If you’re stuck for creative inspiration, the colourful and captivating creatures that inhabit the planet are a good place to start

Wonder is a feeling that can inspire creativity – perhaps triggering you to put pen to paper, pick up a paintbrush, compose a piece of music or craft something with your hands. If you find yourself in a creative rut, rediscovering that sense of wonder can be as simple as looking to the exotic and aweinspiring creatures that seemingly create their own art as they go about their lives.

From the peacock fanning out its vibrant tail to attract a mate to glow-worms lighting up a meadow on a summer’s evening, Earth is teeming with incredible sights and sounds from other living beings. So, the next time you find yourself stuck or blocked, why not look to wildlife for direction? Whether you’re drawn to the butterflies in your back garden or to documentaries that transport you to rainforests and oceans far away, there’s bound to be something out there to fire your imagination.

Fantastic beasts

It was a question that puzzled biologists for centuries – why do zebras have stripes? These African mammals are certainly eye-catching. Not only does each different species of zebra have a different pattern, colour and design of stripes, but no two are the same. In fact, the zebra’s stripes are as unique as the human fingerprint, making them living, breathing works of art. Rudyard Kipling was inspired to imagine in his Just So Stories that the zebra got its stripes by standing half in the shade and half out, ‘with the slippery-slidy shadows of the trees’ falling on its body. And, indeed, scientists believe that one of the functions of the stripes is to work as a camouflage against prey. More recently, biologists also discovered that the stripes help to repel flies by effectively dazzling them and making it difficult for them to distinguish a good landing spot.