Organisms
pharyngula | March 30, 2011Earlier, I posted a photo of a saguaro — Rob Bartlett had to one-up me by sending me this photo of a saguaro+.
pharyngula | March 23, 2011After a brief warming period, winter came rushing back last night with a couple of inches of wet sloppy snow…and my university has even cancelled morning classes (there goes my 8am physiology class). So here's something I won't see outside.
Codariocalyx motorius
pharyngula | March 21, 2011How I feel this morning.
Hey, how come there are no LOLcrocs? They're much cuter than cats.
pharyngula | March 15, 2011
About 600 million years ago, or a little more, there was a population of small wormlike creatures that were the forebears of all modern bilaterian animals. They were small, soft-bodied, and simple, not much more than a jellyfish in structure, and they lived by crawling sluglike over the soft muck of the sea bottom. We have no fossils of them, and no direct picture of their form, but we know a surprising amount about them because we can infer the nature of their genes.
These animals would have been the predecessors of flies and squid, cats and starfish, and what we can do is look at the genes…
pharyngula | March 11, 2011Since I just received my very own copy of The Digital Cuttlefish Omnibus, I had to include a picture of a cuttlefish this week, even if this one doesn't have a book of poetry.
You can order your own copy, too. Keep it by the bedside for amorous readings, or something.
pharyngula | March 9, 2011I have just learned that hagfish can absorb nutrients directly through their skin and gills simply by wallowing in the rotting flesh of a carcass. Somehow, that just makes the whole world look beautiful again.
pharyngula | March 7, 2011Some poor embryo acquired a pair of embryonic axes, and look what resulted. It's 7 weeks old, so all the internals seem to be functioning all right, so maybe it has hope for a long life.
pharyngula | February 28, 2011Pay special attention to those orange spots on the anal fin.
Astatotilapia burtoni
(via Kevin Bauman)
Those spots help this fish get oral sex.
As is the case in many fish species, the sight of a brightly coloured male somehow triggers females with ripe eggs to start releasing them. But in cichlids, there is a twist. Females hold their eggs in their mouths and incubate them there after fertilisation - a behaviour that is thought to have evolved to protect the eggs from predators.
As soon as a female has spawned her eggs, she collects them up in her mouth. Normally, sperm released into the…
pharyngula | February 23, 2011The theologian John MacArthur has a new book titled Slave: The Hidden Truth About Your Identity in Christ. His premise is that this is what being a Christian is all about: it's about being a slave to your lord.
"Slave" is the word that almost every English translation of Scripture has avoided using, in favor of the term "servant." But MacArthur insists that the image of a slave is absolutely critical for understanding what it means to follow Jesus.
I think he's on to something, actually. Those creepy stories by Horvath are all about being servile and sucking up to Jesus, after all.
Let's…