Scientific tales

The Diary of a platypus 

In French
The day-to-day life of a female platypus, from her own birth to becoming a mother herself for the first time, told in the form of a first-person story.

This project, begun for the 2004 Saint Jean d’Angély science exposition, was meant to test the principle of using an animal tale as a teaching tool to transfer scientific knowledge to a wide audience.  Its success, one confirmed by an impact study the following year, validated its adoption as a medium for diffusing and sharing information on other topics such as vector-borne parasitic diseases. 

100 days in the life of a tsetse fly

The tsetse fly recounts how she became an involuntary vector transmitting trypanosomes. These parasites cause Nagana disease in cattle throughout the inter-tropical convergence zone and sleeping sickness in humans in some thirty African countries.

This animal tale is part of a program aiming to make scientific knowledge available to ordinary people living in Africa, as well as to donor agencies, in order to raise awareness about efforts to control mosquitoes infected by trypanosome pathogens.