Sometimes pictures are too cool to wait for Friday. My friend Tom K. sent these along for my enjoyment and now yours. The first is a close up of the bay scallop, Argopecten irradians, where you can clearly the ring of blue eyes that around the mantle. They are weak but sufficient to detect predators. The second is the red-footed or pygmy sea cucumber, Pentacta pygmaea, common along the Gulf of Mexico.
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Extant sulids - the gannets and boobies - are admittedly pretty uniform (greater diversity existed among fossil forms, as we'll see at some stage), but they still differ in many subtle ways. In the previous sulid post we looked at the gannets: we now turn to the boobies [composite image shown here…
tags: Red-footed Booby, Sula sula, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz
[Mystery bird] Red-footed Booby, Sula sula, photographed on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, Midway Island, Hawai'i. [I will identify this bird for you in 48 hours]
Image: Joe Fuhrman, March 2010 [larger view].
NOTE:…
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Apropos the recent tornadic activity here, a repost:
This story:
10 tornadoes confirmed in Ga., including one with winds topping 160 mph
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That's an awesome closeup of the scallop!
I'll never forget walking through a pile of bay scallops in shallow waters off Beaufort, North Carolina. The scallops were leaping 2-3 feet in the air. They must have seen us coming!
Note to self, look for scallops tomorrow!
Note to KZ: Congrats on the job offer! Say hello to Drs. Crowder, Rittschoff, Read, Joe B, Mike Orbach. What a great place to be. Have fun!