Organisms
pharyngula | September 17, 2009Abraliopsis
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | September 11, 2009There's a familiar beast plaguing the fish of the Jersey coast: a tongue-eating isopod.
Mr Chambers told BBC Jersey: "When we emptied the fish bag out there at the bottom was this incredibly ugly looking isopod.
"Really quite large, really quite hideous - if you turn it over its got dozens of these really sharp, nasty claws underneath and I thought 'that's a bit of a nasty beast'.
"I struggled for weeks to find an identification for this thing until, quite by chance I stumbled across something that looked similar in a Victorian journal.
"Apparently there's not too much ill effect to the…
pharyngula | September 11, 2009Heteroteuthis hawaiiensis
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | September 9, 2009They must be devolving into dinosaurs (no, not really)! Great tits normally live on a diet of seeds and insects, but when those resources are scarce, they'll fly into caves and kill and eat bats. They don't do it unless they're really hungry — they prefer bugs and bacon, as do we all — so the interesting thing about is that these birds can push the boundary of what is expected of their species.
Follow the link, it has a short movie of a tit picking up a bat carcass and flying off to a branch to tear at it. Appetizing!
pharyngula | September 4, 2009Octopus micropyrsus
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | September 1, 2009I know, my title is very controversial…but the BBC has a photo gallery of Arctic jellies. Judge for yourself!
pharyngula | August 28, 2009Tips for flourishing after a mass extinction. Ceratites nodosus (MCZ-7232) (A), from the Triassic of Germany, was similar to the ceratitid ammonoid species that thrived in the water column in the Early Triassic (1), while bottom-dwelling species languished. Key to the ceratitids' rapid success after the end-Permian mass extinction were their ecological tolerances, which may be inferred by reference to their closest living relatives, the coleoids (squids, octopuses, and cuttlefish), including the low-oxygen specialist Vampyroteuthis infernalis (B).
This picture has a little story behind it.…
pharyngula | August 14, 2009Octopus maorum
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | August 6, 2009Octopus mototi
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | July 31, 2009Dosidicus gigas, left, Homo sapiens, right
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | July 27, 2009Mary isn't here this week, since she's off shepherding kids at Camp Quest Minnesota. A conspirator at Camp Quest did send me this photo of a camp counselor in her native habitat, so that will have to do.