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 readingTag: animal behaviour
is this a coat of many colours?
I had to look twice at this undersea Liberace-lookalike before recognising it as an octopus (more precisely, a blanket octopus, Tremoctopus sp.) These beautiful creatures live in the open ocean where they grow up to 2m long. The female in this image (thanks, Science Alert) has unfurled a sort of cape (called a ‘web’ in […]
Continue readingbicep-flexing & s*xual selection
When I was a kid, we’d all look forward to Friday evenings – because Dad & Grandma would come back from town with the weekly supply of comics. The ads in the back were almost as good as the cartoons, although we were very disappointed to find out that sea monkeys were definitely not as […]
Continue readingstunning spiders
I won’t post the photos here – but drop over to wired & admire the stunning spider images from photographer Nicky Bay. I think my favourite would have to be the Mirror Spider (Thwaitesia sp.), which looks as though it’s got a disco ball for an abdomen. And for awesome mimicry, take a look at […]
Continue readingthe sea’s strangest square mile, indeed
From Shark Bay Films on vimeo, via PZ, comes this awesome video – life and death on the sea bed. It opens with a species of polychaete worm (aka bobbit worms**) – what an amazing stealth predator! And surely one to give small children – and first-year biology students! – nightmares. And there are ribbon […]
Continue readingthe male himalayan monal – an absolutely gorgeous bird
Another for the ‘gosh, isn’t this beautiful?!’ files: the Himalayan Monal (the national bird of Nepal). (Image via Facebook: Tambako the Jaguar; Flickr — with Robin Subba, Sarvesh Wangawad,Jeriko Angue, Roberto Delapisa, Jonas Mgr, Neelesh Suryavanshi, Shashank Asai,Sushant Bhujel and Pabitra Lamichhane.) This stunning bird (Lophophorus impejanus) is a type of pheasant, and like other pheasants the species is strongly sexually dimorphic: the males […]
Continue readingtool use – even more widespread than you thought
Yesterday my ‘Facebook science feed’ (ie daily browsing) brought me this stunning image (click the picture for the hyperlink). It’s from the book Thinkers of the Jungle: the Orangutan Report (Shuster, Smits & Ullal, 2008) & shows a young orangutan apparently using a long stick in lieu of a spear, copying local fishermen as they […]
Continue readinga cute little piggy (but why do we find it so?)
On Facebook yesterday, Science Alert posted a picture of a cute little piggy. Why, they asked, do humans feel such love for baby animals? Assuredly, this is a psychology experiment waiting to happen! Not so. For one of my favourite science writers beat them to it, by about 30 years. And in a rather entertaining manner. […]
Continue readingfostering is the cause…
… of a lack of time for other things. (Like writing ‘proper’ posts.) On Friday we became the foster parents of a tiny 4-year-old black toy poodle male (who’d previously been a stud dog). At least, we think he’s about four; could be a bit less or a bit more. Kanji (his new name) is […]
Continue readingmoss s*x and springtails
Sexual reproduction in flowering plants is often mediated by the birds & the bees (& other animal agents), but up until now the life cycle has appeared much simpler in plants like the mosses. Until fairly recently it was generally accepted that moss sex was a case of ‘just add water’: this released sperm from […]
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