Organisms
pharyngula | February 19, 2007
Cool: here's a duck with four hindlimbs.
I have to gripe about the description, though:
A rare mutation has left eight-day-old Stumpy with two extra legs behind the two he moves around on. … The mutation is rare but cases have been recorded across the world.
No, no, no. This is almost certainly not the result of a mutation, and it's one of my pet peeves when the media makes this wrong assumption, that every change in a newborn is the product of a genetic change. This is the result of a developmental error, not a genetic one, most likely caused by a fusion of two embryos in a single egg.
(…
pharyngula | February 16, 2007Nautilus belauensis copulating
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | February 14, 2007
This large squid, Taningia danae, has been caught on film, and it's amazing stuff. It swoops in on its prey, arms splayed wide, using its luminescence to disorient the target. It's beautiful!
pharyngula | February 11, 2007That's a line in this video describing the scene when the South African police tow a beached whale carcass offshore—you can guess what it all looks like, if you'd rather not watch.
It just gets better, though. After the great white sharks have gorged themselves and are lolling about, the announcer declares that they have spotted the "tell-tale aspect of a large sexually aroused male"…
(via Byzantium's Shores)
pharyngula | February 9, 2007Euprymna tasmanica
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | February 8, 2007Got a jar you can't get open? Tired of straining just to get a dab of peanut butter? You need Violet, the incredible jar-opener*, complete with suction cups. Act now, and perhaps you can train her to use a can opener, too!
*Offer void where prohibited. Violet not responsible for damp, salty flavor of opened product.
pharyngula | February 6, 2007Here's a peek at a work in progress: it's got two kinds of cephalopods, Stethacanthus, and crinoids front and center. Delicious.
pharyngula | February 2, 2007May your weekend be as fun as theirs.
Loliginid squid mating
Well, more fun, actually…these squid have a frenzied spawning, and then die. Don't go quite that far.
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | February 1, 2007As is traditional at the end of the month, a new Circus of the Spineless is up at The Voltage Gate. And the next Circus of the Spineless at the end of February will be…here! Start sending me good stuff on invertebrate organisms—remember, there are over 30 animal phyla, and all but one of them are fair game, and even that one contains non-vertebrate classes. Will we be able to get them all represented?
pharyngula | January 26, 2007Sepioteuthis sepioidea
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | January 24, 2007Oooh, cool movie of a recently captured frilled shark, Chlamydoselachus anguineus. These are weird-looking deep water predators with awkward-seeming bodies and extremely sharp teeth that they use to catch fish and squid.
(hat tip to the Count)
pharyngula | January 22, 2007Hot tip for cephalopod fans: the February 2007 issue of Natural History magazine includes a very good article on octopus intelligence and personality.
Enteroctopus dofleini and Lego™
Mather JA (2007) Eight arms, with attitude. Natural History 116(1):30-36.
pharyngula | January 19, 2007
Oh, sure…one moment it's all long throbbing organs pumping slickly in and out of orifices, and then the next thing you know, you've got a whole faceful of babies and little larvae giving you that evil demonic look. This is what happens after the squid orgies.
While most squid seem to lay their eggs in masses on the sea floor, Gonatus onyx is a deep sea squid that hangs on to its clutch of several thousand eggs, swimming along with them dangling in filmy sheets, occasionally pumping its tentacles to aerate them. The movies filmed from a submersible are spectacular (some are available here).…
pharyngula | January 19, 2007Watch the octopus crawl through a maze of plexiglas tubes—it makes a fellow wish he could get rid of his bones. Hydraulic skeletons rule!
pharyngula | January 18, 2007
The vulva is one of my favorite organs. Not only is it pretty and fun to manipulate, but how it responds tells us so much about its owner. And it is just amazing how much we're learning about it now.
Don't worry about clicking to read more…this article is full of pictures, but it is entirely work safe because it's all about science.
It also helps that all I'm going to talk about is worm vulvas. Anybody who has taken a developmental biology class in the last ten years knew exactly what to expect: when a developmental biologist starts getting all enthusiastic about vulvas, you know he's…
pharyngula | January 14, 2007Any other fans of the Phasmatodea out there? For years, we kept a collection of stick insects — they are extremely easy to raise, and although they aren't exactly dynamos of activity, they're weird enough to be entertaining — and so I perk up when I notice a paper on them. The latest news is the discovery of a fossil leaf insect (also a member of the Phasmatodea, but a smaller subgroup specialized to resemble leaves rather than twigs) from 47 million years ago that resembles modern forms very closely. The cryptic camouflage of this group is ancient, and probably coevolved with the emergence…
pharyngula | January 14, 2007The beginning will seem a little cryptic, and you'll wonder what those little glimmering points of light in the deep might be, but be patient—all will become clear.
(hat tip to the Science Pundit)
pharyngula | January 13, 2007The heathen at IIDB are talking about squid—it's infectious, I tell you, and the godless seem especially susceptible—and in particular about this interesting paper on squid fisheries. Squid are on the rise, and are impressively numerous.
We can get an idea of the abundance of squid in the world's ocean by considering the consumption of cephalopods (mainly squid) from just one cephalopod predator the sperm whale. Sperm whales alone are estimated to consume in excess of 100 million tonnes of cephalopods a year. This is equivalent to the total world fishery catch and probably exceeds half the…
pharyngula | January 12, 2007Grrlscientist asked me for a blue cephalopod the other day, and what do we all think of when blue cephalopods come up? Blue ringed octopuses, of course. So lovely, and so deadly.
Hapalochlaena
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | January 11, 2007This will blow you away. Watch the video and spot the octopus—it's like magic.
(via Skeptic News)