Let's hear it for those awesome diploblasts!
Drifters of the deep from Eugenia Loli-Queru on Vimeo.
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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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« Truth in labeling | Main | New Hampshire is wimping out »
Mesmerizing
Category: Organisms
Posted on: May 30, 2009 12:11 PM, by PZ Myers
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Life Science
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TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/111211
Comments
Posted by: JD | May 30, 2009 12:23 PM
There they are. The Christian Diploblast Coalition in full regalia.
Posted by: Pierre | May 30, 2009 12:44 PM
They're pretty nice, I admit. But you have competition, PZ. Look at what Phil did today: instead of posting a video showing elegant (yet boring) marine organisms, he posted Put Down The Duckie! Rubber ducks always win.
Pierre
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | May 30, 2009 12:54 PM
Awesome!
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 30, 2009 1:10 PM
Totally awesome.
Except for the ctenophore at 0:30, I think all of those were scyphozoan jellyfish (cnidarians); a few could have been hydrozoan medusas instead.
Like you, every one of those individuals has an unbroken string of successfully reproducing ancestors that goes all the way back. Our last common ancestor-population with these animals lived something like 600 million years ago.
Photographed at the Monterey Aquarium, which didn't even exist yet when I spent a formative summer there in Pacific Grove in 1981.
Posted by: Rob Clack | May 30, 2009 1:17 PM
Not too keen on the soundtrack (I turned it off in the end), but the beasties are pretty awesome!
Posted by: steve | May 30, 2009 1:57 PM
I may be mistaken, but don't cnidaria and other medusae usually propel themselves with the tentacles down?
Right side up or upside down, still lovely!
Posted by: steve | May 30, 2009 2:00 PM
I may be mistaken, but don't cnidaria and other medusae usually propel themselves with the tentacles down?
Right side up or upside down, still lovely!
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 30, 2009 2:06 PM
The ones at the end there do stay "upside-down," forming jellyfish gardens on the bottom. Others can swim up, down or wherever they want to go. At the aquarium, they keep them in tanks with a rotating or swirling current, too.
Posted by: Happy Tentacles
|
May 30, 2009 2:46 PM
Psychdelic hallucinatory diploblast extravaganza - gorgeous!
Posted by: NewEnglandBob
|
May 30, 2009 4:23 PM
Terrific photography - it can't be that easy to get the lighting so perfect.
The music is hauntingly appropriate.
Posted by: Sili
|
May 30, 2009 4:33 PM
They move an awful lot for "drifters".
Posted by: David Utidjian
|
May 30, 2009 4:39 PM
Very nice. Would make a nice screensaver.
-DU-
Posted by: Zar | May 30, 2009 5:32 PM
So pretty!
Posted by: Fred the Hun
|
May 30, 2009 5:36 PM
Pretty darn cool for an artificial jellyfish.
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/robo-jellyfish/3559
Posted by: ursulamajor | May 30, 2009 5:56 PM
Gorgeous!
I find it ever so much more awe-inspiring to believe that every organism on Earth is here because it struggled, adapted and overcame difficult odds to survive and thrive.
Yay life!
Evolution FTW!
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
|
May 30, 2009 6:14 PM
Beautiful
Posted by: Wistari | May 30, 2009 6:23 PM
Serious thrill issues -Dude!
Posted by: Porco Dio
|
May 30, 2009 6:34 PM
PZ, i can can tolerate that you are an atheist and a fag lovin', priest rapin' despot but this jelly-porn, it just, it's just too sexy for words!
thanks.
Posted by: JThompson | May 30, 2009 6:54 PM
I've gotta ask...how the hell do they drift in swarms like that without ending up with a giant jellyfish knot?
Posted by: recovering catholic | May 30, 2009 8:11 PM
Hmmmm...can jellyfish really propel themselves tentacles-first when it seems that the "power stroke" of the bell should be making them move bell-first? Surely there aren't parts of this lovely footage that have been run backwards for effect...
Posted by: lydia | May 30, 2009 9:59 PM
my 5' year old son was mesmerized. he couldn't get enough. He called them "beautiful and nasty jellyfish ...."
Posted by: Lorkas | May 30, 2009 11:16 PM
Triploblasts > Diploblasts
Posted by: Lorkas | May 30, 2009 11:23 PM
"Hmmmm...can jellyfish really propel themselves tentacles-first when it seems that the "power stroke" of the bell should be making them move bell-first?"
I don't see any parts that look reversed, but there are definitely some shots where the camera is panning in such a way to make the jellyfish appear to be moving in the opposite direction.
In some of the shots near the end, you notice that the jellyfish in the foreground appear to be moving tentacles-first, while the jellies in the background are moving as normally expected. I'm not sure what to make of that shot :S
Posted by: bastion of sass | May 31, 2009 3:14 AM
Ethereal! Hypnotic! And it's nature's trick that something that looks so gentle and delicate can be so nasty.
BTW: The National Aquarium in Baltimore's current exhibit is Jellies Invasion: Oceans Out of Balance.
You can play the Jelly Quest game too!
I seem to recall that the Aquarium had a major exhibit on jellyfish a few years back, and I was mesmerized.
Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook | May 31, 2009 3:32 AM
Gorgeous! One of my favourite places in the US is the Monterey Bay Aquarium - not so much for the adorable sea otters, but for all the stunning jellyfish displays.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 31, 2009 12:21 PM
These were filmed at the Monterey aquarium, in tanks with strong circulating currents.
Posted by: Andy Allen | May 31, 2009 3:55 PM
My family and I have been to Monterey aquarium during our summer vacations. The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach is bigger and even more amazing/impressive. Both are well worth the visit.
My 5yr old son, looking at the jellyfish video asked, "Daddy, do jellyfish have eyes?" Trust kids to ask the simple, hard questions. :)
No, no eyes that I know of; but is anyone able to expand on the subject of jellyfish senses?
Andy
Posted by: Sundog | June 6, 2009 5:56 PM
Funnily enough, some jellyfish do have eyes, and they can see quite well. They belong to the box-jellies, or cubozoa, and they use their eyesight to fix on prey, avoid predators and navigate. The eyes themselves are at the four corners of the "box", and occur in clusters of simple eyespots surrounding a somewhat more sophisiticated eye-pit.
Just how they experience "sight" without anything even resembling a brain is, so far as I know, still something of a mystery, but apparently they're not keen on the colour red.