cephalopods
pharyngula | December 20, 2013The cephalopod with the most impressively Goth name ever — Vampyroteuthis infernalis — turns out to be all show and no fangs.
It still looks awesome.
pharyngula | November 29, 2013 In Medias Res
Vampyroteuthis would like you to know that it is forgivable that you visit Walmart or any of the other greedy big box stores today in search of bargains; however, the retailers who exploit their workers and gin up scarcity and treat the desperate poor as targets are going to someday find themselves dying cold, dark, hypoxic deaths, and the grim clammy bleak squid of their conscience will rise up to drag them down into oblivion. Live humanely while you can. They wait.
pharyngula | November 1, 2013He's persistent, I'll say that for him. I first encountered Mark McMenamin as an enthusiastic promoter of Stuart Pivar's inflatable donut model of development. He then sank from sight, along with the pretentious septic tank salesmen, until two years ago, when he presented piles of ichthyosaur vertebrae as evidence that a giant cephalopod, a kraken, had been creating Mesozoic art by arranging the disks into a self portrait.
You may laugh now.
He presented at the Denver GSA meeting this year. Here's his abstract.
THE KRAKEN'S BACK: NEW EVIDENCE REGARDING POSSIBLE CEPHALOPOD ARRANGEMENT OF…
pharyngula | November 1, 2013The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a clever scheme for aerating their babies that involves a little creative surgery on pop bottles. It looks good, though!
I'm tempted to try something similar with zebrafish, just because. I don't have a problem with keeping them supplied with oxygen, but I do have to maintain good concentrations of food available…and this would hinder more than it would help. But it's the coolness of it!
pharyngula | October 25, 2013Last weekend, in San Francisco…I could have been hanging out with my people.
And my favorite non-people.
Maybe next time…
pharyngula | October 18, 2013Oooh, those glossy thick pages. The bright colors that pop. The action shots. The extreme closeups. I admit it: I have an addiction to aquarist magazines. You've gotta check out CORAL: the reef & marine aquarium magazine, especially this issue, the one with the big bold feature on "WRASSES". Turn to page 70. Oooh, baby. Wonderpus action, with the camera right up in the sweet spot.
Insertion! Hooah!
Money shot. Mmmm.
Was it good for you, too?
pharyngula | August 30, 2013
The bulk of an octopus's nervous system is not in its brain, but its arms. So scientists have studied isolated octopus arms and found that they retain substantial responsiveness to the environment.
It's depressing. I love eating big molluscs, but I've had to cut them out of my diet because there is just too much intelligence there. I'm going to have to cut out pork, too. Chickens are OK? Well, I'm cutting back there, too.
pharyngula | August 23, 2013
There's more! A whole series of photos of nautilus hatching from the Birch Aquarium at Scripps!
pharyngula | August 16, 2013The name "Flamboyant Cuttlefish" is perfect, and if you watch the video you'll see even better why they deserve to strut.
Hmm, maybe I should retroactively get my kids' names changed to "Flamboyant Myers". Or at least their middle names. It's got to have an effect.
