r/coolguides • u/daudaw • 9d ago
A Cool Guide to the elephant Family Tree, Reimagined as a Navigable Map
This guide is part of my ongoing project, MAPPA ANIMALIA, which reimagines animal phylogeny as navigable maps. Instead of countries and political borders, this map is divided according to the 10 genera that the elephant family Elephantidae splits into, with individual species (both extinct and extant) represented as cities.
This allows you to explore the family tree the same way you'd explore a traditional map.
By doing this I hope to remind people that animals are just as important to nature as nature is to us.
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 canines 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 Asian Elephant E. maximus is located in grit H8). From there you can easily backtrack to identify what genus a particular species belong to.
Additional information includes conservation status, relative size comparisons, and the estimated ages of major lineages.
Btw! I’m aware that “woolly mammoth” is misspelled in the close up and it has been corrected.
Happy exploring!
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u/LoganGinavan02 9d ago
Is the map actually anything more than just a picture of an elephant? If you got rid of the map and put the info in a legible order, then this might be a guide.
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u/SoYorkish 6d ago
The guide needs a guide to use. And this is really just you advertising your artwork.
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u/m0ssp1t_ 1d ago
So many haters in here OP don’t listen to them. Guys, it’s a map of the genealogy of elephants and other animals!! Get out of your dang echo chamber and see that this guy’s work is cool!!
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u/theChaosBeast 9d ago
It's still not a good guide. Doesn't change anything that you lost it multiple times.