mbari

Stunning footage of deep-sea squids from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), where researchers use remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to observe and record deep-sea animal behaviors.
So 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…
Beautiful and fascinating footage of a Bloodbelly Comb (not a jellyfish, but similarly gelatinous, like my brother) from the Monterey Bay Aquarium's remote operated vehicle. The laser light show comes from tiny transparent, hair-like cilia combined with trace amounts of LSD that will forever remain in your spine. I could point out that it appears Deep Sea News ran this a few days ago, but we're not talking to them anymore since they went all "academic" on us... I bet they don't even have any shirts with wolves on them.
The barreleye has been known to science since 1939 but scientists have never understood why the fish had a see-through head. Well now researchers at MBARI have solved the mystery: the barreleyes' see-through heads allow them to read each others' thoughts! OK not true. Actually, their see through heads allow their long tubular eyes to actually stare up through their own noggins. We strongly suggest you go visit the sea monkeys at Deep Sea News to get the whole story. But if you don't care about "facts", and just want pretty pictures and scintillating see-through fish video, well, we got that…