Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
July 1, 2015
The NY Times has stirred up some controversy by recommending a novel flavor combination: guacamole made with peas. I must weigh in.
iStock_000001074285Small
Sounds delicious! Would love to try it!
June 29, 2015
Is it Shark Week again? I wouldn't know, because their destructive and dishonest portrayals of these amazing animals was a major factor leading me to turn off the Discovery Channel and never watch it again.
SDExpeditions
Read David Shiffman's essay on the abuses of sharks, and join the rest of…
June 25, 2015
Turtles are nifty animals, with a remarkable adaptation: they've taken their ribs and shifted them outside their appendicular skeleton, flattened and expanded them, and turned them into a shell. It's a clever twist, and it doesn't require any magic -- just a shift in timing during development, with…
June 22, 2015
Behold, the newly rediscovered Malatgan River caecilian. When my ankle acts up, I begin to think that maybe these critters were smarter than I am in jettisoning all those messy, complicated limbs.
June 19, 2015
You can stop emailing me now. Everyone on the planet has seen Opisthoteuthis adorabilis, fallen in love, and demanded that I feature it in a Friday Cephalopod. OK!
June 15, 2015
Good news, everyone! The US Fish and Wildlife Service has decided that captive chimpanzees deserve the same protection as wild chimpanzees. We've been living for years with a peculiar split decision that says it is illegal to experiment on some chimps, the ones still living in the wild, but other…
June 12, 2015
The giant cuttlefish fades and dies after mating. Somehow they maintain a little dignity in dying.
Giant Cuttlefish
June 12, 2015
This new movie, Jurassic World, is stirring up a fascinating love/hate reaction from paleontologists. We all love to imagine dinosaurs resurrected, and the movies give us an image of what they'd be like, so everyone is happy to see that…and it also inspires new enthusiasm for fossils, so it helps…
June 8, 2015
Celebrate the occasion, appreciate what's going on in the deep!
May 29, 2015
Pink Tank Scuba
May 22, 2015
By carrying that coconut, octopuses of this sort made a change in their legal status necessary.
FAQuatics
The extent of octopus intelligence is debated, at least among vertebrates, but there is evidence of pretty complex behavior, including possible tool use. See, e.g., J.K. Finn, T. Tregenza,…
May 18, 2015
This town in Australia got some unusual precipitation: millions of spiders that proceeded to blanket the entire town with cobwebs.
May 1, 2015
In my previous post about Paul Nelson's weirdly ignorant view of nematode evolution, Kevin Anthoney made a prescient comment:
Remember that Nelson’s got this bizarre linear view of evolution which starts with a single cell creature, which evolves into a creature with a few cells, which evolves…
May 1, 2015
Vast, dense swarms of migrating squid, all swirling about a boat. How can the sailors resist leaping into the water with them?
I'm picturing millions of tiny beaks, each taking a tiny nip, and millions of tentacles, each stroking and rasping away a thin layer of skin, all in endless succession.…
April 27, 2015
There is, and today is it. This is World Tapir Day!
April 26, 2015
The latest fatuous obsession by Paul Nelson, Philosopher of Biology at the Discovery Institute, is a real corker. He has decided that nematodes could not possibly have evolved, because scientists (real ones, not creationist pseudoscientists) have produced an extremely detailed literature…
April 24, 2015
I am sure that's exactly what you think when you see a picture of vampire squid.
But it's true! Where most cephalopods do the deed once, spawn, and die, Vampyroteuthis has multiple cycles of reproduction. Unfortunately, they're also cold, gelatinous, and lethargic…which, if you think about it, is…
April 20, 2015
This leafhopper is a myrmecomorph - it has sprouted lumpy dark extensions of its carapace that resemble an ant. It spends its whole life living in a costume!
Cyphonia clavata: The treehopper Cyphonia clavata with a mimic of an ant (top right) extending from its pronotum (photos: M. Stensmyr). The…
April 17, 2015
They know how to use gadgets!
April 17, 2015
This is one of the loveliest fossils I've ever seen. They are the bones of a Neanderthal, found in a cave in southern Italy, and although they've been calcified by mineral-rich water trickling through the cave where they were found, it's an almost complete skeleton, with the bones all intact.
That…
April 11, 2015
Ken Ham is such a disappointment. He has this regular series of short radio-style bits of apologetics, and they are dreary and boring. I had hopes for this one, about "Carnivores Before the Fall (Leopard Seals)" -- I expected some juicy stories about what these big, large-fanged predators ate…
April 7, 2015
And every year thereafter. He hasn't learned a thing.
Nelson showed up in the comments to the earlier post on Paul Nelson Day, declaring his intent to publish something to clarify the situation later today. By some miracle, he has already managed to post something today, and not in 2031.…