Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
March 24, 2017
What it's like to be an octopus? This review of Peter Godfrey Smith's book, Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, captures perfectly why I've been fascinated by them -- they're the closest thing to aliens we've got.
Unlike cetaceans – whose sentience it is…
March 17, 2017
Is anyone else seeing this picture and immediately wondering what molecules regulate the orderly dispersal of those well-distributed pigment cells?
BBC
March 6, 2017
Oooh, beautiful. Starfish larvae are covered with beating cilia that they use to swim, and also to swirl bacteria towards their mouth…and in this video that visualizes the motion generated by the cilia, you can see that they do both at the same time.
March 3, 2017
MBARI
If you need more cephalopods, from the same source:
February 24, 2017
Apparently, flamboyant cuttlefish are born looking snazzy.
Monterey Bay Aquarium
February 15, 2017
I lack any tattoos, but on the day we can transfect human skin cells with the machinery to make chromoplasts and chromatophores, I'll be first in line at the local genetic modification parlor.
phys.org
January 27, 2017
It's Friday of the second week of classes. I'm already frazzled and worn out -- I get home at night, slump into a stupor, and fall asleep by 10. This is not good, especially since I don't have this excuse: sex makes squid exhausted.
All I'm doing is teaching, teaching, teaching. Clearly the squid…
January 13, 2017
Sometimes, you just don't want to know about the lifestyles of the tentacled.
MBARI
The vampire squid lurks in the eternal midnight of the deep sea and a cloak-like web stretches between its eight arms. When threatened, it turns inside out, exposing rows of finger-like projections, called cirri.…
January 6, 2017
The video spares you the worst of it: they also insist on beginning every meal with a round of poetry.
January 2, 2017
One of these would be nice.
December 9, 2016
Jeannot Kuenzel
What a squid egg mass looks like if you step back a bit:
December 4, 2016
There was a conference sponsored by the Royal Society last month, titled New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives. There have been a number of news stories about this event, some good, some bad. Here's one: can you tell what's wrong with it?
For…
November 29, 2016
The crackpots are bustin' out all over -- not just in politics, but also in science. Remember Stuart Pivar? The septic tank tycoon who invented a whole new theory of evolution and development that he called Lifecode, built entirely around imaginary drawings of how embryos formed by folding and…
October 21, 2016
You'd think Octopolis would be a lovely place, but then you discover it's a junk-covered slum where the octopuses are engaged in street warfare.
October 14, 2016
You knew that one beneficiary of over-fishing (it removes competition) and climate change (they like it warm) is that cephalopod populations are booming, right? Those of us who love the little beasties also have appreciate that they are a portent of coming oceanic doom.
Spooky.
October 12, 2016
My university is hiring for a full-time, tenure-track biology position. Take a look at our job ad:
Duties/Responsibilities: Teaching undergraduate biology courses including cell biology, genetics, electives in the applicant’s areas of expertise, and other courses that support the biology program;…