The animated animals in this app by illustrator Christoph Niemann react to prodding fingers (+ movie).

The Petting Zoo app was launched at the Design Indaba conference in Cape Town last week and features a menagerie of 21 interactive animal characters.

Users can swipe or tap the creatures to see how they react: push the rabbit and it stretches towards the edges of the screen or strike the teeth of a crocodile to play a tune.

Niemann describes the app as an "interactive picture book" and there are no words because "animals don't speak English".

It includes thousands of hand-drawn animation frames plus music and sound design by South African electronic musician Markus Wormstorm.

Christoph Niemann's work has appeared on the covers of The New Yorker, Newsweek and Wired, and his work for The Times Magazine is archived on his Abstract Sunday blog. After eleven years in New York he now lives in Berlin.

Dezeen were in Cape Town for the first leg of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour, where Design Indaba founder Ravi Naidoo took us on a tour of his hometown and explained why Africa today is a place of "renewal, regeneration and growth". Look out for more movie reports from Cape Town in the coming days.

Petting Zoo is available at the iTunes store and is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Credits

Concept and animations: Christoph Niemann
Developer: Jon Huang
Music and Sound Design: Markus Wormstorm
Executive Producer: Design Indaba