Move, and something follows you.
A family of interactive websites, drawn in code. Four for children, about wildlife, bugs, pets and dinosaurs, and one for grown-ups with a garden to plan.
Move your pointer, or drag a finger, and it comes too. Each one is from one of the sites below.
For children
Animals from around the world that follow your pointer.
Visit Interactive Wildlife (opens in a new tab)interactivewildlife.co.uk
For children
Insects, spiders and minibeasts, by place or by type.
Visit Interactive Bugs (opens in a new tab)interactivebugs.co.uk
For children and families
Dogs, cats and other pets, with honest notes on looking after them.
Visit Interactive Pets (opens in a new tab)pets.interactivewildlife.co.uk
For children
Dinosaurs, sea reptiles and pterosaurs, period by period.
Visit Interactive Dinosaurs (opens in a new tab)dinosaurs.interactivewildlife.co.uk
For grown-ups
What to sow, plant and pick this month.
Visit Interactive Garden (opens in a new tab)garden.tulo.top
Coming next
Another site is on the drawing board. Come back soon to see what follows you next.
In the making
What they have in common
No stock cartoons. Each animal is drawn from scratch and moves the way the real one does: it hops, soars, scuttles or swims after you.
Facts, real photographs with their credits, quizzes and lists to tick off sit alongside the play.
No accounts, no adverts and no tracking. Lists and scores are kept on your own device.
Lead an animal with your finger as easily as with a mouse. Most of the sites can be added to your home screen.
How it started
Read on, and watch who turns up.
The first animal was a seven-spot ladybird. It was drawn in code for a single demonstration page at Lime Fresh Design, a web design studio in Macclesfield, to show that a website could do more than sit still. Move your pointer and the ladybird walked after you. Move further away and it opened its wing cases and flew.
A bumblebee, a peacock butterfly and a dragonfly soon joined it, and the page was called Follow the Bug. It was too much fun to leave at four insects, so it grew: a whole garden of British bugs, then birds, a pond, the night, the seashore, and on around the world until it became Interactive Wildlife.
The other sites followed. The bugs got a site of their own. A pet bearded dragon led to Interactive Pets. The dinosaurs came next, and then a garden planner for the grown-ups.
Hundreds of animals later, every site still works the way that first page did: move, and something follows you. The ladybird is still here too. It is the first to greet you on almost every one of them.
