Ink Meets Zoology – Lindsay Nikole

Zoologist Lindsay Nikole’s science storytelling takes many forms.

The last time zoologist Lindsay Nikole left the grassy savannas of Southern Africa, she had worked closely with the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia. Now, Koya, one of the CCF resident cheetahs, rests firmly on her shoulder and is one of the many tattoos she chose to dedicate to her passion for felinology.

Nikole left a piece of her heart in the nature reserves, where she hoped her college degree would provide a career path to continue her research. However, upon graduating in 2020, her job search stalled, and soon the Oregon State University alum found herself back in her old bedroom at her parents’ Los Angeles home, just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic.

While quarantining, her roommate noticed that living with a tattooed and pierced scientist who wielded ancient DNA analysis and effortlessly pronounced complex scientific animal names, like Sahelanthropus tchadensis, with Gen Z verbiage and comedic one-liners was definitely a vibe — one the world should experience.

Taking her roommate’s advice, Nikole procured a greenscreen and committed to making one educational video a day with her iPhone. She let loose as the face of a self-made brand that combined microlearning presentations and infographics with her unfiltered penchant for deadpan humor. During this new venture, Nikole’s fear of speaking faded away, giving rise to a bevy of clips that earned her breakthrough success and a shoutout from fellow content creators like Miniminuteman, who called her “TikTok’s Zoology Superstar.”

Viral Beginnings

Nikole went viral and booked a TikTok commercial that bolstered her income. She then rented out new digs and settled on a filming spot inside her larger living space. The young visionary recreated the homely look of her childhood bedroom wall as her backdrop setting, tying together elements of her passion for bioarchaeology in Africa with her past as the lead guitarist of the alternative rock band The Unknown, which also featured her younger sister in the rhythm section. Now, the Warrick bass guitar that once belonged to her sister occupies the left side of the wall as a decoration. It hangs next to a whiteboard that became an essential part of her big transition from TikTok to YouTube.

A world of possibilities unfolded with the addition of Nikole’s video editor, Gian Franco, bringing new life to the whiteboard in her backdrop with animation and image overlays in post-production. The support behind Nikole’s content has evolved from a small DIY crew to an international production team complete with six researchers and a pair of science writers. In January, the team scored one of its biggest victories when Nikole surprised her followers by interviewing Will Smith days ahead of the debut of “Pole to Pole with Will Smith,” his new series with National Geographic television.

Her team continues to grind independently, creating a slew of originals and on-deck projects with aspirations of a partnership with a major Hollywood studio somewhere down the line. Their material has the potential to resonate with audiences across the entire viewership spectrum, from the HISTORY channel to Adult Swim.

“We film it and send it off to three different editors on a chain just to see what that kind of workflow looks like for my team, in hopes that we can do (a partnership) in the future,” Nikole said, adding, “That would be ideal, but I do really love the creative freedom of YouTube. So, there’s definitely pros and cons to both.”

“EXTINKED” Origins

Among the most creative shows from Nikole’s 2025 lineup was a docuseries called “EXTINKED,” a play on the words “inked” and “extinct.” The science-focused program is inspired by her affinity for a motley collection of extinct prehistoric animals and her decision to honor their existence with new tattoos on her body.

Last year, Nikole’s team traveled to Portland, Oregon, for the first season. Filming took place at Shokunin Tattoo, where the artwork was completed by Nikole’s longtime friend and Ink Master season 11 alum Angel Rose.

The celebrity tattoo artist was a natural choice for the show because of her knack for black-and-grey realism, Nikole’s preferred tattooing technique. Before this series commenced, Rose applied a double-headed snake tattoo to Nikole’s right leg, and then added five new tattoos to the same region of her lower body during the filming of “EXTINKED.”

The enduring connection between the tatted-up entrepreneurs fit the show’s profile appropriately — like the stencil placement of the four-horned Diabloceratops that Rose put on Nikole’s upper thigh minutes into the series premiere. As the season unfolded, the experimental mash-up of their careers translated on-screen beautifully with fun observations about prehistoric life, fossils, and myriad other profoundly educational whatnots that aren’t typically discussed in vibey settings like tattoo parlors.

In a recent interview with Inked Magazine, Nikole got down to the science of her latest sitting, being on the receiving end of Rose’s tattoo machine. She alluded to the correlation of additions that included an image of the Dimetrodon, a synapsid that she described as “more closely related to humans than dinosaurs,” and the Sahelanthropus tchadensis, a hominin that she described as the earliest separation between mankind’s common ancestor with chimpanzees.

“Each (episode) is a different situation,” Nikole explained. “The Paraceratherium (episode 5), that’s my favorite extinct animal. They’re giant hornless rhinos. They were the largest land mammals to ever exist, that we know of.”

She continued: “The Smilodon (episode 2) is an extinct saber-toothed cat, and, with my background working with big cats and now my new love for paleontology and extinct animals.”

Nikole’s collection of body ink began on her 18th birthday, when she had “Everything will be okay” written in Greek tattooed on her skin. She didn’t know it at the time, but she gained a new hobby that would bear a signature part of her identity in the coming years.

Career-Defining Ink

Like many tattoo collectors, Nikole has developed a theme for the way her body art is displayed. Just under the collarbone are tattoos that say “As Above” and “So Below,” sentiments that align with her career and personal life.

“The right side of my body will represent the living, and the left side is going to be all extinct,” she said. “So, it’s kind of this transition from living to extinct on either side of my body. Most everything that I have is plants and animals, except for my guitar, which is tattooed on my right arm. I also have an Oryx on my back, which is this antelope that lives in Africa.”

The collarbone tattoos were created by a Los Angeles-based artist named Connie Kang (@lollipop_skin). Sean Harder (@seanharder), over at Third Street Tattoo, handled the octopus, bird of paradise, and the plants on the right side of her body. Nolan Duran (@nolan_void), who also operates out of Third Street Tattoo, is responsible for the Oryx displayed on Nikole’s back. The 28-year-old is already thinking about her next tattoo, which is something that just might fit the concept for season two of “EXTINKED.”

“I have this idea to get a piece of the As Tall as Lions album, because I used to play along to it on drums, and it meant so much to me as a teenager,” she explained. “There’s this one section of the album art that I want to get tattooed somewhere on my ‘extinct side’ of my body since the band broke up.”

It’s been just over a half-decade since Nikole embarked on a career change that has made her a synonymous figure in zoology for a whole new generation of incoming science buffs. The content that she’s created, including her work as a published author, indicates that a return to the grassy plains is almost as likely as an upcoming tattoo appointment. Nikole’s penchant for forging her own path means that a return to making music isn’t out of her reach either.