Organisms
pharyngula | May 9, 2010Show this video to your mom. Tell her you're thinking of her. It's the nice thing to do.
Best wait until after the Sunday brunch you're treating her to, though.
pharyngula | May 7, 2010Sepia tokioensis
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | May 6, 2010This adorable, recently discovered jellyfish is notable for the peculiarity of it's morphology: it's saucer-shaped, with a ring of gonads on top. The species name is medeopolis, meaning "city of gonads". Sounds like a place to party!
pharyngula | April 30, 2010This is the first I've heard of this, but there is a devastating disease called Plum Pox Virus that kills trees bearing stone fruits, like plums and peaches, and the only way to deal with infected plants is to rip them out of the ground and destroy them. There has been a recent outbreak in Pennsylvania; don't rush out to buy the last of the fruits in an apocalyptic terror, it's just a hint of a potential problem for the future, but you can worry a little bit. And maybe you can promote some science that will help.
A new variety of plum called the Honey Sweet has been genetically engineered…
pharyngula | April 30, 2010Argonauta nodosa
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | April 28, 2010Couroupita guianensis
There's a reason this is also called the cannonball tree.
pharyngula | April 23, 2010I swear, half the photos I have of cuttlefish are of two or three or four animals getting it on.
Sepia pharaonis
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | April 19, 2010Basiliscus basiliscus, AKA the Jesus Christ lizard
Just in case you're wondering where the name came from…
pharyngula | April 16, 2010This video focuses mostly on some bipedal chordate, but he's happy enough about cephalopods that it makes it all OK.
pharyngula | April 16, 2010Over on stuff.co.nz, there is a spectacular video of an octopus that grabs a diver's video camera and swims off with it. Much of the video is a surreal blur, because the octopus is all wrapped around the camera, but that just adds to the charm…and there are also plenty of shots of the beautiful animal as it and the diver wrestle.
I'd imbed the video here, too, but that site doesn't make it easy to extract the code, tangling it all up in javascript. That's when I realized the octopus's real intent: he wanted to make videos that were shareable and publicly accessible.
pharyngula | April 14, 2010I have no idea what this is. I was sent the photo by a reader who discovered it in a jungle of ferns on Hawaii. It looks vaguely familiar, but perhaps someone here can identify it.
I have a feeling this feature might turn into something like a county fair on Discworld, where people bring in odd-shaped turnips that have curiously titillating shapes when looked at just so.
pharyngula | April 10, 2010Oh, no…it's a video of a sea lion brutalizing an innocent cephalopod.
It looks like this was made by attaching a camera to a sea lion. Am I wicked for thinking the next video I want to see is a sea lion slowed down by the clumsy gadgetry on its back, getting chewed on by a shark?
Yes, I am taking sides!
(Video moved below the fold because it seems to load every time the page is refreshed.)
pharyngula | April 10, 2010They're amazing multicellular animals that complicate the issue of individuality. Check out this creaturecast!
CreatureCast - Siphonophores and Individuality from Casey Dunn on Vimeo.
pharyngula | April 9, 2010Sepia latimanus
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.