Tag: weird creatures
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Newly evolved for 2012’s climate: world’s first hybrid shark
The changing climate that increasingly dominates the news is beginning to play its hand in some strange and unexpected ways. Creatures from algae to fishes are busting out of their old geographic ranges and striking out into new territories. A case in point: the microscopic phytoplankton species Neodenticula seminae, a dominant primary producer in North…
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Ocean thoughts for New Years day
Today is New Year’s Day, the traditional day to look ahead. With that in mind, here is a neatened, expanded-on, written-down version of some thoughts I shared on my final appearance on the BBC radio show Home Planet just before Christmas when the producers gave me a chance to cast an eye forwards. There’s no doubt that these…
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Wave your claws in the air…
… like you just don’t care. Remember the Yeti crab? That fuzzy pawed deep sea denizen that revealed itself to science a few years ago and got given the name Kiwa hirsuta? Well, meet it’s newly-discovered cousin, Kiwa puravida. This chap has gone one step further down the weeeeird sea animals pathway. It’s not just hairy but…
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Happy Thanksgiving!
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Silky seabugs
As a long-time afficianado of the amphipod crustaceans I’ve come to terms with being alone in a crowd, having as it were a more rarified taste in biophilia than the average whale-hugger lover of sea life. Sure, they’re submicroscopic, sometimes pesky (crawling into your ears while working underwater, for example), and often devilishly difficult to…
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Marine biodiversity: The tip of the iceberg
Who doesn’t love whales, beautiful fishes, octopuses, corals — even sharks? You know that we do here at SeaMonster. But those charismatic megafauna, as they are rather cumbersomely known in the conservation science-geek community, are only the tip of the biodiversity iceberg. Down in the jumbled rubble on the floor of the reef, among the…
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Florida: haven for illegal immigrants
OK, so strictly speaking this has nothing to do with the Sea, except insofar as the Everglades are a semi-aquatic environment that drains at some remove into salt water. Still, it involves a large cold-blooded predator exhibiting a classic ecological interaction in a vivid and, well, somewhat appalling way. Which is good enough for me.…
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The Dead Sea isn’t so dead
Life as we know it doesn’t exactly thrive in the Dead Sea. No fish have evolved to put up with the notoriously salty waters. But weird new forms of microbial life have been discovered inhabiting a network of massive craters at the bottom of the Dead Sea. A diverse mixture of sun-worshipping and sulphide-munching bacteria have…
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Yeti crab – the Movie!
Live from the World Conference on Marine Biodiversity in Aberdeen, it’s . . . Yeti Crab – the Movie! Perhaps a bit of explanation is in order. We’re live (sort of) in Aberdeen with 953 of our closest friends and colleagues, catching up on the cutting edge of research on the wondrous and varied life…
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Smackdown: bear meets squid
Now, I have truly seen everything. We all know the inspiring images from nature shows of majestic bears whacking big salmon out of the water as they make their grueling and intrepid homing migrations upstream (the salmon, that is). But squid? Unlike the photo of the shark in the streets of Puerto Rico (mea culpa)…