Dan Otte catching flying grasshoppers in the Kalahari desert.
When Dan Otte, curator of the entomology department at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, went to his 53-year high school reunion in South Africa earlier this year, he was confronted by several female classmates who demanded an explanation for the mysterious doodles he'd left in their autograph books half a century earlier.
Instead of penning fond rememberances, Otte drew baboons and antelopes jumping over bushes and being pounced on by lions. “I never knew what to say to girls,” he says.
Although he says he has no recollection of doing those sketches, Otte has been drawing what he sees ever since he can remember. Growing up in Zululand, South Africa meant he was privy to some spectacular scenes.
“I was always drawing antelopes ...
