I saw this little critter a while back, over on Pharyngula, & put it on the list of Things To Blog About. Somehow, it took me a while to actually get onto it, but we've got there in the end 🙂 Image credit: Laurence Madin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/CMarZ, Census of Marine Life I was […]
Continue readingCategory: animal diversity
a strange but beautiful bird
In terms of plumage and behaviour, some of the birds of paradise have to be strong contenders in any 'most unusual' list. I mean, take a look at this: (Image source: Wikpedia (Creative Commons)) This is a male Wilson's Bird of Paradise (Cicinnurus respublica), a species that's found only on a couple of small islands […]
Continue reading‘slow life’ – corals and anemones strut their stuff
When I was a kid we used to go to the beaches of the Mahia peninsula most weekends. (Well, memory says 'most weekends' – it might not have been that often!). Sometimes we'd stop at the sweeping sandy shores of Blue Bay, but on other days we'd go round to the exposed rocky coast & […]
Continue readingjust like ‘alien’ – moray eels have *two* sets of jaws
Around 14 months ago the husband & I were spending a lazy holiday in Rarotonga. We did quite a bit of snorkelling on the reefs, and especially enjoyed our experiences at Muri, where we saw a good range of reef fish in near-ideal conditions (as in, clear, calm, relatively shallow water). There were several moray […]
Continue readinga glorious (but deadly) cephalopod
Every now & then the husband goes on a fossil-fossicking expedition, in order to add to his collection of things long dead & turned to stone. There are a number of good sites in the Waikato region, and one of them has yielded quite a few belemnite remains: specifically, the bullet-shaped fossilised internal shells of […]
Continue readingswimming as a sperm does
It's much harder for a sperm to swim, than it is for a sperm whale. Why? This excellent TEDed video explains: I think I'll use it next year, during the 'reproduction' section of my first-year biology paper 🙂
Continue readinga creeping assassin
The daughter & her friends play Assassin's Creed from time to time. This little arachnid would fit right in: Photo: Jeremy Miller For this is an assassin spider, one of a number of species (in the superfamily Palpiamanoidea) that prey on other spiders. The assassin spiders have a long history: a combination of fossil & DNA evidence suggests […]
Continue readingessays on our fascination with those who are different
Book Review: The Two-Headed Boy and Other Medical Marvels by Jan Bondeson Cornell University Press, USA (2004) Paperback: i-xxii, 297 pages ISBN: 0-8014-8958-X RRP: US419.95 It's all Grant's doing, really. If he hadn't picked up on an off-hand comment of mine (relating to vipers in bosoms) & turned that into a catchy blog post, I quite probably […]
Continue readinga beautiful nightmare
A few weeks back I briefly mentioned the 'bobbit worm' – a rather large polychaete worm of scary appearance (a friend said 'nightmarish' was closer to the mark) and predatory habits. I've noticed on Facebook how interest in any particular subject seems to come in waves, and so it is with this creature. For via […]
Continue readinga really strange sea urchin
I mean, look at those really weird spines! Image from Moorea Biocode via ScienceAlert This unusual creature is Chondrocidaris brevispina, which appears to be much less spiny than the urchins we're probably all more familiar with. Those pinkish pimply bumps towards the creature's right-hand side are the bases of missing spines, which articulate with their bumps via a type of ball joint. […]
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