Tag: weird creatures
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Hollywood Amphipod
ALIEN IS ALIVE! …but this real-life version of Alien from the half-billion-dollar movie franchise isn’t even an inch long and lives in the ocean. Phronima, a hyperiid amphipod related to shrimps, crabs, barnacles, krill, and other crustaceans, is found just about everywhere in the oceans. Though their offspring are not about to burst through anyone’s…
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Octopus Houdini
Octopuses have a gift for squeezing themselves through any hole larger than their beaks. Is this what childbirth is like? [cincopa AUCAPoKGL9ML] This video was filmed by Chance Miller of Miller’s Landing in Seward, Alaska
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Cuba journal: Day 7 – The Wall of Mouths
Day 7: Thursday 2 June Done. All over now but the last dregs of clean-up and packing. Five days in the “Gardens of the Queen”, and what a time it’s been. A journey back in time in both the state of society and of the Sea. In the last five days we’ve become accustomed to…
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Why pufferfish puff
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkXhC7yzISI&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] Okay, so I admit this is a river story but I can only imagine similar things go on in the sea. And it just goes to show how blowing up like a beach ball is a really effective way of seeing off predators. HT to Practical Fishkeeping for the link.
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Name that seamonster (and you thought British seas were boring!)
It seems it’s all the rage to get members of the public to name species that are otherwise stuck with boring scientific epithets. Latest is the UK’s Guardian who are running a name-that-species contest on their website today, including a bunch of critters than inhabit British seas. My favourite is this orange sea spider – it looks…
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Giant squid: Panda bear of the ocean?
Some people think so. Not in the sense of being cute and cuddly, of course. But in superstar potential. Think World Wildlife Fund’s iconic panda logo — who doesn’t recognize that image? A team of researchers has published a new paper in Biological Conservation arguing that ocean conservationists should take a page from WWF’s book…
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What are gelatinous plankton?
An amazing video about gelatinous plankton from MBARI. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HzFiQFFQYw&[/youtube]
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Classic film series: Barnacles tell no lies
Alright. John has broken the ice in introducing invertebrate porn to SeaMonster. So I can’t resist a shout-out out to the grandaddy of ’em all, a true classic, and a runaway favorite for best soundtrack. Ladies and gentlemen, from 1991, it’s . . Randy Olson’s Barnacles Tell No Lies! [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZQE0Z2aZHE[/youtube]
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Barnacle mating (x-rated!)
Warning: the following post may contain material not appropriate for children and some adults. Barnacles have sex. And as marine biologists are fond of saying, male barnacles have the largest “boy part” relative to body size in the animal kingdom. Male marine biologists frequently attempt to increase their own genetic fitness by sharing this information with…
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Jellyfish have eyes AND brains!
A great article in the NYT by Natalie Angier about the surprising complexity of jellyfish: For all their noble antiquity, jellyfish have long been ignored or misunderstood by mainstream science, dismissed as so much mindless protoplasm with a mouth. Now, in a series of new studies, researchers have found that there is far more complexity…