devil), living carnivorous marsupial and it is considered an apex predator.   The tiger quoll is the largest of the quolls. Males and females of D. m. maculatus weigh on average 3.5 kg and 1.8 kg respectively and males and females of D. m. gracilis weigh on average 1.6 and 1.15 respectively.^[4] The next largest species, the western quoll, weighs on average 1.31 kg for males and 0.89 kg for females.^[5] The tiger quoll has relatively short legs but has a tail as long as its body and head combined.^[4] Both its head and neck are stout and its snout is slightly rounded. The skull is broad flat and only slightly rounded in profile with a slender rostrum that, unlike other quoll species, is parallel between canines and molar teeth.^[4] It has 5 toes on each feet, both front and hind, and the hind feet have well developed halluxes. There are also foot that extend to the wrist and heel joints and are pinked and ridged, owing to its arboreal lifestyle.^[6] This makes up for the fact that its tail is not prehensile. The tiger quoll has a reddish-brown pelage with white spots and colorations does not change seasonally. It is the only quoll species with spots on its tail in addition to its body. An orange-brown colored oil covers both its fur and skin. The underside can be grayish or creamy white. The average length of D. m. maculatus is 930 mm for males and 811 for females respectively. For D. m. gracilis, the average length of males and females respectively is 801 mm and 742 mm.
Submitted by artist Kassie McMahon

The jackalope is a fearsome creature that lives in the deserts of the Western United States. Many doubt their existence, but I believe that’s because no one’s seen one and lived to tell the tale.

On the outside, the Jackalope appears to be a simple creature. It is essentially a common jackrabbit, with gangly legs, ears large and tall, and hind legs that could kick up mounds of sand in no time flat. It has long claws to fend off attacking jackrabbits, and large eyes that see all. In addition, the Jackalope has a set of antlers on its head, just as a deer would. These antlers range anywhere from four to eight points. Some Jackalopes even have the antlers of a Pronghorn Antelope, another Western creature.

Jackalopes are said to have the ability to mimic the human voice, often singing along with lonely cowboys from a distance. They also are attracted to whiskey, which may be the easiest way to catch one. But the Jackalope is a fierce beast, and it would be wise not to get too close to one should you meet

Submitted by Jess Hillard

A large animal weighing 800-1100kg for males, its skin sags greatly at its chest and underbelly. It’s got an obtrusive hump on its upper back. Its horns curl upwards and its ears flop downwards. Usually dirty white splattered with grey and black spots. The area around its eyes are lined with what looks like smudged mascara

Submitted by Ying

The echidna is often thought of as Australia’s answer to the porcupine or hedgehog in that its back is covered in ivory to yellow coloured spines that it can raise and lower but it is somewhere between the two in size. The spines are about the thickness of a knitting needle.

Without the spines it might look something like a a small brown bear (it is covered in soft, dark brown fur and has a similar waddle) but it has a beak, rather like a thin elongated duck-bill. In fact, it is a species of the monotreme family, like the duck-billed platypus, and lays eggs as they do, carrying it’s young in a rear-facing pouch on it’s belly when they hatch.

It’s four, squat little legs have very long sharp claws to tear apart the hiding places of ants and insects to snatch them up with it’s long sticky tounge.

Its eyes are tiny and bright and face on, the spines fan out around their little faces like a… well… like a lady’s fan.

Like other spiny or armoured creatures it curls into a ball when threatened.

Submitted by Sally Rees

A ghost-like sea-angel, this is a naked pelagic snail, up to 1.4 cm long, with a semi-transparent body, the visceral mass is seen through the body wall. It is conical in shape, with two lateral arms each with 40 suckers. It is a good swimmer that hunts shelled pteropods as food and lives in the Antarctic Ocean .

Submitted by Valerie

Around 6’6 tall from the tip of its flat-topped ears to the bottom on its four humanesque feet, each with seven bone-clawed toes, all the better to trot through the forest with. A muscular slim line body makes up the bulk of the creature’s hunter body, covered in a dark purplish soft skin to scare away would-be predators, which has deeply scored patterns etched in to intimidate and which can be seen vaguely through its pale multi-toned brown and grey fur coat - mottled in pattern and all the better to hide in the rocky landscape of the mountains with.

From its trunk extends a long, thin neck, bristling on each side with a symmetrical pattern of small, curved bone horns. Which stop just under where its thick elongated snout set upon a bulbous little head is set, perfect for rotating 360 degrees to pin-point its chosen target or destination. Its heavy lids partially hide hard, emerald-like eyes. Finally an elongated forked tongue of the deepest vermillion can snake out at any moment to scent the air around him, especially in the darkness of the forest.

Submitted by Michelle K Jamieson

Also known as the cigar shark, it is a member of the dogfish family and can be found in warm water, particularly around archipelagos. It lurks in deep waters, two miles below the surface, during the day and rises at dusk to feed before descending with the dawn.

It is long and cylindrical, reaching up to twenty-two inches, and fleshy brown in colour. Its skin is wrinkled, almost as if it had been in water for a little too long, and it has rows of photophores along its belly which glow bright blue in the darkness. From below, a neon spine attached to two sets of side-fins (one behind its head and the other just in front of its short tail) appears to snake through the depths, with two disembodied glowing eyes leading the way.

In the light, those eyes are oil-black and the size of fat coins. They sit just behind a stubby snout. On the underside of that snout the mouth which is its namesake is round and squished upwards into a demonic grin. The top of its mouth is edged by flabby lips only but within the bottom border, a crescent-shaped row of teeth sit, looking for all the world like the curved blade of a saw. In the blackness of an oceanic night, it is these teeth that latch onto an unsuspecting porpoise or whale and neatly remove a circular chunk of flesh before darting away almost instantaneously. Once day comes, the only sign of its presence is a cookie cutter-shaped scar marring the skin of its prey.

Submitted by Sarah

A wonderful little animal in a zoo in Japan […].  It was like a teeny tiny deer, definitely less than a foot high, with disproportionately short legs and a really round, chubby body.  Its face was long and narrow with a small black nose and short pointy ears, and it had large, inquisitive eyes.  I think its body was spotted, and its fur was a reddish-brown colour.

Submitted by Kimberley Beattie

In the small American town of New Milford CT lives the king of flies, a beast of such proportions I was sure I was being ‘wound up’ before I seen it with my own eyes.

It dates from prehistoric times and is bigger than the average human hand. It has a wide, oval shaped body with protruding yet small beady eyes that appear glazed over (eyes which cannot see as the Dobson Fly has terrible/limited vision). It is olive green in colour and has long slender wings protruding from the centre of its body coming out past its back end. The wings are see through and have beautiful, intricate, angular patterns inside them. The legs (6 of them) are short and stumpy and it has a hoover like nose!

Submitted by Marguerita

Pitcher plants live in swamps or bogs and survive by trapping insects in their sweet smelling digestive juices at the bottom of their pitcher-shaped bodies (in so much as a plant can have a body). They are primarily green with some vertical reddish streaks, and the inner lip of the pitcher is usually lighter in color than the outside. They’re quite thin compared to what we think about as drinking pitchers, but the shape is similar. I think about them as being about 8 - 10 inches tall, but I think some varieties can grow larger than that. Their only leaves make up their bodies, so they don’t have regular branches and leaves, just leaves furled together to make a bug-trapping pitcher.

Submitted by Alexis

Ceruleoptera Pellisae is unique among the ‘insecta’ class in having a furred abdomen and thorax, hence its name. In addition to its distinguishing ‘pelt’, it displays hard blue-green wing-casings, and a long proboscis adapted to sucking pollen from deadly nightshade.

Measuring seven inches from its hindparts to the tip of the antennae, the abdomen is covered in a fine pale down, whilst the upper thorax is more obviously furred, in a darker shade marked with bluish transverse lines.

The Pellisae has two pairs of wings, the hind pair being significantly broader than the forewings. The outspread wings measure some nine inches in diameter, and are colourless and remarkably fragile; upon its first discovery in 1812, it was thought the wings were residual, being too frail to bear the proportionally larger weight of the furred body.

In rest, Pellisae conceals its wings beneath a curved casing extending the length of the body, leaving only the deep furred belly visible. The casing is unevenly faceted, rather like a roughly cut gemstone, and iridescent in the manner of an blue abalone shell. These casings are naturally shed every thirty-nine days, and it is believed the court of Queen Victoria saw a brief fashion for jewellery (particularly belts) adorned with the casings.

Pellisae’s three pairs of legs are as fragile and seemingly unsuited to its weigth as the wings, and are unusually jointed, with each leg bearing an additional joint giving the appearance of a long white shoe with a narrow curved toe.

The mouthparts are concealed beneath a long tuft of fine golden-brown fur, from which the proboscis is unfurled swiftly during feeding. The antennae, which appear to move independently of each other in a continuous questing motion, resemble long narrow pale-brown feathers, dipped, at the further extremity, in blue ink.

Ceruleoptera Pellisae is nocturnal, and though there have been no studies confirming the rumour, it is thought that during its brief mating season the female’s underbelly sheds a portion of its fur revealing a bioluminescent glow that may be seen at a distance of some twenty feet.

Submitted by writer Sarah Perry

The main body shape is that of a sea horse, but it’s snout is much longer and thinner. It’s body is quite odd shaped, kind of like a ginger root, but in one smooth wiggly shape.

The leafy sea dragons tend to be a yellow / gold colour and have vertical stripes down the side of their body. These stripes are quite thin with white in the middle and red on either side.

It then looks like it got crossed with a leafy bush. Tendrils or fins come out of it all round it’s body and head, but not on the sides of it. Each of these look like a little bunch of delicte leaves. These can have light brown smudges on them. It also has smaller sticky out fins over it’s back and tummy. There are also little bunches of these leaves/fins sticking out of it’s head.

It’s eyes are yellow with a black pupil, and it has a dark brown patch around the eye.

Submitted by Elaine McVicar, Designer

If you were to view a silhouette of this creature you’d say with certainty it was a frog.

If you then turned a light on it you’d notice the colour scheme as well as the upper torso, front arms and hind legs are all precicely like that of a frog, but you’d be shocked by the head and full torso of the creature.

With a frog, the head seems to point proudly upwards, is a bit fat and round and has big, bulging round eyes.

In the case of this creature, the head points aggresively downward, the deep-set, mottled orange eyes are slanted into an evil stare and the general shape is flatter and more pointed.

The lower torso too isn’t jolly and rotund like a frogs, this creature has a lean, long reptilian body. A close comparison might be a komodo dragon.

Its stance suggests that unlike a frog (which jumps upward), this creature will launch forward directly at prey in a rugby tackle manouvre, grasping with it’s longer, leaner arms.

The back is smooth and flat, apart from a boney hunch around three quarters of the way down. This is an odd feature of a creature that suggests a hint of frailty to the aggresive, deadly figure it cuts. Only one of these creatures has ever been seen!

Submitted by David Park, Designer

The male is the one with the most colourful feathers - this is the one I’m describing. It kind of starts off looking a bit like a blackbird, with kind of coppery tinges. It’s quite a small bird - up to 21cm. It originates from Indonesia/Asia.

The crown of it’s head has sections of a vivid cyan blue. These bits don’t have feathers on it. There is semi-circular patch of bright yellow feathers on the back of it’s neck, then big patches of red feathers down it’s back. It’s front has emerald green, and it’s feet are a royal blue.

The loveliest part is two crazy tail feathers - these are violet. These spiral out of the bird in mirror image swirls.

Submitted by Elaine McVicar, Designer

It’s a mammal and it’s sort of like a pig in size and shape, although they can be very large too, with a snout like an anteater but shorter, and quite like a rhino in it’s slight prehistoric feel, but without the horn. Their colouring can be dark brown/grey but some have a large white ‘saddle’ around their middle. They look quite sweet, not really frightening. Kinda mellow.

Submitted by Michelle Haswell, Designer and writer at Kingdom of Style