Organisms
pharyngula | December 12, 2006Isn't she pretty? This is Promachoteuthis sloani, a new species of deep water squid trawled up out of the North Atlantic.
Many more photos of this creature are available online, and you can also download the paper describing it.
pharyngula | December 8, 2006Good news for Olduvai George—he's got new commissions that are keeping him busy—but that means he might be a little tied up for a while. Still, he's nice enough to give us an eclectic mix of interesting creatures.
pharyngula | December 8, 2006Clutch of Argonauta nodosa eggs and hatchlings
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | December 7, 2006Behold the spectacularly long-tongued glossophagine nectar bat, Anoura fistulata:
Anoura fistulata feeding from a test tube filled with sugared water; its tongue (pink) can extend to 150% of body length.
This length of tongue is unusual for the genus, and there is an explanation for how it can fit all of that into its mouth: it doesn't. The base of the tongue has been carried back deep into the chest in a pocket of epithelium, and is actually rooted in the animal's chest.
Ventral view of A. fistulata, showing tongue (pink), glossal tube and tongue retractor muscle (blue), and skeletal…
pharyngula | December 7, 2006
That's a baby gorilla holding hands with a worker at the Lefini Faunal Reserve. It's a touching picture (and there's a much larger version available if you click on the image), but there's an ugly story behind it. The gorilla is a "bush-meat orphan".
"Bush-meat orphan." That's a phrase of understated unpleasantness.
pharyngula | December 3, 2006I expect Carl Zimmer must have already seen this, but it's cool anyway: Attenborough shows us some of those freaky parasitic fungi destroying insects.
pharyngula | December 1, 2006Enteroctopus dofleini
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | November 29, 2006The neurophilosopher writes on the virtues of being ugly—there's actually a good reason why bat faces are decorated with odd protrusions and lumps and folds. Maybe "Yo momma echolocates" would be a good insult to remember.
pharyngula | November 28, 2006
Ah, Aplysia. Also known as the sea hare, Aplysia is a common preparation used in neurobiology labs; it's a good sized beastie with the interesting defense mechanism of spewing out clouds of mucusy slime and purple ink when agitated. I well remember coming into the physiology lab in the morning to find a big bucket full of squirming muscular slugs in a pool of vivid purple goo. And then I'd reach in to grab one, and they were all velvety soft and undulating and engulfing my whole arm in this thick, slick, wet, slippery knot of rippling smooth muscle…
Ahem. Well. Let me compose myself for a…
pharyngula | November 25, 2006If you looked like that, you'd be very sad, too. Especially if you'd just been trawled up from your nice home a thousand meters beneath the sea and made to pose for a photographer.
(via Jeffrey Shallit)
pharyngula | November 24, 2006How many of you have a picked-over carcass in your refrigerator?
Architeuthis sp.
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | November 24, 2006You know how we great clumsy gallumphing unsophisticated atheists are always comparing belief in gods to belief in fairies at the bottom of the garden or tooth fairies or whatever? We may have to revise those arguments.
Now we really have to worry. If some space probe snaps a picture of an orbiting teapot, we'll have nothin'.
Crap. Sean knocks the props out from under my godlessness. Now I'm going to have to convert to something…what does everyone recommend? Catholicism, LDS, Scientology, etc., or should I just go all the way primitive, erect a phallus-shaped rock in my backyard, and start…
pharyngula | November 23, 2006
The BBC is going to be showing a program with images of developing embryos (there are some galleries online) generated from ultrasound, cameras inserted into the uterus, and largely, computer-generated graphics. It's all very pretty, and I hope it will also be shown in my country, but…these pictures violate all the rules of scientific imaging. The images are clearly generated by imposing artistic decisions derived from the conventions of computer animation work onto the data that was collected—I can't tell what details in these embryos were actually imaged, and which were added by the CGI…
pharyngula | November 22, 2006New artwork at Olduvai George's place: it's the start of a series on cetacean evolution.
pharyngula | November 21, 2006I just received word from Per Ahlberg that the status of the Australian lungfish conservation efforts have reached a critical phase: letters are needed NOW. Here's the situation:
The Traveston Dam proposal has moved into a new and critically important phase: it has been referred to the Federal Environment Minister (Mr Ian Campbell) for consideration under the Federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. Ian Campbell has the power to stop the dam, but if he doesn't it is unlikely that any other organisation or individual will be able to do so.
The first hurdle that must…
pharyngula | November 20, 2006
I've been writing a fair amount about early pattern formation in animals lately, so to do penance for my zoocentric bias, I thought I'd say a little bit about homeotic genes in plants. Homeotic genes are genes that, when mutated, can transform one body part into another—probably the best known example is antennapedia in Drosophila, which turns the fly's antenna into a leg.
Plants also have homeotic genes, and here is a little review of flower anatomy to remind everyone of what 'body parts' we're going to be talking about. The problem I'll be pursuing is how four different, broadly defined…
pharyngula | November 17, 2006
There don't seem to be a lot of carnival notices in my mailbox today, so I'll just note that the Friday Ark #113 is up, and remind everyone that the next Tangled Bank is coming up on Wednesday, at Newton's Binomium (by the way, I thought his post on the difficulty of explaining the importance of evo-devo was good—there are biologists who look utterly blank at the enthusiasm the subject generates in some of us). Send stuff to host@tangledbank.net or me by Tuesday.
pharyngula | November 17, 2006People send me pretty pictures all the time…they're almost always of molluscs, of course. I've put the latest below the fold.
Some pottery from a Sicilian shop window:
Some lovely art:
A doodle:
pharyngula | November 17, 2006A member of the family Cranchiidae
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.