Tag: weird creatures
-
All Reef Creatures Great and Small
In a follow up to our interview with Prof. Charles Sheppard about his latest expedition to the Chagos Archipelago, here is PhD researcher Catherine Head in an exclusive Seamonster guest post giving us a glimpse of the incredible hidden word of coral reef cryptofauna. Chagos for me is what it’s all about, it represents why…
-
Online Encyclopedia of Life hits a million pages
The Encyclopedia of Life has hit a million pages! From ScienceDaily: The Encyclopedia of Life has surged past one million pages of content with the addition of hundreds of thousands of new images and specimen data from the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). Launched in 2007 with the support of leading scientific…
-
Weird seahorse cousins found in stone for first time
My seahorse fossil-finding friend, Jure Žalohar, has made another amazing discovery. Back in 2009 Jure and his friend Tomas found the first fossils of extinct seahorses in his home country of Slovenia. His latest find is the world’s first fossilized pygmy pipehorse – a…
-
Stunning reminders of why the oceans are awesome
Here’s a few of the amazing pictures that won this year’s underwater photography contest run by the University of Miami Rosentiel School. Make sure you check them out in their full glory at the 2012 Winners website.
-
Teeny tiny glowing sharks could be missing link
Take a tour of sharks around the oceans and you’ll find that around one in ten has the ability to glow, sparkle and twinkle its own eerie light. Some of the tiniest and most mysterious sharks – the pygmy and lantern sharks – are the subject of a new study looking into how glowing sharks…
-
Helen in the Gambia
If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll probably have heard that I’ve just begun a 2-month trip to West Africa. You can keep posted on my adventures here as I report back on all things seamonsterly. In the first of my reports, I encounter my first two local species down at the beach. …
-
Sand bubbler crabs eat sand, make art
I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent many hours on tropical beaches gazing at the crazy patterns of tiny sand footballs left behind by crabs. Here’s a neat up-close video on them doing it. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6449515[/vimeo] Big HT to Treehugger – head on over there for…
-
Cuttlefish are cool
Yes they are. But don’t just take my word for it. Click & listen below to seahorse expert Heather Mason Jones from the University of Tampa making her pick of the oceans inhabitants for “Critter of the Month” in the latest episode of the Naked Oceans podcast. Cuttlefish are cool – Naked Oceans
-
Best invertebrate porn I’ve seen all week
I mean, not that I go looking for it or anything . . . but you will see from the video why they call it (no I am not making this up) penis fencing. And watch carefully: they each have two. Not sure exactly where they put them but, well, let’s not go there. Truth,…
-
Breaking news – fish mimics the mimic octopus
This is so very awesome you better sit down and pay attention. A fish has been caught in the act of mimicking that master of disguise – the mimic octopus. We all know how clever octopus can be. And of all the brainy cephalopods, the mimic octopus stands out with it’s extraordinary repertoire of impersonations.…