Having recently republished an old, classic article on Speculative Zoology – that based around a 2014 interview with After Man creator Dougal Dixon – it seemed appropriate to republish another Tet Zoo classic...
I’m referring here to my 2015 article on Marc Boulay and Sébastien Steyer’s 2015 book Demain, les Animaux du Futur, originally outed at Tet Zoo ver 3, but now republished here, in revamped and updated form…
As will be obvious if you read the previous Tet Zoo article – or if you’re familiar with Dougal Dixon’s several books on the subject – speculative zoology is very much a ‘visually driven’ field, one where the look of the animals is important. And it’s in that vein that Boulay and Steyer’s Demain, les Animaux du Futur excels. First things first: this book is in French, and an English-language version does not exist, at least not to my knowledge. Back in 2015, efforts were made to get one produced but ultimately fell through. Whatever, Spec Zoo fans should obtain the volume for its illustrations alone. It has been the subject of an enormous amount of interest in France and I've seen numerous relevant interviews and articles in magazines, newspapers, and on TV.
Caption: once again, we have to give credit to After Man (Dixon 1981) as the foundational work behind this newer one. At right, what appears to be a new, 2025 Japanese edition of Demain, les Animaux du Futur (from here).
By total coincidence, I’ve only just discovered that a Japanese edition exists. I initially thought that this was brand new for 2025 but now know that it was published in 2017. You’ll recall from the Dougal Dixon article that Japan has a huge audience of Spec Zoo followers, meaning that publishers and broadcasters take it more seriously than they do elsewhere. Anyway… here’s hoping that an English language version does get the green light at some point. The book’s title – Demain, les Animaux du Futur – doesn’t translate especially well into English. Literally, it’s Tomorrow, the Animals of the Future, but I suspect it should be imagined as something more like ‘The Animals of Tomorrow’.
Co-authored and illustrated by artist Marc Boulay and palaeontologist Sébastien Steyer’s Demain, les Animaux du Futur is beautiful and lavishly illustrated in colour throughout, featuring spectacular renditions and diagrams of its hypothetical future creatures. The setting is the Early Neozoic of 10 million years in the future, a time in which humans are long-extinct, the 6th Great Extinction has been and gone, and a variety of new species inhabit the oceans and landmasses. The authors explain that they chose this time frame because it’s distant enough to allow sufficient novelty, is not so distant that truly different organisms might have evolved, and also represents a section of time mostly unexplored by previous authors (Boulay & Steyer 2015). On that note, it is implied that the work might exist in the same universe as certain other Spec Zoo projects.
Caption: life-sized models of two 'Dixonian epoch' animals on show at the at the Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique (IRSNB), Brussels, and photographed in 2010. At top, the giant penguin Neopygoscelis and, below it, the flightless pelagic petrel Propellonectes. Neopygoscelis here is shown as grey, albeit countershaded, but the version in Demain has a more penguin-like livery. I published a Tet Zoo article on these models (and others in the same exhibit) can no longer find an intact version. Images: Darren Naish.
The theme explored here is, I hardly need say, similar to that of Dougal Dixon’s After Man (Dixon 1981; Dixon 2021) and The Future Is Wild (Dixon & Adams 2004). Early sections of the book discuss this history (credit too is given to the Russell and Séguin dinosauroid; for more on that see this Tet Zoo article from 2021), and the authors explain how they were inspired by these works in crafting their own vision of the future. Incidentally, the genesis of their project is, I presume, reflected in the Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique’s installation on the ‘Dixonian epoch’, since that includes certain creatures that feature in the book (Boulay & Steyer 2015).
Caption:Demain does a good job of setting the version of Spec Zoo it follows within its correct historical perspective. As you can see from the pages shown here, there’s fair coverage of Dougal Dixon and After Man and of Russell and Séguin’s dinosauroid. Image: Boulay & Steyer (2015).
In contrast to a few other books that focus on speculations about the lives of animals (I’m thinking here of the Walking With books in particular), the text doesn’t revolve around ‘day in the life’ style storytelling, which is good news as far as I’m concerned. Instead, the text is mostly devoted to describing the world we’re immersed in, and of the biology, ecology and evolutionary history of the organisms we meet (Boulay & Steyer 2015). Profile sections introduce the relevant species and describe facts about their biology, ecology and anatomy. They have technical scientific names, some of which include references to the Alien films, Blade Runner and Daft Punk. H. G. Wells, Gert van Dijk (of Furaha), palaeoartist Zdeněk Burian and others are commemorated too.
Caption: night-vision scene from Boulay & Steyer (2015) showing flightless birds interacting on the Euroafrican savannah, Necropteryx at left, Tyrannornis at right. Image: Boulay & Steyer (2015).
Full-colour images feature on virtually every page of Demain, les Animaux du Futur. There are also diagrams illustrating evolutionary sequences and numerous details of anatomy. The CG, photo-real artwork is spectacular and many of the complaints so often levelled at CG depictions of animals do not apply. The animals fit into their environments, lack crass efforts at motion-blurring, and are well colour-matched and correct in terms of ‘heat’ and shadow relative to the surroundings. Many of the images are memorable and extremely clever. One of my favourites is a night-vision scene showing an altercation between the carrion-eating, flightless raptor Necropteryx and the giant parrot Tyrannornis.
The animals of this world are a fascinating lot and I like a great many of them, finding them mostly plausible and anatomically sensible. The illustrations make them look very ‘real world’: some of the birds have frayed, gnarly keratin on their crests and bills, ruffled plumage and other details. These show that the artist has been paying a great deal of attention to what animals really look like.
Caption: a pair of Neopygoscelis, a large, deep-diving, pliosauromorph penguin. Soaring over the ocean above we see a giant bat, on which more below. Image: Boulay & Steyer (2015).
Creatures of the Neozoic oceans. There are in fact so many animals designed for the book that there are substantially more than I can write about or mention. We start off with the marine fauna. As can be predicted given the probable state of near-future conditions, over-fishing, pollution, acidification and warming have resulted in a collapse of the modern marine fauna. Numerous animal groups have disappeared, including several important plankton groups and many marine vertebrate lineages. A different ecosystem and set of species have arisen, the majority of biological wealth being benthic and well below the warm waters of the surface (Boulay & Steyer 2015).
Tiny catfish with bioluminescent lures are super-abundant and occupy the role taken in our time by such species as krill. Diverse squid – some of which are superficially fish-like, others of which are gigantic (Rhombosepia is 10 metres long) – occupy middle- and top-tier roles occupied in modern times by bony fish, sharks and cetaceans. Even tetrapod devotees have to grudgingly admit that cephalopods have enormous potential, especially in a world with massively reduced vertebrate diversity.
Caption: modern plankton are under all kinds of pressures, and the suggestion has been made several times that future oceans might be extremely different, ecologically, as a consequence. Demain proposes that the upper waters of the ocean are highly depauperate as a consequence, but that a radiation of new, miniature catfishes inhabit the depths. Image: Boulay & Steyer (2015).
Several flightless seabirds are present. The large, deep-diving penguin Neopygoscelis has inevitable similarities with the big pelagic penguins of After Man (Dixon 1981, Dixon 2021) and again hints at the idea that penguins might have the evolutionary potential to give rise to forms that resemble cetaceans or short-necked plesiosaurs. Penguins have been a mainstay of Spec Zoo projects even since After Man. The fact, however, that penguins are not doing well in a rapidly warming world – virtually all species are rapidly declining, even relatively abundant ones like the Adélie Pygoscelis adeliae (the global population is over 10 million, but entire colonies are disappearing as climatic warming is making their breeding islands unsuitable) – means that we might be sceptical of these ideas. I’m not the first to say this when discussing Spec Zoo scenarios.
Caption: news about penguin decline, about the loss or shrinking of breeding colonies, constantly makes the headlines. Most of the findable articles are about the big Aptenodytes penguins (the King and Emperor) and there’s less publicity on pygoscelids (the small Adélie and kin). However, they’re in trouble too, though the global situation is complex enough (colonies disappear here, but new ones appear there) that it can be hard to form a consensus.
Demain also features large, superficially hesperornithine-like flightless petrels (Propellonectes), though I find it ironic that they descend from one of the most terrestrial of petrel lineages.
Perhaps the most surprising creature of the Neozoic oceans is Benthogyrinus – a wing-headed, super-sized, suspension-feeding beast, 40 metres long (Boulay & Steyer 2015). Assorted arthropods and cephalopods lived on its surface. It might best be described as a gargantuan, armour-plated tadpole-whale. And that's an apt description, as it’s a paedomorphic, sea-dwelling frog. A descendant of Xenopus. In order to imagine such a beast, we have to envision frogs undergoing major developmental, physiological and morphogenic shifts. Contra popular wisdom, certain modern frogs do have some tolerance of salinity and can even swim in the sea; nevertheless, to account for the other changes we would need massive changes in anuran biology. But… hey, this is what speculative zoology is all about and I, for one, welcome our new gargantuan marine tadpole monster overlords.
Caption: why anurans have never evolved paedomorphosis whereas salamanders often has is an oft-asked question. The answer lies somewhere in the fact that sexual maturation in anurans is tightly linked to metamorphosis: they literally cannot reproduce while in larval form. Demain imagines that a solution to this has been found through evolution, and thus we have tadpole monsters. Image: Boulay & Steyer (2015).
Flightless birds: ‘new dinosaurs’. Moving now to the terrestrial realm, the large animal fauna is dominated by flightless birds, including modified ducks, waders, raptors, parrots, hummingbirds and crows. Many have converged on a thick-legged, shaggy-plumaged, ratite-like morph, meaning that terrestrial habitats are full of creatures that look something like giant kiwis and cassowaries. These are among my favourite animals of all, so I especially liked these designs.
Would gigantic descendants of geese, raptors and so on all really end up looking ratite-like? Well, it’s an important point that birds might be somewhat constrained in potential with respect to overall shape and form... can they do anything truly innovative? I don't want to give everything away, but I will say that the book includes quadrupedal birds (Boulay & Steyer 2015).
Caption: at left, ontogeny of the giant, herbivorous, quadrupedal goose Giraffornis vandijki. It grows quickly (which is in keeping with its goose ancestry), reaching 6 m in height for males, and is named in honour of Dr Gert van Dijk. The authors note that it’s somewhat reminiscent of sauropods. Image: Boulay & Steyer (2015).
Hadrornis and Giraffornis are giant, long-necked anseriforms. Necropteryx is a large, flightless descendant of the Lammergeier or Bearded vulture Gypaetus barbatus. It absolutely looks the part, with its long, pseudo-toothed bill (it's the creature depicted on the upper part of the cover). Tringapterus is a vaguely cassowary-like, sexually dimorphic flightless wader with a dagger-like bill. Tyrannornis rex – the T. rex of the piece – is a gargantuan pseudo-toothed parrot (and one of several species in this genus).
Neoviraptor is a short-faced flightless corvid that specialises on eating eggs. On that last point, a speculative animal can be specialised for whatever its designers wish, but did they base this idea on the supposed diet of Cretaceous oviraptorid theropods? The possibility that oviraptorids ate eggs still exists, but it looks more likely that they were predominantly herbivorous, or omnivores that consumed a large amount of plant material.
Caption: head-shot of male Tyrannornis rex (females are less gaudy and without the casque), a giant flightless parrot. I quite like this design but find the colour scheme a bit too reminiscent of certain macaws. The again, maybe this is ok for a forest-dwelling predator that interacts with species that have excellent colour vision. Image: Boulay & Steyer (2015).
We thus see a radiation of ‘new dinosaurs’, and it’s quite easy to see parallels – or, specifically, cases of evolutionary convergence – between these birds and the theropods of the Mesozoic. This is not ignored by the authors (Boulay & Steyer 2015). It again raises a very interesting possibility: as long are birds are around, it’s almost as if the world could once again become the domain of dinosaurs of a sort mostly associated with the Mesozoic. Not sauropod- or tyrannosaur-mimics, but of fuzzy, beaked theropods much like those that first appeared more than 100 million years ago.
I must mention the fact that Demain includes some smaller birds as well, including the eusocial, burrowing mole-bird Talpidornis, a highly modified weaver that builds massively complex burrow systems. How does it compare to other speculative burrowing birds? It does not look much like the spink of The Future is Wild but does look quite like a bird drawn whimsically by Gabriel Ugueto!
Caption: at left, the mole-like bird Talpidornis sechani from Demain. These Eurafrican birds have a caste system, with a large, long-lived queen, formidably armed soldiers, and smaller workers, explorers and nurses or nannies. At right, inspired by a 2019 discussion, Gabriel Ugueto illustrated a hypothetical ‘mole-bird’, and it’s interesting that his version is actually quite Talpidornis-like. Images: Boulay & Steyer (2015); Gabriel Ugueto.
A world of future bats. Mammals are still present in the Early Neozoic but are only represented by bats. The authors emphasise how this enormous, diverse and globally distributed group (remember: accounting for 20% or more of all mammal species today) could have an incredible future, assuming, that is, that they’re not too severely afflicted by anthropogenic changes. On that note, some studies have looked at the possible fate of bat diversity in tropical ecosystems in view of environmental and climate change. The news isn’t good, since diversity is expected to plummet and communities at the species level will homogenize (e.g., Meyer et al. 2016, Alroy 2017, Gonçalves et al. 2021).
Caption: the enormous, highly specialized sky-bat Gigapterus troposherus – a descendant of free-tail bats (molossids) – cruising at altitude. These animals look even more specialized for soaring than the most specialized of soaring pterosaurs and birds. Image: Boulay & Steyer (2015).
Then again, maybe it can be argued that the species integral to the evolutionary scenarios explored here will persist and thus have potential to do what they do in the book: at least some of the bats here descent from the highly abundant free-tailed bat Tardarida (Boulay & Steyer 2015). Some very, very interesting things have happened. An entirely new group of giant sky-bats have evolved and have developed a suite of innovations that allow them to fly, live and hunt at altitude.
Some of the species we’re introduced to are boldly patterned, mega-winged giants with wingspans of up to 15 metres. Giant lungs, an air-sac system and a pouch used to contain the young have evolved (Boulay & Steyer 2015). The bats also have a novel wing form. Many have incredibly high-aspect wings, and additional membranes and patagial lobes are present in some species. The hindlimbs are reduced to near-absence in the Velocipterus species, some of which look like long-winged, mammalian butterflies.
Whether bats might ever evolve pneumaticity, giant size and an ability to give birth on the wing are all questions asked at one time or another by those interested in bat evolution. They haven’t happened yet, but is there the potential for such features to evolve? These speculations are certainly thought-provoking.
Caption: the big, flightless, quadrupedal bat Nesferapoda, from Boulay & Steyer (2015). This image was borrowed from Gert van Dijk’s review of the book from Furahan Biology & Allied Matters. Demain includes several additional images of this animal. Image: Boulay & Steyer (2015).
Flightless bats. Yes, there are flightless bats here too. Fans of speculative zoology will immediately be thinking of Dixon’s Night stalker. Nesferapoda of the Neozoic is not especially similar. It’s a direct descendant of Desmodus and is a thick-limbed quadruped. As I said above, an interesting thing about the book is that the authors don’t discuss their creatures within an in-universe context only (as is the style for works like this); rather, they make proper reference to the ideas that have gone before, and they note how speculative terrestrial bats – including the Night stalker and the Future Predator of Primeval – have appeared before in the works of others.
Flightless bat are – much like those giant penguins – ‘classic’ beasts of the genre and, as the authors note, a certain number of constraints require that speculative bats can only really end up heading in a few given evolutionary directions (Boulay & Steyer 2015). On bats in general, I’m thrilled that this book explores so many new ideas on this group, I think for the first time in print.
Arthropods, echinoderms, plants. There’s more. A large Scolopendra centipede that has evolved a gliding ability is one of the most terrifying animals in the book. There are also large marine echinoderms – the predatory ‘terminator urchin’ Neocidaris schwarzenheggeri (erm, typo: that specific name should be schwarzeneggeri) – and crustaceans that ride aboard the giant Benthogyrinus.
And then there are plants. It’s all too tempting when creating a future world to put your future animals into an essentially modern flora. But plants are just as dynamic and changeable as animals – if not more so – and I respect the fact that Boulay & Steyer (2015) went to the trouble of thinking about, and designing, these crucial components of their world.
Caption: Marc Boulay in what I assume is his office space, with excellent promotional t-shirt. And what is that model?… I would love to know! Image: Ouest-France / Philippe Renault.
The big picture. There’s much more to the Neozoic world than outlined in this review. A section at the end discusses tectonics, climate and other big-picture stuff, while the book ends by looking at the creative process that led to the creation of the Neozoic world.
Echoing sentiments made previously here at Tet Zoo, it should be said that speculative zoology is not mere frivolous fun but inspires us to think about the shape of evolution, about the impact we’re having on the world and its fauna, and about the possibilities and limitations that exist as regards the organisms around us today. Remember that Dougal Dixon’s remit when designing After Man (Dixon 1981; Dixon 2021) was to discuss factual processes via speculative creatures (Thomann 2024). Overfishing, overhunting, pollution, climate change, human population expansion and a myriad other things may paint a view of the future somewhat bereft of hopefulness, but a future exists nonetheless and even a future with a depauperate fauna is still a future with a fauna.
Marc Boulay and Sébastien Steyer have succeeded in creating a fantastic and compelling view of a future that is not provincial or small in scope. It is a grand, vibrant, diverse vision of imaginary life, and it looks amazing. I’m sure that their book will inspire a new generation of fans and thinkers who will now become turned-on to the world of Dixonian fiction and discover the exciting works that already populate the genre.
Caption: Boulay’s scene showing part of ‘The infinite mangrove’ (though flipped horizontally relative to the one in the book). Note the bats and speculative vegetation. The CG render is really nice. Image: Boulay & Steyer (2015).
If you’re a Spec Zoo fan, you really must get hold of this book. And – again – here’s hoping that an English language version can be published, in which case this book will be bought to the attention of a new and large audience.
Marc Boulay and Sébastian Steyer. 2015. Demain, les Animaux du Futur. Softback, index, pp. 157. €23 $58 £15.87. Éditions Belin, Paris. ISBN 978-2-7011-5886-0. Here at amazon. Here at amazon.co.uk.
For previous Tet Zoo articles on speculative zoology, see...
Oh no, not another giant predatory flightless bat from the future, March 2007
Come back Lank, (nearly) all is forgiven, September 2008
Giant flightless bats from the future, November 2012
Of After Man, The New Dinosaurs and Greenworld: an interview with Dougal Dixon, April 2014
The LonCon3 Speculative Biology event, August 2014
Speculative Zoology, a Discussion, July 2018
The Dougal Dixon After Man Event of September 2018, September 2018
Dougal Dixon’s After Man, the Initial Pitch Document, June 2020
Speculative Zoology and the World of After Man; an Interview With Dougal Dixon, April 2025
Refs - -
Alroy, J. 2017. Effects of habitat disturbance on tropical forest biodiversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, 6056-4516061.
Boulay, M. & Steyer, S. 2015. Demain, les Animaux du Futur. Éditions Belin, Paris.
Dixon, D. 1981. After Man: A Zoology of the Future. Granada, London.
Dixon, D. & Adams, J. 2004. The Future Is Wild: A Natural History of the Future. Dorling Kindersley, London.
Gonçalves, F., Sales, L. P., Galetti, M. & Pires, M. M. 2021. Combined impacts of climate and land use change and the future restructuring of Neotropical bat biodiversity. Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation 19, 454-463.
Meyer, C. F. J., Struebig, M. J. & Willig, M. R. 2016. Responses of tropical bats to habitat fragmentation, logging, and deforestation. In Voigt, C. C. & Kingston, T. (eds) Bats in the Anthropocene: Conservation of Bats in a Changing World. Springer, Cambridge, pp. 63-103.
Thomann, V. 2024. A “speculation built on fact”: on Dougal Dixon’s zoology of the future. In Castle, N. & Champion, G. (eds) Animals and Science Fiction. Springer Nature, pp. 345-362.
