Organisms
pharyngula | June 21, 2013
Aim a camera at this little guy, and it just has to put on a graceful show.
(via Institute of Marine Research)
pharyngula | June 10, 2013These are awesome. I want a swarm for a pet.
Upwards of 3 feet long and in some cases-as thick as a garden hose and have the texture of jello. There's mucus. These things are crazy.
Key words: EAT EVERYTHING. ALIVE or DEAD. These have been fed almost everything-and they eat what's given them: fecal pellets, starfish, dead seal meat, fish, sponges, sea anemones, worms amphipods, penguin meat, sardine meat (with tomato sauce!) and on and on....
(via The Echinoblog.)
pharyngula | June 3, 2013I have no problem with slugs, adorable creatures. Twenty centimeter long slugs, great, I grew up with those. But hot pink twenty centimeter slugs is going a little far.
pharyngula | May 20, 2013It's the lovely Pink Dragon millipede — it's bright enough to belong in the girl's aisle at the toy store.
It also squirts cyanide at you if you annoy it.
pharyngula | May 13, 2013But that membrane hanging off of it is just plain weird.
Maybe the video will help make sense of it all.
(via ZooBorns)
pharyngula | May 12, 2013At first glance, I thought it was an epiploon or omentum, but no, it's a lovely octopus mother tending her brood. Go hug your mom right now, or if she's not nearby, hug a mollusc instead.
pharyngula | May 6, 2013Oh, no. The metazoan curator sent me this photo for this time around, and I groaned a bit: more big furries. I told her, "Where are the tubeworms, the crustaceans, the zooplankton? Why no jellyfish or echinoderms?" And she said, "But they're so cute!" and gave me that look. That look that means I have to do as I'm told.
You know, if she starts sending me cats, I'm just gonna blow up. Me posting cats? That would be one of the signs of the End Times, along with the Last Trump and deluges of blood and whores riding dragons.
(via NatGeo)
pharyngula | April 27, 2013Casey Luskin is such a great gift to the scientific community. The public spokesman for the Discovery Institute has a law degree and a Masters degree (in Science! Earth Science, that is) and thinks he is qualified to analyze papers in genetics and molecular biology, fields in which he hasn't the slightest smattering of background, and he keeps falling flat on his face. It's hilarious! The Discovery Institute is so hard up for competent talent, though, that they keep letting him make a spectacle of his ignorance.
I really, really hope Luskin lives a long time and keeps his job as a frontman…