cephalopods
pharyngula | March 27, 2015A certain deep, primal part of my brain went "Squeeee!" at this video of a nautilus being fed by hand. I want one. I want a cephalopod to be my friend. But sorry, people, taking an exotic animal out of the ocean and confining it to an aquarium is not exactly the friendliest thing to do…and a lot of cephalopods are finicky and delicate.
Still, you have to love that face.
pharyngula | March 6, 2015 Fred Tsang
Then he waited, marshaling his thoughts and brooding over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something.
pharyngula | February 27, 2015Now you can learn everything you need to know about octopus sex. It's a bit tangly:
But just in case you got lost in all the tentacles, here's a diagram to help you out. By the way, in case you've ever wondered where an octopus keeps its nads, they're maybe not where you expected.
There should be a warning sign here, though.
In one instance, she and her colleagues observed two day octopuses mating on a reef in Indonesia. After about 15 minutes of copulation, the female lunged and wrapped two arms around the male's bulbous body, his mantle. A few minutes later, the male was motionless. The…
pharyngula | February 20, 2015This week, everyone has been sending me a link to that horrible series of photos showing a seal gnawing and dismembering an octopus (no, I will not link to it! I might cry.) So instead I'm showing you a happy movie of a successful octopus gnawing and dismembering a crab.
Well, happy for everyone except the crustaceans who read Pharyngula.
pharyngula | February 6, 2015Look closely at the eel in this picture. Look up around its head. Do you wonder what that odd little blob is?
Now go see the animation. All will be clear.
pharyngula | January 30, 2015 CIAC
Unfortunately, this event is not on my calendar: the Cephalopod International Advisory Council (CIAC) is meeting 8-14 November in Hakodate, Japan, to discuss recent advances in cephalopod science (pdf). It looks delightful. I've always wanted to visit Japan. But alas, all I can do is tell you you should go.
pharyngula | January 30, 2015How would you feel if NOAA sent a camera to snoop around your most intimate moments, huh?
pharyngula | January 23, 2015Just yesterday, Japanese fishermen caught a 6m long giant squid, and it lived for a few hours before expiring. Here's a video of the rare beastie swimming about, with shots of the tragic corpse afterwards.
pharyngula | January 2, 2015All right, I definitely want to go there.
It also looks as though MBARI has a multi-barrel squid-sucker, according to this video.
I want one!
pharyngula | November 28, 2014Have you called her lately? Look at this mother octopus, clinging to a deep-sea cliff, hanging over the abyss, guarding her clutch of eggs.
She stayed there, never leaving, for four years. The MBARI submersible would regularly visit the spot and check on her, and there she was, getting weaker and weaker, but still defending her brood…until one day they checked, and she was gone, and there was only a heap of hatched-out husks of her eggs.
If she were human, I'd say that was so lonely, so sad. But maybe an octopus finds hovering over eggs for years and years and starving to death fulfilling.
