nudibranch
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…
zooillogix | March 4, 2008Don't usually do this but the Wikipedia Picture of the Day is just too cool.
Glaucus atlanticus
Info from Wikipedia: These two Glaucus atlanticus, a species of nudibranch, were washed up on Surfers Paradise Beach in Queensland, Australia. The larger one is about 35 mm (1.4 in) in length. G. atlanticus preys on the Portuguese Man o' War and other surface-dwelling sea animals. Occasionally Glaucus will feed on others of its kind.
This guy looks like a ship from Star Trek... or so I would imagine if I ever watched that kind of show... The fact that they prey on Portugese Man of Wars makes them…
bleimanb | December 12, 2007Two weeks ago, we asked you what your favoritest animals in the world were. Then, last week we asked you to up the ante and get weirder. You responded in turn with a veritable cornucopia of odd critters some of which we had never heard of! (Just kidding of course we'd heard of them, we're like freaking bizarre animal encyclopedias.)
Anyway, without further ado, your responses (in video, whenever possible):
Drhoz! wants to cuddle with a tardigrade, aka a 'water bear.' Who doesn't?
Unfortunately, Drhoz! also claims to...
... be open to "shacking up" with a goose barnacle if it buys dinner…