If you are passionate about natural sciences you will have
come across the ZooSparkle YouTube channel at least once in your life , one of
the most followed in Italy in terms of zoology, paleontology and evolution ,
where Willy Guasti carries out an excellent work of scientific dissemination.
In its space you will find contents on dinosaurs, insects and mammals. In
short, animals that have been alive or dead for millions of years.
Willy, born in 1991, does not limit himself to divulging
only on YouTube; has a Twitch channel , is featured on Instagram , on Facebook,
and has a podcast called Zoopodcast. He was also the face of Focus TV,
conducting a science popularization program in prime time, and was scientific
consultant for some editorial projects, supervising for example texts and
illustrations of the book " I Dinosauri di Leonardo D ", published by
Mondadori in the series "The Steamboat". He also supervised the
illustrations of Federica Messina's comic "Addio Darwin" (Shockdom),
where she has her own column . He is also currently curating a series of
scientifically accurate 3D printed prehistoric animal models by the company
"Hibou Coop".
We wanted to get to know Willy and let you know better, who
kindly granted us an interview. We talked about his studies, his passions, his
dissemination activity and also some previews on his future projects!
Interview with Willy Guasti of ZooSparkle
Everyeye: Where did your passion for dinosaurs come from?
Willy: " I would say I was born there, but if I have to
identify a trigger it was having seen Jurassic Park as a child. It was 1993
when the film came out, and I was two years old "
Everyeye: You did your thesis on Iguanodon, what struck you most about this
dinosaur?
Willy: " Well, it was a satisfaction to get my hands on
a real dinosaur fossil to study it a bit and I'm delighted to have had this
experience. The iguanodon is one of the most famous dinosaurs ever and I
already knew its history. , but deepening it I realized more than ever its
importance.
In short, it is a crazy dinosaur : it is the second dinosaur
ever described by science, in 1825, and the first ever reconstruction of a
dinosaur known to science is a sketch (never published while it was alive) made
by the geologist Gideon Mantell, the one who he described it scientifically.
It is one of the three dinosaurs (together with Megalosaurus
and Hylaeosaurus) used to define the word "dinosaur" for the first
time, in 1842. Among the first statues of prehistoric animals ever made in
history - shown to the public in London in 1854 - there is there were also two
Iguanodons, still visible today. The first complete dinosaur skeletons ever
found were - you guess what - Iguanodon, and were unearthed in 1878 from the
coal mines of Bernissart, Belgium.
Through the various ways in which the Iguanodon has been
reconstructed over time we can also get an idea of how the understanding of
these extinct animals has changed from the nineteenth century to today, in
short, it is monstrously important on a scientific and cultural level . "
Everyeye: In on several occasions you defined yourself as
unsuitable for the university environment, however you finished your studies
and built an effective and original dissemination project; what advice would
you give to the Willy of the past who is now starting his university
career ? Willy: "I would tell him to live without
making comparisons with others. Which in hindsight is good advice, but in fact,
the pits are full of hindsight. And in all honesty it's not like I'm that good
at it even now. In any case, the university experience - and I allow myself to
talk about it in general, since talking about how I lived it on social media I
noticed that it is a problem for many more people than I thought - is a path
that forces you to make comparisons with others, and that puts on you a not
just social expectation from the people around you.
It must be said, for the avoidance of doubt, that the
problem was in my approach to the university, not in the university itself; I
grew up with my passionand people who assured me that " at university you
can finally study what you like ", but at that point I discovered the hard
way that it was not true.
The paleoartPaleoart is a branch of naturalistic
illustration that deals with representing as scientifically accurate as
possible the appearance that an animal might have had when it was alive,
starting from the fossils available. In this case, the work on the Iguanodon
was done by Fabio Manucci.
Sure, what I like I studied, but it was a small part!
Everything else - which was obviously functional to my course, but I understood
this later - were things that didn't interest me very much, and in many cases I
really didn't like them. And then the years of study get longer, you go off
course, while you see people who enrolled in the three-year degree after you
graduate from the master's degree, and you think that since you do not earn a
lot of money it is the parents who lose out since you are dependent on them. ,
and everyone keeps asking you when you graduate .
But in the end, it helped to suffer like this: I opened the
channel to have an excuse to continue studying the things that interest me
outside the university, and I discovered that I liked scientific disclosure.
Over time I fortunately managed to make a job of it, even before I formally
finished my studies ".
Photo by Gianluca Ross
Everyeye: You have an immoderate passion for monsters, you
talk about them a lot on the YouTube channel and beyond. What's your favorite,
and why Godzilla?
Willy: " Eh, Godzilla is truly one of the most
beautiful things ever invented by human beings , I 'm not kidding. The only,
terrible regret is that to invent Godzilla we had to throw two atomic bombs,
since he himself is a metaphor of destruction caused by nuclear weapons in
Japan. A wound from which the Japanese will probably never fully heal, but
nevertheless they deeply love Godzilla, just think that in 2015 he was
officially recognized as Japanese citizenship, as well as the position of
ambassador of Japanese tourism in the Shinjuku area - where, moreover, his big
head on top of a building stands out in plain sight.
I have always loved monsters, as a child I continually drew
the most disparate monsters - dinosaur species, to the point that it was not at
all convenient for my family to buy sketchbooks: they went directly to the
500-sheet copier reams. I have never seriously cultivated drawing, studying it,
and I regret it a little, but I still love drawing . What then, once for a
whisker I did not give up the university to go to study illustration among
other things. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, Rodan comes right after Godzilla
. "
Everyeye: How do monsters and natural sciences meet?
Willy: " Well, a lot of what you see in the world of
monsters is inspired by the natural world, since - by our standards - there are
so many monsters to rework in the animal world. Speaking of Godzilla, they
relied on the depiction of the mural "The Age of Reptiles" by Rudolph
Zallinger, a mural completed in 1947 and housed in the Yale Peabody Museum.
The Tyrannosaurus gave the general appearance of the monster
(The images of the Tyrannosaurus are by the paleoartist Max Bellomio ) , the
Stegosaurus gave its back plates. And there is also another dinosaur
responsible for the design of the King of Monsters, namely the Iguanodon - I
had already praised it, but here you really fly.
The inspiration was taken from the illustrations of Zdenek
Burian, a European artist: his iguanodon probably donated his sturdy
"arms", which were even better adaptable to a costume. They were very
famous pop culture images, and it must be said that if Godzilla had invented it
today and drew on updated reconstructions of the same creatures, it would have
come out quite different. Not because the prehistoric animals that inspired
them have changed, they are always the same ones .. but because the
interpretation attributed to fossils has changed, thanks to advances in
science. I have always found this very interesting! Today, however, studying
the natural world can make monsters even more original, scary, interesting and
believable - provided that they are monsters anyway . "
Everyeye: Do you agree with the Willy child on what you wanted to be when
you grew up?
Willy: " I would say Yes, OK. The 6-year-old Willy when
asked "what do you want to grow up" answered "the
paleontologist"; I don't work as a paleontologist, but I did my thesis on
dinosaurs, and for work I often talk about it - along with all the other things
that the baby Willy liked, so I would say that although he didn't exactly go
that path,. I think this is a success, all in all .
Everyeye: When and why did you decide you wanted to disseminate science?
Willy: " After opening the channel I have grown over
the years, both as an audience and as an age. Not only did I like it and was
starting to take some little satisfaction, but I was starting to take my
business really seriously. I began to understand that those who talk about
science, at all levels, have a great responsibility . After I decided I wasn't
going to continue with college, it seemed like a path worth trying.
At the time, the idea of working full-time as a science
communicator on social media in Italy was truly a mirage, also because the people
who did it were very few - and they are few even today, to tell the truth. I
didn't have clear ideas and I didn't have a plan in mind, I just had the
stubbornness to continue , people who believed in me, the luck that someone
cared about what I do, and the ability to continue doing it. When I came to be
financially independent with this thing it was a great satisfaction, because I
finally no longer felt guilty for having spent years keeping my parents on
something that could have been a hole in the water . "
Everyeye:Let's imagine a strange, slightly battered elderly
figure limping towards it, with a fictional name that doesn't need to be said
anyway because it's just the pretext for a strange question, and it gives you a
hex with the clear intention of killing you. However, this person is not very
experienced in dark magic and is wrong, effectively making you able to disclose
only one animal (present or extinct) for the rest of your life. You can choose
it though, which one would it be and why?
Willy: " Well let's say there are various answers. If I
said the TyrannosaurusI'd be smart. This is because it is an animal that always
meets the favor of the public, on which there is a boundless literature, and on
which new discoveries are continually published. Therefore, I would never run
out of information and tell the public about something they like.
The PycnogonidsThey are a grouping of arthropods comprising
several hundred species, all marine. They have an arachnoid appearance and are
of uncertain systematic location, ie it is difficult to understand the kinship
relations between organisms and their evolutionary history.
But being so famous, maybe there would be many people who
would talk about it anyway. So maybe I should pick some group of invertebrates
that nobody cares about. I don't know, like the Pycnogonids . Who is it that
ranks them, the Pycnogonids? Yet they are great. Not many things are known
about them yet, and I could bring people closer to their world. Not to mention
that I would be the only popularizer (and perhaps human being) to consecrate my
existence to the Pycnogonids, which would not be a problem for the competition
. "
Everyeye: What role do you think the popularization of natural sciences
has, or should have, in company?
Willy: " I have to make a confession: I do this job
because I like it. It sounds ugly, but it is mere and simple personal
satisfaction, it is not because I feel I have a mission useful to the
community, nor because it is (at least at the moment) who knows how profitable.
Working with the media exposure of social media, every day, including Sundays,
and very often even after dinner is not an easy thing, even if you do the thing
you love . Whoever said "do the job you want and you won't work a single
day of your life" must have been a very unhappy person with his job. Or a
jerk .
That said, I believe what I do can potentially have a useful
impact for people, and I know this because many have written to me that they
have improved their relationship with insects or spiders, turning fear into
curiosity. This is something thats fills me with joy, because I truly believe
that animals like insects deserve to be seens as what they are, which is one of
the most successful things in the history of life on Earth, and tell people why
they shouldn't kill them. unnecessarily on sight but maybe stopping to observe
its particularities is something I really care about.
So yes, in this case I believe that those involved in
scientific dissemination on social networks - being in fact an influencer -
have responsibilities towards their audience, like any influencer. Mind you,
sometimes I have used my catchment area to raise awareness of certain issues
that I care about because I believe it is right, and because above all they are
issues that I care about - such as the climate crisis , the loss of
biodiversity and things like that. - but I don't feel I have a
"mission", that's it.
I am delighted if what I do has positive implications for
people, but most of the time I consider them as wonderful side effects.In
reality, I believe that those who disseminate must accustom people to do more
and more without him / her ... let me explain: I think it is an understatement
to give only notions, while instead it is better to try to give tools that make
the public enough aware of not having to ask you for explanations in case of
doubts. It sounds counterproductive, but I think it's important.
Notwithstanding that I see nothing wrong with using science also as
entertainment , mind you! ".
Everyeye: Before saying goodbye let's talk a little about
the future, is there any particular goal you would like to achieve?
Willy: "A lot of things, actually. For good luck I'll
tell you only two: in the meantime I would like to make other videos like the
one I made at the request of the Egyptian Museum of Turin together with Ruggero
Rollini, and have the opportunity to talk about the great Italian museum
heritage (as regards the natural sciences) on my Youtube channel with more
"documentary" videos.
It is something that I would like, a good series would come
out of it, which maybe as a product would also work outside of YouTube, who
knows. And I would like to have the opportunity to visit some places in the
world, to shoot some vlog in kind; I should have already started with the tour
operator with which I am organizing some things with my followers, but the
situation did not help. But sooner or laters it will end, and for that moment I
would like to be ready ".
