Animals In Art: Gerbils, Elephants, Beetles And Bugs

An artist called Sally Madge has created a work of art with the help of the small, furry creature in the picture below. Yep, that's right - her assistant was a gerbil!

Gerbils love to nibble, gnaw and munch, so Sally decided to put a book into this lucky gerbil's cage... and to see what happened.

The gerbil began to work its way through the pages of the book, chomping and shredding as it went.

The book Sally used was a reference book from 1933, full of facts, figures and ideas.

Look carefully at the pictures to see what happened to the pages....

...the gerbil's done a good job hasn't she?

Sally is very interested in the way the gerbil has shuffled, or mixed up, those thousands and thousands of words.

© Waygood Gallery (both gerbil pics).

Do you think the words would still make sense? Perhaps the gerbil's made some new sentences or even new ideas?!

The book's shredded pages are on display in the Waygood Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne until July 30 2005, along with a video showing the arty gerbil at work. Sally's hard-working assistant meanwhile, is happily back at home.

It's not just gerbils who can be creative, here are a few more animals getting arty ....

These elephants at the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre in Thailand create art to let people know about the centre's work and to raise money.

Their helper or 'Mahout' pops a paintbrush up their trunk and the rest is down to the elephant!

Photo: Millie Young

Here's one of the elephants' paintings. It was put on show at the Booth Museum in Brighton in 2004.

What do you think - bold lines and great use of colour, eh?

Moving to the tail end of the elephant... artist Chris Ofili uses lumps of elephant dung in his paintings (he gets it from London Zoo).

He dries the dung and coats it in a thick layer of varnish so it doesn't smell!

Courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery, London.

The gerbil and elephants look as if they really enjoy their arty adventures, but life in the world of art and design isn't so much fun if you're a beetle...

This beautiful evening dress dates from around 1893 and would have been worn by a wealthy Victorian woman. It's decorated with net panels embroidered with gold thread and shiny green beetles' wing cases.

The embroidery was probably made in India - the city of Madras was a centre for beetle-wing embroidery, which was very popular with Europeans. Click here to see a larger version of this photo.

© Museum of London.

More unhappy bugs - these tiny things are the dried bodies of cochineal insects. Cochineal, or carminic acid, is a red colour that comes from drying and crushing the insects to extract the red colouring.

© Florida Center for Instructional Technology, University of South Florida.

Cochineal was used by the Aztec and Mayan people of South America to dye fabrics, and is still used as a fabric dye today. It's also used as a food colouring, and in make-up and artist's paints. In Tudor times, cochineal was rubbed on the cheeks and lips as blusher and lipstick.

Strange stuff isn't it? Can you find any more examples of arty animals? If so, why not use our Get in Touch page to tell us about it?

PS - it wouldn't be a good idea for you to feed your gerbils or any other pet, with a book, or for you to start collecting pet poo. But we don't need to tell you that do we?! Best to leave it to the experts.