Organisms
pharyngula | June 7, 2010Panthera pardus pardus
Bonus video: you be the judge. A cat showing compassion, or a cat with a new toy?
pharyngula | June 4, 2010Before:
Megalocranchia fisheri paralarva
After:
Megalocranchia fisheri adult
Figures from ToLWeb and Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | May 31, 2010
Hippos have an odd habit of licking crocodiles — tempting as it may be to want to find out what makes them so yummy, it's not recommended unless you weigh a few tons and have the ability to bite them in half if they protest.
pharyngula | May 28, 2010Sepioteuthis lessoniana
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | May 26, 2010
Well, more like great-great-many-times-great-aunt of all squid, but it's still a spectacular fossil. Behold the Cambrian mollusc, Nectocaris pteryx.
(Click for larger image)Reconstruction of Nectocaris pteryx.
This was one of those confusing, uninterpretable Cambrian animals, represented by only one poorly preserved specimen. Now, 91 new specimens have been dug up and interpreted, and it makes sense to call it a cephalopod. It has two camera eyes — not arthropod-like compound eyes — on stalks, an axial cavity containing paired gills like the mantles of modern cephalopods, and a flexible…
pharyngula | May 24, 2010This story about antelope trickery struck a chord with me. When attempting to mate, the male will snort and stare as if he's spotted a predator, to make the female hesitate to move away. Guys, have you ever taken a girl to a scary movie in hopes that she'll want to hold your hand and snuggle up close? Same thing.
pharyngula | May 21, 2010Nototodarus hawaiiensis, Hawaiian flying squid
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | May 19, 2010Argonauts are odd animals. They rather resemble a nautilus, but they aren't particularly closely related to them; their closest cephalopod relatives are the octopuses. Females have a thin shell and scoot about in the water column, but the poor males are all dwarfs, rarely seen, with no shell.
What is the shell for? It seems to be a chamber for holding a bubble of air that the animals use to maintain neutral buoyancy. I'm a little surprised that this was a surprise, though — the analogy to the chambered nautilus is obvious, and all the photos and videos I've seen of them suspended in…
pharyngula | May 15, 2010Whoa, dudes. Did you hear about the bats who have oral sex?
Oral sex is widely used in human foreplay, but rarely documented in other animals. Fellatio has been recorded in bonobos Pan paniscus, but even then functions largely as play behaviour among juvenile males. The short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus sphinx exhibits resource defence polygyny and one sexually active male often roosts with groups of females in tents made from leaves. Female bats often lick their mate's penis during dorsoventral copulation. The female lowers her head to lick the shaft or the base of the male's penis but does…
pharyngula | May 14, 2010Oh, yes, I know whenever Boing Boing posts something with cephalopods in it — I get a tsunami of email telling me to post it right now. All right, since I'll get no work done until this is purged…here's an octopus killing a shark.