This painting, Animal Map of the World, now available as a poster, does exactly what it says on the tin; it shows some of the many creatures we share the planet with, in the approximate place you might find them. The original watercolour painting was a commission for Mini Map Makers for use in a series of children’s cartographic textbooks.

Which animals are where in world?

• North America – brown bear, bison, striped skunk, monarch butterfly
• Central and South America – keel-billed toucan, red-eyed tree frog, green iguana, southern tamandua, guanaco, Commerson’s dolphin
• Africa – carmine bee-eater, dromedary camel, scarab beetle, African elephant, giraffe, ring-tailed lemur
• Europe and Asia – reindeer, red fox, great-spotted woodpecker, Przewalski’s horse, grey wolf, Japanese red-crowned crane, peregrine falcon, panda, Bengal tiger, Arabian oryx, Indian cobra
• Australasia – red kangaroo, kiwi, flying fox
• Antarctica- gentoo penguin, king penguins
• Pacific Ocean – salmon, sunfish, sealion, humpback whale
• Atlantic Ocean –   Atlantic puffin, cod, green turtle, bluemarlin, Commerson’s dolphin, chambered nautilus, waved albatross
• Indian Ocean – white shark, whale shark, orca, manta ray, yellow tang, clown fish
• Arctic Ocean – narwal, ringed seal, polar bear, eider duck, walrus

Animal map

There are many animal maps of the world out there (this is hardly an original idea), but many of them show hopelessly simplified representations of animals, or are exceptionally detailed. The painting is designed to come somewhere in between. Mini Map Makers, who commissioned it, will use it in school workbooks to teach 4- to 11-year-olds.

In this current age of catastrophic global extinctions, it’s important that we humans do all we can right now to fight for and preserve the planet’s biodiversity and habitats while we still have species to save. Not just the big ‘iconic’ species, many of which appear on my Animal Map of the World painting. But the small ‘uncute’ stuff too; amphibians, insects, crustaceans, molluscs. Without biodiversity, we ourselves are unlikely to survive. Because we are all in it together.