pharyngula

I know you're thinking we've had more than enough discussion of one simplistic umbrella hypothesis for the origin of unique human traits — the aquatic ape hypothesis — and it's cruel of me to introduce another, but who knows, maybe the proponents of each will collide and mutually annihilate each…

(via the International Cephalopod Advisory Council)

Gang, don't try this at home. I'm a trained professional, so I can get away with it, although I do face extreme risk of brain damage. I am reading two books at once. OK, that part isn't too scary, I'm actually just alternating between the two — an hour with one at lunch time, an hour or two with…

Cystic Fibrosis is a serious genetic disorder caused by the inheritance of a defective transporter protein. It leads to an accumulation of mucus and fluids in the lungs that can cause progressive scarring and damage to the tissue, and eventually loss of so much lung function that respiration is…

Aim a camera at this little guy, and it just has to put on a graceful show. (via Institute of Marine Research)

Don't you hate it when you get up in the morning and the first thing you read on the internet is that the news that your entire career has been a waste of time, your whole field of study has collapsed, and you're going to have to rethink your entire future? Happens to me all the time. But then, I…

(via Larry Linton)

Daniel Friedmann has found it! It's the scaling factor that lets you convert the 'days' of God in the book of Genesis into human years. This is reported with total credulity in the Toronto Star. Let’s take the word “day.” In terms of the first six days, they’re “creation days,” which are different…

(via Debbie Merschen Harding)

I'm shocked. Just totally surprised. And it was unanimous — the Supreme Court determined that human genes cannot be patented. This is excellent news. Why is it a good decision? Because medical DNA analysis was turning into a patchwork of competing landgrabs. Sequencing technology is coming along so…

(via Cannabis Culture)

Lehrer has landed a new book deal. This has sparked justifiable disgust: Maria Konnikova explains why. Lehrer is not the writer who simply made up a few Bob Dylan quotes and self-plagiarized (the way he’s portrayed in recent accounts of his latest book deal). He is the writer who got the science…

These are awesome. I want a swarm for a pet. Upwards of 3 feet long and in some cases-as thick as a garden hose and have the texture of jello. There's mucus. These things are crazy. Key words: EAT EVERYTHING. ALIVE or DEAD. These have been fed almost everything-and they eat what's given them:…

Title: "Leggy, Luscious, and Lethal." (via Underwater World of Wonder)

photo by Paul Pichugin (via World's most beautiful trees)

I have no problem with slugs, adorable creatures. Twenty centimeter long slugs, great, I grew up with those. But hot pink twenty centimeter slugs is going a little far.

(via Mexi Elena Marine Photography)

We may have the answer to all of the big problems in physics! Or not. My money is on "not". Marcus du Sautoy, a very smart mathematician and the fellow who occupies the chair for the public understanding of science at Oxford formerly held by Richard Dawkins, made a stunning announcement. Two years…

Molluscs have amazing super-powers. But you know what? So do humans. We air-breathing terrestrial bipeds are able to enter strange alien worlds and return with a digital record of the events that even the lubbers among us can appreciate.

It's the lovely Pink Dragon millipede — it's bright enough to belong in the girl's aisle at the toy store. It also squirts cyanide at you if you annoy it.

(From TONMO, on a page about raising captive cuttlefish)

(via Australian Geographic)

Remember the good old days, when you could always trust a creationist to claim their theory was not religious, and then they'd turn around and neatly undermine their own claims for you? Think Bill Buckingham at the Dover trial, who completely won the case for the good guys by saying a lot of stupid…

But that membrane hanging off of it is just plain weird. Maybe the video will help make sense of it all. (via ZooBorns)

At first glance, I thought it was an epiploon or omentum, but no, it's a lovely octopus mother tending her brood. Go hug your mom right now, or if she's not nearby, hug a mollusc instead.

He has a new movie coming out this summer, After Earth. It looks awful, but then, that's what I've come to expect from Will Smith's Sci-Fi outings. Jebus. Anyone remember that abomination, I, Robot? How about I Am Legend? I steer clear of these movies with a high concept and a big name star,…

It's going to be a good season, I can tell already. It's finals week, so I'll still have an abrupt pile of grading to do on Thursday, but otherwise, my teaching obligations are done for the semester. Now I'm trapped, trapped I tell you, in Morris for almost (I do have two quick trips to Europe…

Oh, no. The metazoan curator sent me this photo for this time around, and I groaned a bit: more big furries. I told her, "Where are the tubeworms, the crustaceans, the zooplankton? Why no jellyfish or echinoderms?" And she said, "But they're so cute!" and gave me that look. That look that means I…

From a lovely article in the New York Review of Books about octopods:

After our disastrous chick lab — it turns out that getting fertilized chicken eggs shipped to remote Morris, Minnesota during a blizzard is a formula for generating dead embryos — the final developmental biology lab for the semester is an easy one. I lectured the students on structuralism and how…