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Description
This drawing took me some time. I was thinking alot about it. In the first step I wanted to draw a stag with mushrooms instead of the normal antlers. I like the idea. For me as someone working in the area of biologie parasites are very interesting. They can modify the body and the behaviour of their host.

A quite well known example is Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which is an insect-pathogenising fungus. It is found predominantly in the tropical forest ecosystem. This fungus is also called zombie fungus, because it infects ants and alternates their behavioral patterns. Infected hosts leave their nests and use their mandibles to affix themselves, til their death, to a major vein on the underside of a leaf. During its reproductive stage the fruiting bodies of the fungus grow from the ant's head and release their spores.

Well in this case I think about the infection of this deer not as a pathological act but as a mutation that leads to a more symbiotic coexistance. The question is how much control does the fungus have over this deer. How much ist the stag still a stag. Or is this even only a magical creature ^^. There are lots of stags with leafs as parts of their antlers or even small fungi, growing out of their antlers. But in this case the fungus is the antler.

That was the idea so far behind this drawing. I would love to draw more creatures of this kind. I hope I find the time for it, I got still so many unfinished drawings XD and ideas. This time it turned out quite sad I think.

paint tool: SAI, airbrush

Art and design by me, Cibana
Do not use or copy without permission

Description
This drawing took me some time. I was thinking alot about it. In the first step I wanted to draw a stag with mushrooms instead of the normal antlers. I like the idea. For me as someone working in the area of biologie parasites are very interesting. They can modify the body and the behaviour of their host.

A quite well known example is Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which is an insect-pathogenising fungus. It is found predominantly in the tropical forest ecosystem. This fungus is also called zombie fungus, because it infects ants and alternates their behavioral patterns. Infected hosts leave their nests and use their mandibles to affix themselves, til their death, to a major vein on the underside of a leaf. During its reproductive stage the fruiting bodies of the fungus grow from the ant's head and release their spores.

Well in this case I think about the infection of this deer not as a pathological act but as a mutation that leads to a more symbiotic coexistance. The question is how much control does the fungus have over this deer. How much ist the stag still a stag. Or is this even only a magical creature ^^. There are lots of stags with leafs as parts of their antlers or even small fungi, growing out of their antlers. But in this case the fungus is the antler.

That was the idea so far behind this drawing. I would love to draw more creatures of this kind. I hope I find the time for it, I got still so many unfinished drawings XD and ideas. This time it turned out quite sad I think.

paint tool: SAI, airbrush

Art and design by me, Cibana
Do not use or copy without permission