Charming to a fault ... :)

Walruses rock, when combined with wonderful illustrations like the one seen above, one readily understands why Louis Carroll included one in The Walrus & the Carpenter poem that resides in Carroll's Thru the Looking Glass.

With that being said, scientific drawings like the one seen above, are charming to a fault, especially how the whiskers are rendered in sketch four of this amazing animal. :)

But not every concept is going to result in a serious picture. A squid in an MRI machine is always going to look pretty funny, no matter how well it is drawn.

So, the results of visually communicating science are often quirky, strange and, honestly, charming as heck. They're imbued with a certain je ne sais quoi that cannot be striven for, but must evolve organically from the concept, the illustration, or some arcane combination of both.

We've seen many such illustrations that stopped us in our tracks and made us smile. Here are some of our favourites - we hope you get a grin out of them, too.

You don't want to cross a walrus.

An actual squid MRI

You thought we made up the squid MRI, didn't you? Well, no. A team of scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia recently conducted a first-of-its-kind study to generate the most high-resolution 3D map of squid brains to date.

The old one got away. :)