Organisms
pharyngula | July 15, 2006So go watch some deep-sea movies—there are a couple of exotic cephalopods, some predatory arthropods and fish, and a very pretty sea cucumber. It cooled me right down.
(tip o' the hat to Phil)
pharyngula | July 14, 2006Hug a lungfish!
I've had about 8 requests for further information on saving the Australian lungfish. That's a good start, and thanks to everyone who wrote in, but it's not enough. Look at that beautiful finny beast to the right; do you want them all to die? And seriously, look at those fins: aren't they spectacular? Don't you want to know how they develop and how they evolved?
The Australian government is planning to dam the last rivers on which these spectacular vertebrates live, and that will be it for them. We'll be left with nothing but bones and tissue samples and few relics in aquaria…
pharyngula | July 14, 2006Abralia veranyi
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | July 12, 2006(click for larger image)
A new report in this week's Nature clears up a mystery about an enigmatic fossil from the Cambrian. This small creature has been pegged as everything from a chordate to a polychaete, but a detailed analysis has determined that it has a key feature, a radula, that places it firmly in the molluscan lineage. It was a kind of small Cambrian slug that crawled over matted sheets of algae and bacteria, scraping away a meal.
Here it is, a most unprepossessing creature. It was small (less than a 5 inches long), a flattened oval with few striking features, with a small mouth…
pharyngula | July 12, 2006I just received a letter from Per Ahlberg, who is working as the international coordinator in a campaign to save the Australian lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri, this magnificent creature:
Unfortunately, this species is threatened, and its situation is getting worse, as its habitat is at risk of destruction. As Dr Ahlberg put it:
Neoceratodus, which is the most tetrapod-like of living fishes and an invaluable source of information about the transition from fish to land vertebrates (particularly from an evo-devo perspective), is native only to the Mary and Burnett Rivers of Queensland. The…
pharyngula | July 11, 2006It's July in Minnesota, and you know what that means: bugs. Clouds of bugs. Some people complain, but I generally rationalize a large population of fecund invertebrates as simply a sign of a healthy ecosystem, so yeah, we've got bugs, but it's good for us.
Except for those mosquitoes. It's hard to think charitably of some invertebrates when you're lying in bed at night and you hear…that…high-pitched whine rising as the nearly invisible little blood-sucker buzzes by your exposed flesh. Now, in a discovery calculated to increase my irritation, I learn that the little bastards are singing a love…
pharyngula | July 10, 2006Eh. It's a mannered debate about the plural of "octopus". Honestly, I think fretting about whether the root is Latin or Greek and the ending of the plural form matches is a waste of time—we're speaking English. What matters is that it is understood, and what the convention is. So let's ask the scientists who study octo-whatsises!
Searching PubMed for the various forms of "octopus" gives the following numbers of references:
Octopus:
1,608
Octopuses:
592
Octopods:
16
Octopi:
6
Octopodes:
0
Octopedes:
0
I'm sticking with octopuses, the form hallowed by informed usage. I won't spit in your eye…
pharyngula | July 8, 2006I've been told that there is a drop of old Dutch blood in my ancestry—that way back in the 17th century, an intrepid few Dutch immigrants mingled their seed with the mongrel mess of my father's line. I think now I sense a kindred spirit. Adriaen Coenensz, a fisherman and fish seller from Scheveningen in Holland wrote and illustrated a book between 1577 and 1580 titled Het Visboek ("The Fishbook"). It's an amazing browse. Apparently, Coenensz was interested in adventure and exotic dining experiences…
…he was an early devotee of science fiction…
…and most of all, he was obsessed with squid…
pharyngula | July 7, 2006There are just too many pretty molluscs in the world, so today you get TWO Friday Cephalopods, this one thanks to NOAA.
Benthoctopus sp.
Just think, their children will be such lovely cyborg cephalopods.
pharyngula | July 7, 2006Only this one has a real prize. Invasive Species Weblog wants a title for an article—a strange story about those wretched starlings.
pharyngula | July 7, 2006Via Deep Sea News, here is a site for the BP Kongsberg Underwater Image Competition 2006: a whole collection of underwater images. It's beautiful!
Sauroteuthis syrtensis
Siphonophore
Nereis
Viperfish
pharyngula | July 6, 2006While I'm announcing a few carnivals, I'll remind all of you readers in West Central Minnesota that there will be a Drinking Liberally tonight at 6:00, in Old #1 on Atlantic Avenue in Morris.
Otherwise, for those of you trapped in the virtual world…
I and the Bird #27
Skeptics' Circle #38
pharyngula | July 5, 2006It's been three years since I visited Washington state, and Kerry of Federal Way just had to make me homesick by sending photos from the West Coast Chainsaw Carving Competition. I've been there before! It's fun and noisy.
It's just as well I didn't go this year: I would not have been able to resist this.
I don't think it would have fit in an overhead storage bin, either.
pharyngula | July 4, 2006Carl Zimmer tells us all about the recent big dodo find, in both the pages of the Grey Lady and a podcast. He's a master of multimedia, that guy.
pharyngula | June 30, 2006Once upon a time, as a young undergraduate, I took a course in neurobiology (which turned out to be rather influential in my life, but that's another story). The professor, Johnny Palka, took pains at the beginning to explain to his class full of pre-meds and other such riff-raff that the course was going to study how the brain works, and that we were going to be looking at invertebrates almost exclusively—and he had to carefully reassure them that flies and squid actually did have brains, very good brains, and that he almost took it as a personal offense when his students implied that they…
pharyngula | June 30, 2006It's a bonus movie for the Friday Cephalopod: the octopus is a master of camouflage.
pharyngula | June 30, 2006Giant Australian cuttlefish
"It's a giant orgy. The waters of the Spencer Gulf are simply reeking with sex at the moment, as millions of Giant Australian cuttlefish arrive for their annual breeding season."
O Australia! I wish I could switch continents!
pharyngula | June 29, 2006It's got bats, it's got clever giant albino centipedes, it's got sudden death: it's the perfect lunch hour movie for Pharynguloids.
There is no genital mutilation, you may be relieved to learn.
pharyngula | June 28, 2006
Maybe half of my audience here will be familiar with this problem. You're a man, and you're hauling this massive, ummm, package around in your pants everywhere you go. Other men fear you, while the women worship you…yet at the same time, your e-mail is stuffed to bursting with strange people making friendly offers to help you make it even bigger. It's a dilemma; you think you would be even more godlike if only it were larger, but could there possibly be any downside to it? (There is a bit of folk wisdom that inflating it drains all the blood from the brain, but this is clearly false. Men who…