crab
dr. dolittle | June 18, 2016
The blue blood of horseshoe crabs contains a special chemical limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL) that medical laboratories obtain from thousands of animals annually to detect bacterial infections in humans. The labs are only allowed to draw up to 30% of their blood once a year. Despite these precautions, researchers are becoming increasingly concerned that some animals may be injured during the process resulting in the death of animals after they are returned to the ocean. In fact, some researchers are pushing to add horseshoe crabs to the vulnerable list as populations decline in some countries…
dr. dolittle | April 1, 2015Yesterday (Tuesday) was another great day for Comparative Physiology!
Congratulations to Dr. Arthur DeVries (above; Professor Emeritus, Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology; Professor of Animal Biology, University of Illinois), this year's recipient of the August Krogh Distinguished lecturer award from the Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology section of the American Physiological Society. Dr. DeVries gave an excellent seminar summarizing his career studying fish that live in some of the coldest waters without freezing! The fish accomplish this amazing task by having anti-…
jgoldman | June 22, 2010This is just cool. No behavior, no cognition, no neuroscience. Just animal awesomeness.
Amazing time-lapse video of a twelve-foot spider crab molting. Watch til the end.
From Neatorama, via @kzelnio (of Deep Sea News)
zooillogix | June 22, 2010In this nightmarish time lapse video, a gentle spider crab is internally consumed by a terrifying angry red spider crab who then dispenses of the empty husk of its former host.
... or maybe its just molting
Thanks to our Asian friend Kangatron for sharing.
sb admin | May 17, 2010So a week back or so, a number of friends read an article about death by rectal eel and immediately thought of me. For those of you who missed the story, it went a little something like this:
* Chinese man gets drunk with friends and passes out
* Friends think it would be hilarious to insert a large living swamp eel into the man's butt while he is unconscious
* Hilarity does not ensue. In fact, the man dies. Chinese doctor says the eel "consumed the man's bowels"
The article was widely reported in major news outlets like CNN and the Times, but I am linking instead to the UK edition of…
bleimanb | November 14, 2008The Census of Marine life is the gift that keeps on giving. Here are the latest pics of some new species they've discovered at the bottom of the ocean.
A blind lobster from the genus--Thaumastochelopsis
Sweet new comb jelly
More below the fold...
Ampelisca mississippiana - a new kind of amphipod
New species of squat lobster
Adorable new pebble crab
A new species of shrimp, seen here standing on a yellow worm (they both eat the same marine plants)
Read more about these species on nationalgeographic.com.
zooillogix | September 19, 2008Marine biologists off the coast of Australia have discovered what they believe to be hundreds of new species on the Great Barrier and Ningaloo Reefs. The project is part of CReefs, a global census of coral reefs, which is in turn part of the larger Census of Marine Life, an ongoing effort to catalog all ocean life.
The researchers were kind enough to take a number of incredible photos, many of which we share below. It's not clear to me which of these are newly identified organisms and which are just pretty critters they encountered along the way, but many of them are spectacular regardless…
sporte | June 23, 2008It was a -1 tide on Sunday and great entertainment for people and birds.
We got there about lunch time.
We found two moonsnails.
Lots of moonsnail egg cases.
Some moonsnail food.
Anenomes everywhere.
And at the end, we had quit being crabby.
And everything was clam.
bleimanb | April 21, 2008A friend of mine (I'll call him Duncan Lye to protect his identity) recently returned from a surf trip to Costa Rica with an amazing tale.
It all started when Duncan --a large man, known both for his voracious appetite and his unbending temperament-- awoke, early one morning, to find that he had developed a pain in his ear. The pain soon worsened to the point of a full on migraine. Duncan figured that it "was just an ear ache from surfing..." Something that's apparently, "common among surfers."
The trouble persisted throughout the day, however, and Duncan was feeling pretty down. He'd been…
zooillogix | January 30, 2008
A FEMA home for a New Orleans crab? "George Bush doesn't care about hermit crabs."
This photo is begging for a back story. We propose a competition: Who can write the best description of what you see here? We will give out awards for most creative, heartwarming and disturbing in a couple of days.
Thanks to Tyler Lang for sending along. As he put it, "it seems pretty self-explanatory."
bleimanb | January 7, 2008National Geographic reported this weekend that three new species of salamander have been discovered in distant cloud forests of Costa Rica's La Amistad National Park. Just like X-Men, each salamander seems to have a special power: "one with a bold streak, one with a 'ballistic' tongue, and one no longer than a fingernail," according to Nat'l Geographic.
La Amistad is the largest wildlife reserve in Central America, and...
...much of it has yet to be explored.
This salamander has markings reminiscent of a poison dart frog, possibly an environmental ruse.
In the article, Alex Monro of…
zooillogix | November 12, 2007These were too cool not to share here. We are like the Robin Hood of scientific imagery... sort of
Larval crab
Copepod
Diatoms
To make matters worse... we can't find the original article these came from... it's over at National Geographic in some article about plankton or something...
zooillogix | March 10, 2007One of over 500 new creatures discovered in 2006 in the Deep Sea Census, the Yeti Crab is among the most unusual. With "furry arms" it is distinct from almost all other crustaceans and would make a great stuffed animal.
kiwa hirsuta