Sea Monster

Tag: weird creatures

  • Who’s the daddy?

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAU-E7KLoaY&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] 20 leopard sharks born in April at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, after their mother went through a 12-month pregnancy. But the question is – Who’s the Daddy? PhD student Andy Nosal is doing a paternity test on the little sharks to work out how many males were involved in their conception (chances are, it’s more…

  • Sea squirts and the secret to eternal life

    [A guest post written primarily by my PhD student Jonathan Lefcheck] Have you ever dreamed of living forever? Since the dawn of time people have sought in vain for the fountain of youth. The latest clue to its whereabouts comes from an unlikely source – our closest relative among the invertebrates, the sea squirt. A…

  • How to get a horseshoe crab in the mood

    Persuading prehistoric-looking horseshoe crabs to mate in captivity may not be on most of our minds, but Carmela Cuomo from the University of New Haven spent 10 years figuring out how to get them in the mood. And it turns out all you need is some sand from home. Horseshoe crabs look like a weird type…

  • Rock-eyed limpets

    A simple mollusk appears to use hundreds of eye-like structures made of a calcium carbonate crystal to scope out potential predators and to protect itself against being eaten. The “eyes” of the three-inch-long mollusks, called chitons, have lenses made of aragonite, a type of rock. It’s the first time scientists have found an animal that…

  • Social shrimp: Discovery of new species and a new family tree

    Of all the wondrous creatures of the sea, only a small handful of inconspicuous shrimps have risen to the pinnacle of social life shared by the ants and honeybees with their large, organized, and cooperative colonies, the condition known as “eusociality”. Because of their retiring habits—making their homes in tunnels within living sponges—and the devilish…

  • A deep-sea fish with a transparent head and tubular eyes

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM9o4VnfHJU[/youtube]

  • Greetings from the Seaster Bunny

  • Top Ten Sea Monsters (OK, make it a dozen)

    We couldn’t have done this better ourselves. Meet the “12 most bizarre and frightening sea creatures“, courtesy of Asylum UK.  This is so good I had to reproduce it: The planet Earth is full of scary stuff. Not just like the threat of bird-flu and unemployment, but even scarier things like angry bears and bity…

  • The Sea Hag: Ugliest creature on earth?

    As marine biologists we consider it our solemn duty to celebrate and sing of the beautiful and charismatic animals that live beneath the waves (see for example here and here). But every now and then one has to face the fact that some animals are, well, just plain disgusting. Alas, not everyone can be a…

  • CreatureCast – Antarctic Krill Love Dance

    [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/20754796[/vimeo]