艺术中的科学秘密：从17世纪画作到现代生态发现

This 17th century work depicts a bat eating a songbird, a behavior scientists only recently confirmed. In the upper right corner of his 1611 painting “Air,” Flemish artist Jan Brueghel the Elder drew a bat holding a songbird in its jaws. While the painting might have been an allegory, the bat’s behavior was real — though scientists would not officially observe the behavior for another 400 years. Artists are often keen observers of nature. Whether mimicking the reality in still lifes and landscapes or imagining a composite world filled with symbolism and fantasy, some artists show real biological phenomena — from predator-prey interactions to insect metamorphoses. …