Real Monstrosities

Spiny Orb-weaver Party!

2012-02-26T12:00:00.000Z

Hi! So glad you could make it!

*mwah* *mwah*

You look gorgeous, darling!

Welcome to our little Gasteracantha party! Here you will find some of the most fabulous and outrageously dressed members of the genus. They are commonly known as Spiny Orb-weavers, which is fine if you're common, but you're with the in-crowd now, darling!

There's Gasteracantha cancriformis showing off her morbid fascination with skulls and blood. It's always good to express yourself! It's... usually good to express yourself. She comes from southern USA, Central America and several Caribbean Islands, but it doesn't look like the journey burned any calories, does it? I suppose one must always carry a reminder of the ever-present prospect of death when one becomes quite that spherical. Oh, here she comes...

Hello, darling!

*mwah* *mwah*

We were just talking about how fabulous you look! Tell me, have you lost weight?

Image: Pen Araneae via Flickr

Gasteracantha sp.
Texture darling, texture. It's not all about colours you know! Gasteracantha are all very tiny spiders but carefully applied thorns can really give the illusion of extra width, which is very fashionable these days. This one measures 2 cm (0.8 in) across from spike tip to spike tip, and the biggest ones are scarcely any bigger.

The whole affair is as tough as a shell, as well as providing a solid foundation upon which to apply your adornments and accessories. Some think it protects them from predators like small birds and lizards, too. I don't doubt it! I wouldn't be seen DEAD in a bird's mouth! In fact, I'd only EVER be seen in a bird's mouth if I WAS dead!

Remember, darling, fashion saves lives!

Image: Nick Hobgood via Flickr

Gasteracantha falcicornis
Buddhist, Hindu, Raëlian... all non-Scientologists are welcome here! Even strident, outspoken Luciferians can come along so long as they leave their rituals at the door. There are no isms in fashion, darling! This... Wait a minute...

Image: Nick Hobgood via Flickr

Yes! It's Fungus the Bogeyman Hell! This beauty is found in southern Africa, eastern Africa and Bogeyman Hell.

Image: Nick Hobgood via Flickr

Gasteracantha sp.
Hailing from Congo, this sweetheart has chosen to mix a macabre purple with vibrant yellow. She has even longer horns than the last one! I don't really know my demonology... will there be trouble between those two? I do hope not. We can certainly do without Dark Lords arising from Realms Unknown and upsetting the drinks. We have a huge table of dead fruit flies in the shape of one, gigantic, dead fruit fly to be brought in later, and I would rather it not be ruined by Dark Magicks thank you very much!

Image: kibuyu via Flickr

Gasteracantha versicolor
It's always nice to see a Gasteracantha feel comfortable about expressing her femininity! The "pink bow" kind of femininity I mean, not the "eat your boyfriend if he doesn't measure up" kind.

But doesn't she look adorable? Oh! Like a pretty little princess! She comes from the southern half of Africa and I bet she has lots of My Little Pony there! But you must remember that no matter how cute she may look, she's still a Gasteracantha. Don't get on the wrong side of her. Always make sure they can't overhear when you talk about them.

Image: Robert Whyte via Flickr

Gasteracantha fornicata
Oh! This is a real sweetie! I really mean sweet, as in she looks like a caramel and vanilla ice-cream flavoured sweet. I just want to eat her aaaall up! But then I see those spikes and I realise I can't. And even knowing this, I still want to eat her aaaall up! Thus, fashion clarifies the tragedy of the human condition. The answer? More fashion! And sweets. This intellectual comes from Queensland in Australia. They could've named the place after her!

Image: Pen Araneae via Flickr

Gasteracantha mammosa
This one looks significantly less edible. Did she want to look some sort of cappuccino chocolate or is she more camouflaged as a small blob of poo? Is this more philoso-fashion? Because it's going right over my head. She comes from Madagascar and southern Asia and has lots of other outfits to choose from. All of which look a bit like poo. Uh oh! She's coming this way!

Hello, darling!

*mwah* *mwah*

We were just talking about how... unique... you look. SO much better than G. Versicolor with all that pink, I don't know WHAT she was thinking!

What's that?

Hmmm. She says she isn't really a Gasteracantha at all, but was quite recently placed in a whole new genus all of her own! She is now an only, lonely Thelacantha brevispina, a close relative, but not really IN. Oh dear, the vagaries of taxonomy. Although it does explain a lot. Ah well, what's a party without hangers-on? Of course she can stay! We have lots more glasses of haemolymph to go round!

Image: Felix Wayne

Gasteracantha sapperi
Oh darling! Those little orange knees? I love, love, love it! And what about those tiny, exquisitely shaped spikes! Her fashionably tiny face and fashionably tiny eyes are fashionably dwarfed by her huge abdomen that looks like one of those gorgeous French wigs. It's just that the theme looks like thorns caked in blood rather than boats. This beauty comes from New Guinea and shows us a whole new sense of style. Remember, fashion knows no borders!

Image source

Gasteracantha arcuata
Oh dear. There's always one, isn't there? Flamboyance is one thing but this... maybe I'm getting too old but surely this is just ridiculous! How can she even walk with those things?

This southeast Asian personage has spikes several times longer than her body! There's enough space for her gentleman friend to build his own little web and travel with her wherever she goes. Good Lord, I dread to think... I'm not one to gossip, so I can't say I've heard anyone say she actually does such a thing, but we're clearly dealing with a desperate exhibitionist here! Who knows what she's capable of?

Image: Pen Araneae via Flickr

Gasteracantha sp.
When all else fails, the Little Black Dress will never let you down, darling!

Frozen Falls Fungus

2012-02-24T12:00:00.000Z

Image: Ken-ichi via Flickr

I completely made up that name but I hope you can see why. This mushroom is absolutely beautiful!

It's in the same genus as the Lion's Mane Mushroom we saw before. That one had long teeth extending down from a central mass so that it looked like a beard growing on a tree. Hericium abietis is different in that the central mass branches out.

Image: Ken-ichi via Flickr

The effect is a wonderful cascade of what look like densely packed icicles. The whole thing can reach 60 cm (24 in) tall and 40 cm (16 in) across, which is spectacular! And great for those micro-scenes I've always loved so much.

Image: Wikimedia

It's found in temperate parts of the world, from North America to Europe to Asia, and grows on conifers. It's also edible in the sense that it won't poison you, but come on now... something this pretty isn't really edible. Not really.

Meet The New Family!

2012-02-23T12:06:00.001Z

They just discovered a whole new family of caecilians in northeast India! Isn't she... beautiful?

The discovery was made by a team led by SD Biju from the University of Delhi and involved 250 hole digging expeditions over the course of 5 years. This is pretty fantastic. If you want to be an eternal child playing in the back garden of the world, then this is the job for you.

Caecilians are limbless, near blind amphibians who dig through soil in many parts of the tropics. They're perhaps the most mysterious of the tetrapods and definitely the most unfamiliar of the amphibians. Even people who've finally realised that salamanders aren't lizards will still say "earthworm snake thing" at a caecilian.

Anyway, all that work yielded some great results! After a careful look and some genetic jiggery-pokery, they found that this was a new species in a new genus in a new family of caecilians: Chikilidae. It's named after the local Garo word for the animals and is just the 10th family in the caecilian order. Their closest relatives live in Africa and they diverged from them some 140 million years ago.

As you can see in unexpected detail, they lay eggs which develop directly into miniature adults. The mother wraps herself around them for 2 or 3 months and doesn't eat anything during this time. They reach about 10 cm (4 in) long and can dig through some of the region's tougher soils. Also they were mostly found about 40 cm (16 in) deep, so... maybe it's not really the job for you after all?

.....

Thanks to Dana at shewalkssoftly.com for alerting me of this news. Be it space, the deep sea or right under your feet, there's still a lot more to discover!

Polynoid Scale Worm

2012-02-22T12:00:00.000Z

Image: Barcroft Media

Oh, dear... not for the first time we find that our nightmares were a reality long before they were our nightmares. Take a deep breath, hold onto your teddy bear and prepare yourself. It's going to get better before it gets a lot worse...

Image: National Museums Northern Ireland and its licensors

Scale Worms are marine annelids. They are usually quite small and can be found all over the place, from tide pools to the deep sea and hydrothermal vents. A lot of them appear utterly nondescript...

Image: A. Glover

others are actually quite pretty.

Image: Moorea Biocode

They get the name "Scale Worm" from the scales on their back. And also from being a worm, I suppose.

Image: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Invertebrate Zoology

They're polychaetes, or bristle worms, so they have parapods on their sides with bristles sticking out.

valkerieqqqq

They use their parapods to crawl along the sea floor in search of food. The ones that aren't too long, thin and wormy look quite a lot like friendly, neighbourhood roly-polies.

But then they find food.

This is when the trouble starts.

The terrible, horrifying trouble.

Image: Ifremer

OH.

Image: Ifremer

MY.

Image: Ifremer

GOD.

You see, the problem with these things is that they are largely predatory. There are some that live around echinoderms, others that live inside the mantle of snails or mussels and steal their food, still more eat bacteria or scavenge... but a lot of them feed on worms.

As you can see, they have just the kind of murderous jaws required to destroy their prey. Also, even though they look like plasticine in the microscope shots, some Scale Worms can give us humans a nasty nip.

It gets worse, though...

Image: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Invertebrate Zoology

As we noticed in our worm round-up a while back, a lot of worms have a proboscis. This is a long appendage sticking out of the head, the kind of thing that butterflies are allowed to get away with.

Image: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Invertebrate Zoology

But worms don't have a cute and curly proboscis. They have an eversible pharynx. This means it's a throat that is turned inside out.

Image: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Invertebrate Zoology

So the Scale Worm looks quite unremarkable until it finds something to eat. That's when it opens its mouth and shoots its jaws out at the end of its own muscular throat.

Image: Ifremer

Some of them have jaws that aren't so obviously threatening. They're still scary, it's just that they follow a different tradition.

Image: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Invertebrate Zoology

Then there's just crazy stuff. I mean... what is this? What's that for? It looks like half a human skull!

You know what's most obscene of all? These worms are in the family Polynoidae, which is in the superfamily Aphroditoidea, itself in the suborder Aphroditiformia. That's 2 mentions of Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. I don't know who decided to use that name, but that person was a strange person.

Image: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Invertebrate Zoology

There's one thing I DO know, though... this is a worm that should definitely keep its mouth shut and its jaws hidden.

.....

Thanks to Katie and Clair who I met at that meetup for suggesting this madness! It's always nice when good things happen after you go off meeting people, and the most disgusting worm I've ever laid eyes on is definitely a good thing!

Real Monstrosities on tumblr

2012-02-20T21:18:00.001Z

I started a tumblr blog!

Apparently tumblr is full to brim with hip, young things and the thought of so many hip, young things being in ignorance of a weird looking fish was getting really stressful.

It'll be a quik ting, with just a picture from here and a link. That seems to be the hip and young thing to do.

So if you're a tumblr user, check it out! If not... check it out!

Real Monstrosities on tumblr

Hell as Habitat, part 3

2012-02-19T12:00:00.000Z

Image: Dr. Bob Embley, NOAA

By now we know a lot about the hydrothermal vents and some of the weird creatures that occupy them. How they keep warm by the heat of volcanic water and are fed by bacteria that have learnt to make sugars out of stuff that usually kills everything. It's all very impressive. Sometimes, though, it's the sheer numbers that make your jaw drop.

We can see that deep sea mussels can cooperate to make an utter spectacle of themselves. Who else wants to outrageously flaunt their ability to survive Earth's most hellish habitat?

Image: NOAA

A Cast of Crabs
Who knew there were pigeons in the deep sea? Looks like they're as messy down there as they are up here! Take a closer look and you will see that what appears from afar to be a million dollops of excrement is in fact a million crabs.

This is Cyanagraea praedator, one of the bigger deep sea crabs with a carapace width of up to 12 cm (4.7 in). They are found on the East Pacific Rise at depths of around 2,600 m (8,530 ft), where they feast on worms and the young of other, smaller crabs. I wonder if those other crabs chase them down, menacingly snapping their claws. It could be like West Side Story. 990,000 crabs chasing 500,000 rival crabs, turning a corner and finding 1,000,000 rival crabs. I'd watch it...

Image: NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program

A Bed of Clams
I look at this scene and I can't help but think of those tracts of land next to railways that get full of litter. Those tend to be a bit more colourful and plasticy. A lot more brand names, too. Like one, big, non-ideal advertising solution. Here it's all white because this is Calyptogena magnifica, a kind of deep sea clam. They reach about 26 cm (10.2 in) long and are particularly fond of areas with lots of hydrogen sulphide. You'll see why if you savagely (or carefully):

rip open their shells. The soft bits inside are red.
rip open their flesh. The gills are swarming with bacteria.
rip open their cells. There's weird haemoglobin inside.

That's right! This clam absorbs oxygen and carbon dioxide from the water. Special haemoglobin allows them to take in hydrogen sulphide, too, without getting poisoned to death. This stuff is passed on to bacteria in the gills who can make sugars from it, which the clam then subsists on. Not as bad as a massive heap of rubbish, but also in a way a lot worse...

Image: R. Zierenberg

A Smack of (Stalked) Jellyfish
Stalked Jellyfish! Those weirder-than-weird jellyfish that live attached to plants and rocks. Most of them are tiny and live in shallow waters, Lucernaria janetae is a little different.

They live in hydrothermal vents on the East Pacific Rise, attached to rocks by a stalk (peduncle) 6 cm (2.4 in) tall. The umbrella (calyx) at the top is the same height and is formed of 8 tentacles, each topped with a burst of 100 or so mini tentacles. With these they capture their prey, mostly amphipods.

L. janetae completely dominates the vent sites they occupy, expanding to huge numbers and becoming the primary (non-teeny-tiny) rulers of their domain. The "big fish", basically. It's strange to think of the pretty little Stalked Jellyfish becoming the big, bad boss of the neighbourhood, but there you go.

There's also a mystery. Adult Stalked Jellyfish are sedentary. Larvae crawl about like slugs. So how have they managed to get themselves to numerous sites miles and miles apart?

Image: NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program, MCR Expedition 2011

A Troupe of Shrimp
I can't be precise, but I think this is ca. a million, billion shrimp. They're in the genus Rimicaris and come from the Mid-Cayman Rise in the Caribbean. They have appendages in their carapace that provide a surface for growing chemosynthetic bacteria that feed on hydrogen sulphide. The shrimp then eats the bacteria. It's a kind of farm on their back.

Also on their back is a strange eyespot that is thought to detect heat coming from the vents. It may seem like they are well provisioned with a backpack full of food, but stray too far from the vents and the bacteria will soon die. Something tells me these shrimp need no survivalist advice from the likes of me.

Image: JAMSTEC

A Group of Sea Anemones
There doesn't seem to be a collective noun for Sea Anemones, which might indicate how strange it is to see so many of them together. It's Mariactis cf. bythios, ghostly white and festooned with tentacles for capturing miniscule prey. They look fairly normal otherwise. Which is actually a huge achievement for something living in the deep sea. Jeez, where's the medal for contributions to "looking fairly normal"?

jobert2kx

Image: Wikipedia

Another Cast of Crabs
Aaaah! Breathe in that fresh, alpine air! Or have we stumbled on the fabled Popcorn Kingdom? Neither. It's a gigantic mass of decapods of the genus Kiwa, closely related to the Yeti Crab, and found at the bottom of the Southern Ocean. The bottom of the bottom.

The Yeti Crab had hairy arms and hairier pincers, but this Kiwa has a dense covering of hair on its ventral surface. A hairy chest, basically. Just like REAL men! It's covered in bacteria that the crab can eat when it's not scavenging from the floor. Just like REAL men!

The biggest and hairiest are found closer to the vents with all the heat and chemicals. Juveniles and egg-carrying females are a little further away in cooler waters. This seems to suggest that moving just a few feet from a vent has a drastic effect on how much bacteria you can cultivate on your belly. At last! Useful, timely advice!

All in all, it's a lot like life. The fresh, alpine air is actually boiling hot, poisonous water and the popcorn is hairy and covered in claws and bacteria. All you can really do is walk away from the vent. :(

Image: NOAA Vents Program

A Clew of (Tube) Worms
Alright, who's been dreaming of Tube Worms? 'Cos it's come true with not just a field, but rolling hills of tube worms. They're probably some kind of Siboglinid, annelids that lack a mouth or gut and gain their food from symbiotic bacteria. They live attached to the ground and secrete a chitinous tube around their body. Most of them have a diameter of a few millimetres but a length of several metres! They might even have roots that delve into the substrate to absorb sulphides for the bacteria. In the deep sea, this is as close as you can get to plants. Seriously, give those Sea Anemones a medal.

Image: NOAA Ocean Explorer

A Seething of Eels
You may have noticed that everything we've seen so far has been an invertebrate. It seems that backbone is a terrible liability in the deep. But there is at least one fish who fights the vertebrate's corner, crushing the crabs whacking the worms, muscling in on the mussels: Dysommina rugosa, an eel with its very own city.

D. rugosa is 35 cm (1 ft 2 in) long and can be found in tropical waters of the western Atlantic and Pacific oceans. But they are particularly abundant in a specific volcanic cone in the crater of a volcano in Samoa.

The volcano is Vailulu'u, rising from a depth of 5,000 m (16,400 ft) to 600 m (1,970 ft). The crater inside drops to 1,000 m (3,280 ft) and in its centre is Nafanua, a miniature volcano that rises to a depth of 700 m (2,300 ft).

Nafanua didn't exist in 2001 but it did in 2005. Already the hydrothermal vents there were colonised by so many of these eels that it was named Eel City. They took the place over! There are scarcely any crustaceans or other invertebrates to be found.

You might expect there to be Eel cars on Eel roads, fancy Eel shops selling locally sourced Eel food and an Eel mayor involved in Eel scandals in the Eel news. But there isn't. In fact, it's more like an Eel Hostel. They really just rest in the nooks and crannies. They even have to leave to find food, probably feeding on crustaceans swept up by the currents.

Surrounding Eel City and the rest of Nafanua is the Moat of Death, formed by the nastiness that oozes from the volcanic cone. It's full of the corpses of fish and squid, the bacteria that eat them and bright red bristle worms who eat the bacteria. A food chain of death, surrounded by death, a horror but also a really cool backdrop for Eel City.

So if you ever find yourself lost in the deep sea, check out Eel City. Show them your backbone and they might just let you stay the night.

A Massive Slab of Robber Fly

2012-02-17T12:00:00.000Z

Image: Mary Keim via Flickr

Good grief! This spindly piece of nastiness is a Robber Fly in the genus Diogmites. It seems that it's members of this particular genus that are adorned with the name Hanging Thief. You may remember that this was to denote their habit of dangling from a leg or two while the other limbs held onto prey, stabbed it to death with venom and then sucked out the insides. That's all fine, obviously. But look at it! Someone call the death penalty on this thing! We need another kind of hanging! It even has a horribly long neck to accommodate our ever so righteous indignation.

Image: Thomas Shahan via Flickr

You can see the gigantic, black eyes they use for looking around. The dark mouthparts beneath are used to cut through chinks in the exoskeleton of prey. Above that is the white moustache of bristles and the antennae at the top.

Image: Wikipedia

Passing by the rather unappealing neck we reach an astonishingly hideous slab of thorax. We clearly have not got his good side. It looks like rubble, or someone trying to build a wall out of rocks they found lying about the place.

smccann27

Beneath it all are long legs that are just too thick. They look like bent straws. Red straws, because this Robber appears to have tried out a bit of fashion. I don't think it worked. Be brown! You're less obvious when you're brown!

Me and My Shirt!

2012-02-16T12:00:00.000Z

Bah!

I hate smiling. It's fine when there's an actual reason to smile, but grinning idiotically at a camera like an actor wildly gesticulating at a blue screen? Nah.

Still, it's tradition. Plus you get to see my snazzy shirt from ooshirts.com in the wild!

Did you know it's "social media week"? Seems to be a bunch of conferences or something. I don't really know. I did however get a little social and went to a London Bloggers Meetup.

The panellists were:

Matt Brown from Londonist
Annie Mole from Going Underground
Sian Meades from Domestic Sluttery
Tom Jones from Tired of London Tired of Life

It was Matt who took a few pictures of me. He made me feel quite sexy and as you can see, it got a little steamy. My camera in his manly hands was something to behold as he masterfully attacked me with his flash from more angles than I'd ever thought possible.

He tried his best, anyway.

A fella called Godwyns from Justice for Gay Africans even read a few poems! After a show of hands it was clear that the audience wanted something soft rather hard. I think I'm right in saying that what followed was a passionate rendition of hardcore, pornographic sex with a snowman. Or perhaps I'm a little old-fashioned. Maybe it's a "poet thing"?

Of particular note is the fact that the guy from Movie-Moron called me The Monster Man! I shall call him The Movie Master. Partly because I can't remember his name and I'm not entirely sure I've ever even heard it. It's one of those potentially awkward things, but somehow we all get along really well with little more than the word "you". Phew!

I also found myself in another picture from another meetup. We're all watching a guy talk. I'm not like, just standing there! Not at that point, anyway :P.

Some day I'll get a picture of myself standing on a hillside with beautiful lighting and an aspirational background. Then you'll all realise I'm sexiest thing you have ever been in contact with.

'Til then, be nice!

Southern Ground Hornbill

2012-02-15T12:00:00.001Z

Image: Arno & Louise Wildlife via Flickr

Black and red. A colour combination of ultimate menace, minx and yes, even jinx. Yet this, the world's biggest hornbill, likes to mix it all up with a bit of wholesome, family values.

Image: Tarique Sani via Flickr

The Southern Ground Hornbill gets its name from living in southern Africa and spending most of its time on the ground. A big male may be 129 cm (51 in) long and weigh up to 6.2 kg (13.6 lbs), while the females are a bit smaller.

Image: digitalART2 via Flickr
Female, depicting blue patch on her throat

Another difference between the sexes is the throat pouch. In males it's completely red, in females it's red with a patch of dark blue.

josechinchi
Isn't that duet amazing? It sounds like something modern and experimental to me. I actually found it quite difficult to believe it was them singing. So here's another video of a couple who seems to require a little more practise.

Image: kibuyu via Flickr

Southern Ground Hornbills are almost entirely carnivorous, spending their days walking around grasslands and savannah in search of insects, amphibians, reptiles, young birds, mammals, carrion... I think you can sum it up by saying they eat everything they possibly can. So long as it's not salad.

Image: kibuyu via Flickr

They can fly when they want to, at which point you can see their white wing tips. They roost in trees at night, and make their nest by lining tree cavities with leaves. The female incubates 1 or 2 eggs for over a month, but only one chick will survive.

Image: David Schenfeld via Flickr

When the chick is young, mother will only leave the nest for brief periods. She'll have to wait until the hatchling is a month old before she can really start foraging for food in earnest.

Image: Kleinz1 via Flickr

Until then she is largely dependant on the male for her meals. But not only him, because they comprise the dominant pair in a whole family of Southern Ground Hornbills. There can be up to 11 of them, both adults and juveniles helping the parents raise the chick.

Image: David Schenfeld via Flickr
Juvenile Southern Ground Hornbill, depicting pale coloured throat

Youngsters have a rather pallid throat, the vibrant red apparently reserved only for those with the maturity to be responsible with it. They'll be dependant on their mother for up to year and won't reach adulthood for 4 years. Plenty of time to help out around the house!

Image: chuck.derby via Flickr

It's quite heart-warming.

Image: Arno & Louise Wildlife via Flickr

Which is weird, because I look into those imperious eyes and it's like...

Happy Valentines!

2012-02-14T04:31:00.000Z

I love you all! In a way that's charmingly and excitingly inappropriate but doesn't get all weird and disturbing.

Just in case your beautiful, thoughtful face is attractively deformed by befuddlement and WTF, I'll say it's a female Deep Sea Anglerfish with her attendant male. It's completely normal and natural!

Oooo, shirts!

2012-02-14T01:06:00.000Z

So I get an email essentially saying "free custom t-shirts from ooshirts.com?"

At first I'm like:

"O RLY?"
"and you are?"
"so you claim, so you claim".

I checked it out a little and free shirts appeared to be an increasingly likely outcome, as opposed to "loads of money mysteriously disappeared from your account".

So I done it and I got 'em.

Cool!

On the ooshirts website I was able to put up a massive, approximately life-size jpeg I made out of a Scalable Vector Graphics file I designed in Inkscape (it's free and I love it).

Ooshirts has all their email, phone number and some other stuff for you to contact them, which is pretty good, but I didn't need to make use of anything other than email.

I may not know a huge amount about t-shirts, but I know what I like. And this, I like!

I got 2 copies and chose a different size for each one. One is big and fits me great. The other was huge and would probably be ideal for a bit of crip walking. Maybe Ice Cube will come round and repeatedly urge me to keep it gangsta. That would be nice!

I'm very impressed with the print quality. All the lines and colours look great, and even the squiggly underline was really precise.

It even had the appropriate holes for my arms and neck. It's quite extraordinary what technology can do these days! I'm extremely satisfied!

Are there any t-shirt experts, gurus or analysts out there?

What do you think?

Hell as Habitat, part 2

2012-02-12T12:00:00.001Z

Image: NOAA

Last time, we left the hydrothermal vents as steaming chimneys of boiling volcanic water, liquid smoke and underground flame.

Minerals spew out and, through a process called chemosynthesis, bacteria are able to take poisonous hydrogen sulphide and make from it all the sugars they need for survival.

They flourish in this deadly atmosphere and provide a source of food for a whole host of animals. They rely on energy not from the Sun, but from Earth herself.

It's a community of life, sitting on a mat of bacteria atop a volcano. Makes that elephants on a turtle one sound quite reasonable, doesn't it?

Image: Ifremer

Giant Tube Worm
One of the most recognisable members of the hydrothermal vent community has a very intimate relationship with bacteria indeed. It's Riftia pachyptila, an annelid that can reach some 2.4 m (7 ft 10 in) long. That's the "Giant", the "Tube" is a chitinous structure they secrete for themselves to provide protection and support. They'll need it because they crowd around the vents in huge numbers, fixed in position and stationary forever more, come (lack of) Hell or high water.

From the white tube pokes out a beautifully deep red plume. It absorbs oxygen and carbon dioxide, and the colour comes from an unusual form of haemoglobin that allows them to absorb hydrogen sulphide without getting poisoned. But this isn't how they feed, this is just their side of the agreement.

Inside a special organ within their body, the Giant Tube Worm may have enough bacteria to make up half their body weight! It's the bacteria that uses that stuff absorbed by the plume, doing their nifty "food-from-poison" trick. Some of this is provided back to the worm, and the barter is complete. This is a lot like our very own Boneworm, who is in fact closely related.

Giant Tube Worms are one of the more dominant species in Pacific hydrothermal vents. The larvae are tiny and can drift for miles, perhaps making use of a digestive tract that they'll lose as they grow. And boy do they grow! In just 2 years, a completely new vent site can become covered in thousands of sexually mature, 1.5 m (4.9 ft) long Giant Tube Worms. This is thought to be the fastest growth rate of any marine invertebrate. I swear they grow faster than some worms move!

Image: Ifremer

Vent Crab
Crabs like Bythograea thermydron can always be seen scurrying around the forest of giant worms. They are probably unfussy eaters, a bit of scavenging here, preying there, grazing on bacteria and nipping at the plumes of the Giant Tube Worms.

Their larvae also drift and swim around to aid dispersal, at which point they have normal, crab eyes and researchers have found that they can be taken right up to the surface and survive just fine. Once into adulthood their eyes become naked retinas, which are much like eye-spots. These can see light emitting from the vent itself. They'll be 6 cm (2.4 in) across and unable to tolerate the feeble pressure near the surface.

MBARIvideo

Image: Ifremer

Vent Eelpout
Also hanging out with the massive worms and taking the occasional nibble from their plumes (it must be like fruit trees for them) is Thermarces cerberus. Not too long ago I found out that Cerberus was a mythological, three-headed dog who guards the gate of Hades. Sounds about right!

They can be seen resting against rocks, all pale and tiny-eyed. They aren't proper eels, but they do have a long body with a long fin that goes from their back, all the way around their tail and halfway up their underside. They kinda look like tadpoles. Sickly tadpoles. A ghost of their former self, hanging onto a meagre sliver of life with grim determination, beady eyes blackened by hardship and struggle. So cute!

Image: Ifremer / A. Fifis

Yeti crab
Here's one that hails from an area between the southern tip of South America and Antarctica. It's called Kiwa hirsuta and "hirsute" is certainly the word! The legs and pincers are covered in what looks like rather luscious fur. It's a shame it's only 16 cm (6.3 in) long; a big hug from a giant Yeti Crab looks like it would be quite comforting.

But what is it all for, anyway? Not keeping warm in the cold, Southern Ocean that's for sure. The hydrothermal vents are about as warm a camp fire as you're ever gonna get. Instead, it houses bacteria that are thought to detoxify all the poisonous horrors coming out of the vent. It's not inconceivable that they could eat the bacteria too, but Yeti Crabs have been seen feeding on shrimp so eating their own bacteria might be a little desperate.

Also it's not a crab. It looks more like a squat lobster but it isn't one of those either. They've been given a whole new superfamily to frolic in, so "new kind of decapod" is probably the best description.

And of course, thank you to Dear Reader Kali who suggested I get onto the Yeti Crab. It, er... kinda got a little expanded from there!

Image: Ifremer / Dugornay

Pompeii Worm
Back to the Pacific and we find another extremist annelid. This time it's a polycheate worm who goes by the rather sensuous name Alvinella pompejana. These get to about 13 cm (5 in) long but bear several similarities to the Giant Tube Worm. They do live in tubes, but they're paper thin. They have haemoglobin-rich, red gills on their head. They even live in symbiosis with bacteria, but in a completely different way.

Pompeii Worms gather their own food, probably tiny microbes captured from the water. The bacteria reside on the worm's back, and the worm even feeds them with mucus secretions so they'll enjoy their stay and not leave because of the appalling catering. Clearly this disgusting, mouldy back is of the utmost importance to the worm. Why?

Well, Pompeii Worms can live with their tail-end resting in temperatures of up to 80 °C (176 °F). This makes them the second most heat tolerant animal in the world! Second only to the Water Bear, of course. The bacteria have a way to go to become the most heat tolerant micro-organism, but it's thought that they probably have something to do with the Pompeii Worm's amazing skills. It's a case of putting 2 and 2 together. And when at least one of those 2s is seriously nasty, the 4 had better be worth it!

Scaly-foot gastropod
Using bacteria is cool and all but those guys are just so DEMANDING! It's all "gimme gimme gimme". "I'm hungry. I'm thirsty. Are we there yet?" Bah! Crysomallon squamiferum has come up with an answer. Forget about "friendly" bacteria and natural eco-green whatever. Go for the chemicals.

Scaly-foot Gastropods incorporate iron sulphides into their shell for maximal next-gen protection against the elements. The foot is also armoured with ferocious looking scales of the same material. They only reach about 4 cm (1.6 in) long, but this Indian Ocean snail is built like a tank!

Smouldering wasteland of flaming death-poison? No problem! Predatory crab emerging from the shadows with angry death-face? Take a walk buddy! Hell has never been so safe! Available in Baleful Black and Whimsical White.

Image: NOAA Vents Program

Vent Mussel
Back to sessile creatures stuffed to the gills with bacteria. Vent Mussels like Bathymodiolus thermophilus can reach 20 cm across and live on hard rock. They again have lots of bacteria gaining energy from the sulphides and passing it on to the mussel. The larvae are again tiny and can drift along to find new places to set up home. When they do, they quite often end up creating massive clumps that provide a habitat for all sorts of other creatures.

It reminds me of the Pillar of Skulls in Planescape: Torment. That was a huge pile of angry, desperate dead-heads who knew a lot of stuff. They could pass on their knowledge. For a price. I don't think this mussel is an aphrodisiac or anything like that, so I don't know what kind of information they could provide you.

Image: Ifremer

Hot Water Volcano Octopus
Or Vent Octopus, Hydrothermal Octopus or whatever else. I don't care, because this octopus glories, GLORIES! under the name Vulcanoctopus hydrothermalis.

They have no irises in their eyes and seem to be blind. They have no pigment in their skin and appear translucent. They're tiny at 5.5 cm (2.2 in) mantle length, or 23.5 cm (9.3 in) when you include the tentacles. It's a proper little ghost! I don't know what it is with these black-eyed white things, somehow they are afforded instant charisma.

Vulcanoctopus tends to keep close to the aforementioned tube worms and mussels, hiding in the nooks and crannies if it feels threatened. It looks like they hunt by feeling around the place for crustaceans and so on. Feeding frenzies have been observed where they fight over swarms of amphipods.

No females have been spotted, but they have seen a male depositing his spermatophore. It's just that he was doing it with another male. Another male of a different species. Either this octopus is more profoundly blind than I thought, or that Mussel Mountain really is an extremely powerful aphrodisiac...

.....

Final part next week. This time looking at swarms, hordes and congregations. See you in Hell!

Supergiant Amphipod

2012-02-10T16:53:00.000Z

So they found a massive amphipod over 4 miles deep in the Kermadec Trench off New Zealand. A good sized amphipod is usually a few centimetres long (an inch) but this thing is 28 cm (almost a foot)! And that's the biggest one they managed to drag up, they actually spotted on camera one that was 34 cm (over a foot) long.

I guess they once found a 10 cm (4 inch) one and called it the Giant Amphipod. After that there was just one place to go. I beg the world to provide for me a Super-dupergiant Amphipod!

Aside from that, they got a great sense of smell and gorge themselves on whatever scraps of rotting flesh make it to the seafloor. They got expandable stomachs to help them stuff themselves and some of them can then fast for a year. This is NOT a healthy way to diet.

This Amphipod pretty much looks like a big version of most of the tiny ones. Our very own Skeleton Shrimp is an unusual kind of amphipod. For me, a 1 foot tall Skeleton Shrimp may not be THE Holy Grail, but it's certainly A Holy Grail. (Quite a lot of the other Holy Grails are probably even bigger Skeleton Shrimps.)

But how did it get sooooo big? Dave Hubble's got a cool (freezing cold) post that explores the issue. He mainly centres it around a specific (massive) Sea Spider, but a lot of the same questions arise. It's always interesting when no-one is quite sure how good things happen!

Stalked Jellyfish

2012-02-10T12:00:00.000Z

Image: Wikipedia

Stalked Jellyfish? What? It may seem strange but there really is such a thing as a jellyfish with a stalk. They have abandoned the usual life of swimming with the sea's most graceful wobble and have instead opted to attach themselves to the floor and stay there.

The 50 or so species of Staurozoa range between a few millimetres to 15 cm in height. Most come from cold, coastal environments in the northern hemisphere, but some explorers find themselves around Antarctica and the biggest ones come from the deep sea.

Image: California Academy of Sciences

Their affinity to the floor starts right at the beginning. You might remember how jellyfish start out as a tiny planula that swims using hair-like cilia. Stalked Jellyfish are similar, except their planula have no cilia and creep along the ground like a slug. There'll be no care-free drifting for them, they got to get to work finding a nice site to set up home.

Their usual place of residence are stones, algae, eelgrass and the like. The planula attaches itself and grows into a polyp just like the usual jellyfish. But they don't go through strobilation, where the polyp segments into a stack of tiny jellyfish. Instead, the whole polyp matures into an adult and remains attached to their surface.

Image: California Academy of Sciences

They end up as a strange mixture of Crinoid and Sea Anemone. They have 8 arms, each tipped with a pom-pom of tentacles for catching small crustaceans. The whole creature looks like quite a nice, decorative goblet, or you could turn it around and turn it into a fancy light fitting. Or maybe just leave it where it is. Up to you.

Just like Sea Anemones they can slowly slide along the floor to find better situations, but some of them have sticky tentacles so that they can somersault their way to pastures new. Some even have to do this because the youngsters live on algae that can't actually support their weight when they approach adulthood. You wouldn't have thought a jellyfish could have an adolescence full of difficult upheavals, but they have managed to find a way.

Image: California Academy of Sciences

Reproduction is achieved by the tried and true method of chucking all your stuff out and letting them get on with it. For such lovely little flowers as these I'm willing to consider it some kind of "sea-swept pollination", but just this once and only because it's you.

Greenland Shark

2012-02-08T12:00:00.000Z

Image: Nick Caloyianis/National Geographic

It snowed. I hate it when it snows because snow becomes ice and my utter loathing for ice on the pavement is matched only by my fear and hatred of slipping and falling. Next time you walk on ice, please tread harshly because you tread on my nightmares. Good job I don't come from the world's most ironically named country, like a certain shark I know.

The Greenland Shark is the most northerly of all sharks. They live in the freezing waters of the north Atlantic and Arctic, around Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia and Iceland. For all that, they are sometimes spotted as far south as Spain and the United States. They don't appear at all averse to a little bit of exploring.

This is true not only for latitude, but also depth. They like to keep to a temperature just above freezing, which means living near the surface during winter. In summer they seek out colder waters at deeper depths. The further south they live, the deeper they have to go. So in the north it might be just 180 m (600 ft), in the south it's more like 1,200 m (4,000 ft). One was spotted as far down as 2,200 m (7,200 ft)! Just checking the place out, I suppose.

With all this freezing cold, they have had to adapt. First of all they're massive! A big one can reach 6.4 metres (21 ft) long and 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb) in weight, and possibly more. They're also chunky, with small dorsal fins and a short snout. This is not a shark that is built for speed. You will find no streamlined elegance here, just a stodgy determination to survive. It's the cabbage soup of sharks.

But a really stinky, poisonous cabbage soup; Greenland Sharks have lots of urea and neurotoxins in their flesh. This stuff stops crystals from forming and keeps their proteins working in the bitter cold. Eating it will cause vomiting, diarrhoea, convulsions and other nastiness.

Then of course there's energy conservation. Greenland Sharks are also known as Sleeper Sharks because of just how ridiculously slow they are.

Greenland Shark unmoved by laser bearing, aquatic, mech guy.
Apparently it's for measuring the length.

Despite the lethargy, Greenland Sharks are apex predators who eat EVERYTHING. Carrion, molluscs, squid, fish, seabirds, seals, small whales (!), horses (?), reindeer (?), polar bears (?!)... all have been found in their stomach. There are stories of them exploding out of the water to grab caribou and drag them into the sea. A fella on an EOL podcast reckons they might wait around near those holes seals make in the ice and pull them down. He also gives a pretty good reason for why we don't know much about the Greenland Shark. I don't like ice underneath me, swimming around with ice above me... no thank you.

They don't have it all their own way, though. There is a parasite who (prepare yourself)... attaches itself to the shark's eye and eats the cornea. There, I said it.

Image source
How to accessorise an eyeball.

It's a Copepod, just a few centimetres long, and can be seen as a little tassel dangling out of the eyeball. One study of 1,500 Greenland Sharks found almost 85% of them had the parasite in both eyes and 14% had them in just one. It's a whole other "99%".

For Greenland Sharks, crustaceans eating your eye is normal. Lack of crustaceans eating your eye is elitism.

So most of these sharks are approaching blindness, but they suffer through it because presumably they don't actually need their eyesight much.

In fact, the hunting habits of the Greenland Shark are so mysterious that some have suggested that the Copepod acts as a lure to fast-moving prey like squid and certain fish. The shark could then pounce from a close distance. It could be true, the Greenland Shark does after all look like a big rock and moves at about the same pace.

Image: JLplusAL via Flickr

The enigma of the Greenland Shark is also evident when you consider that it was only 1957 when people realised they were ovoviviparous. That is they produce eggs but retain them so that they give birth to live young. Before that it was unknown if they deposited their eggs on the floor somewhere.

The other thing is how long do they live for? One shark was captured and measured twice and was found to have grown 9 cm (3.5 in) in 16 years. With that growth rate some of them could be a couple hundred years old! Given their slow metabolism that may well be possible, but they might also get growth spurts for whatever reason.

It's amazing how little we know about this gigantic beast! Big thanks to Dear Reader Crunchy for suggesting this tantalizing mystery, I had absolutely no idea they were so interesting! David Attenborough + the first ever film of a Greenland Shark hunting, please.

Hell as Habitat

2012-02-05T12:00:00.001Z

Image: NOAA
Darkness spews into the darkness.

There is a Hell on Earth. A real one, not that silly fake one. It's a place where our glorious Sun is a long banished frivolity. A place of such insurmountable evil that chocolate is frozen by the cold, melted by the heat and crushed by the pressure. It's so dark that if you drop your chocolate, it will be lost and gone forever. Indeed, it's so dark that the Tree of Chocolate won't even grow.

Chocolate! Why have you forsaken us!

We're talking about hydrothermal vents.

It's all to do with the disastrous geological life of our planet. The tectonic plates dance their slow, ancient dance across the gooey honey that is the rock beneath the Earth's crust. On one side they collide into each other, causing earthquakes and volcanoes. On the other, they separate. Causing earthquakes and volcanoes.

Image: NOAA
White smoker.

Some of this happens dramatically on land, but it can also be a lot more relaxing. In fact, there are people who spend a lot of money to see the geysers and jump into the hot springs that are part of what's called "volcanic activity". This gives us a hint as to the double edged nature of our living planet.

Volcanoes are bad, but it's this geological life that provides us with the minerals and temperature moderation we depend on.

This is even more clear in the bottom of the sea, where most of the boundaries between parting tectonic plates are situated. Mid-ocean ridges form where magma comes up and cools, creating an underwater mountain range across the world and in every ocean.

But there is something else that boils and broils from the ocean floor in these grimly alive areas: water. Much of it sea water that seeped into volcanic rock, was heated and is now liberated with incredible violence.

Image: NOAA
A million crabs frolic in their luscious habitat.

This is water with a temperature of some 60 to 460 °C (140 to 860 °F), compared to to an ambient deep sea temperature of about 2 °C (35 °F).

It's kept liquid by the ridiculous pressure, which can even cause it to become a supercritical fluid. This is weird stuff that can go through solids as if it was a gas, but dissolves minerals like a liquid.

It can also have a pH as low as 2.8, about as acidic as vinegar. :X

But the main thing is those minerals. They are mostly sulphides drawn up from beneath the Earth's crust. These sulphides bring with them all sorts of other elements that may be deposited as they make contact with the cold, ocean water.

Image: NOAA
The yellow stuff is bacteria. Lots and lots of bacteria.

It's these deposits that make the black and white smokers. They're chimneys that spew forth yet more hot waters from the underworld, their colour determined by the minerals in their effluence. Some have been found to be up to 60 m (200 ft) tall and some have been seen to grow at a rate of 30 cm (1 ft) a day.

But there is one deadly poison that is of particular importance. Hydrogen sulphide is usually a stinking waste product of bacteria digesting without oxygen. It's responsible for bad smells in sewers and swamps and is toxic to most life. But in hydrothermal vents there are bacteria that get all the energy they need from it. They may be in such abundance that they form mats several inches thick.

And thus, in total ignorance of the Sun, a whole ecosystem may develop. Creatures here do more than survive, they thrive. There, in the midst of heat, poison and darkness, is a bustling community. An oasis in the desert, with a density of life tens of thousands of times greater than surrounding areas not similarly blessed with a direct link to the pits of Hell.

We'll take a look at some of those demons and devils next week.

Sea Apple

2012-02-03T12:00:00.000Z

Image: emmiegrn via Flickr

What happens when you take a cucumber and squish it up a little? You get an apple of course! Or at least that's what happens in the sea...

Image: dwward via Flickr

Sea Apples are roughly spherical (ish) Sea Cucumbers from the Indo-Pacific. They come in all sorts of fantastic colours and are definitely the pretty-boys of the Sea Cucumber world. Many are nocturnal, spending the days in a protective ball. At night, they might shock you with their feeding method.

That's right! Sea Apples don't eat mud! Like hoity-toity, la-di-da aristocrats, they choose a more elevated manner of gaining sustenance. They're filter feeders, using incredibly intricate tentacles to filter plankton out of the water current.

They still can't help but betray their lowly roots, though. Those fancy tentacles have to be stuffed into their mouth and covered in mucus. After waving them around in the water for a while they go straight back into their gob to suck the plankton off.

nexodos6

Even at night there may be fish and the like tempted to take a bite out of an apple. Desperate times call for disgusting measures for a Sea Cucumber, and a Sea Apple will release toxins and internal organs into the water to scare away predators.

You can take the Apple out of the Cucumber, but you can't take the Cucumber out of the Apple.

Eastern Tiger Salamander

2012-02-02T12:00:00.000Z

Image: J. N. Stuart via Flickr

Do you remember the Axolotl? Well check out their close relative, the Eastern Tiger Salamander! Doesn't he look grown up?

Adult Tiger Salamanders are completely land living. They have a wide range across the eastern half of North America, but you might not see them because they spend their time in underground burrows they dig for themselves. They are a kind of Mole Salamander, after all!

Image: utahmatz via Flickr

Baby Tiger Salamanders are aquatic and have gills and a tail fin to let them do all the stuff they have to do. Eat, basically.

Image: utahmatz via Flickr

They get bigger and bigger.

Image: utahmatz via Flickr

And they look just like an Axolotl! It's just that the Axolotl looks like that for all its life, while the Tiger Salamander will eventually metamorphose into an adult.

In can take months or years for them to reach adulthood, depending on temperature and the like. Some will metamorphose as soon as possible, making small, terrestrial adults in cold areas or where water bodies dry up every season.

Tiger Salamanders in warmer areas do their growth as larvae and will transition into adulthood when they reach around 20 cm (8 in) long.

There are even some populations of Tiger Salamander that don't metamorphose at all, just like the Axolotl! They tend to get even bigger than a normal adult. Amphibians just don't have the kind of rules we do.

Image: Wikipedia

I'm fairly sure there's a population that grows some kind of hair, too.

Axolotl

2012-02-01T12:00:00.001Z

Image: Stephen Dalton

In the face of terrible adversity the critically endangered Axolotl smiles cheekily, loses a place in the wild but gains a place in our hearts. Cheesy I know, but this is probably the only salamander most people can get weepy and sentimental about. So let's do it when we can.

Image: Wikimedia

The Axolotl is a neotenic salamander, meaning it's an eternal child who had a few too many at the Fountain of Youth. It's like pet dogs, who are all essentially wolf pups who get big. It's also completely different to pet dogs, since Axolotls are amphibians that don't go through metamorphosis and end up looking quite a lot like tadpoles their whole life.

Unless they're one of those freakish mutant Axolotls who become grown-ups. Ewwww!

Axolotls reach adulthood after about 2 years, at which point they'll be about 30 cm (12 in) long. They retain 3 pairs of frilly gills for breathing in water and a fin on their tail for swimming. Even the babies have legs and adults are no different, but these limbs remain thin, weak and inappropriate for life on land. It's all fine of course, because Axolotls don't move out from fresh waters.

Image: Wikipedia

Another thing that doesn't cause them trouble is their utterly puny teeth. Axolotls are carnivorous and suck up just about any meat product that can physically fit their head.

They also come in a range of colours to suit your handbag, tie or socks. There are black ones, white ones, brown ones, mottled ones and ones with a golden sheen. That last one for the tasteless dictator in you, perhaps.

This little trooper faces a host of challenges in Mexico, their only native habitat. Today they exist only in a greatly diminished and polluted Lake Xochimilco. Other water bodies they once lived in have been drained in an effort to stop flooding, a process that began with the Aztecs. The future looks quite bleak, with new, non-native fish competitors and nearby Mexico City's (population 9 or 21 million depending on your "city" definitions) increasing demands.

ZSLVideo

It seems likely that the day will come when only captive bred Axolotls remain. These are popular not only in the pet trade but also the lab. You see, Axolotls have absolutely amazing regeneration abilities. They can regrow entire limbs and even spinal and brain tissue. A whole leg can be regrown in a few weeks without a hint of scarring! It's hoped we will one day learn to do the same in hospital, with huge ramifications for healthcare and extreme sports.

We must be glad to have discovered all this before we wiped them out forever. Soon we'll be lopping off each other's limbs without a care in the world, all thanks to an overgrown baby salamander with a goofy grin.

Image: brian.gratwicke via Flickr

Tiger Beetle

2012-01-29T12:00:00.000Z

Image: Ted C. Macrae, Beetles in the Bush
Beautiful Tiger Beetle, Cicindela pulchra pulchra

Tiger Beetles! Fast, powerful and often incredibly beautiful so long as they aren't tearing you to bits. In fact, just like with actual tigers, you may have to grudgingly admit to their handsome good looks even as they send your limbs flying and teach you all about your own internal anatomy.

Image: Lisa Lawley via Flickr
Green Tiger Beetle, Cicindela campestris

The various species of Green Tiger Beetle demonstrate a lot of the typical characteristics. Massive eyes provide great vision and a facial expression of utter fury. Gigantic mandibles are used to grip, grapple and crush prey while enzymes are secreted to begin digesting the good stuff before drinking it up. Eventually a husk of mangled chitin is cast away like a savagely empty tube of toothpaste.

Image: Coastlander via Flickr
Six-spotted Tiger Beetle, Cicindela sexguttata

All this horror is meted out by a creature of extraordinary, unmistakeable beauty. They almost seem to take pride in their handsome features; Tiger Beetles are typically most active in the hottest, sunniest part of the day. The heat and their long legs allow them to be amongst the fastest of all insects. Along with those facial accoutrements, victims stand little chance.

Image: smccann via Flickr
Moustached Tiger Beetle, Ellipsoptera hirtilabris

Many Tiger Beetles keep their activities predominantly to sandy soils. The lady above is well camouflaged for the white sands she prefers. She looks a little more athletic than the typical Tiger Beetle, with ridiculously long legs and much more petite mandibles.

Image: cotinis via Flickr
Virginia Metallic Tiger Beetle, Tetracha virginica

Others appear more stout and heavy set, which I suppose is the price of being really good at hunting. The species above is also nocturnal and, unlike many other Tiger Beetles, doesn't like to fly much. She can secrete a malodorous fluid when provoked, though.

Image: berniedup
Manticora sp.

The biggest Tiger Beetles belong to the genus Manticora. They can reach some 4.5 cm (1.8 in) in length and most live in the deserts of southern Africa. They have a bit of a reputation for death and doom over there, which makes perfect sense when you see one. They are again, nocturnal and flightless and demonstrate that many Tiger Beetles completely eschew the lovely colouration of their gaudy kin.

Image: Biopix: JC Schou
Northern Dune Tiger Beetle, Cicindela hybrida

Some are drab. Some are drab but can't seem to resist a flourish of pattern, a slight iridescence or, apparently, purple and green legs.

Image: Pen Araneae via Flickr
Cosmodela aurulenta, I think

Others are moving toward the downright clownish.

Image: Wikipedia
Green Tiger Beetle, Cicindela campestris
They're... fighting.

Tiger Beetles do it angry!

MDFIDF

Larval Tiger Beetles are in a way similar to the adults, in another way completely different.

Image: Ted C. Macrae, Beetles in the Bush (follow the link for more pictures and details)

They are just as predatory as the adults, with up to 3 pairs of eyes for excellent vision and big mandibles for a swift and brutal kill.

Image: Coastlander via Flickr
Larvae in burrow

But larval Tiger Beetles have a completely different method for catching their food. They live in burrows which they excavate for themselves. Their large, tough head blocks the entrance and they simply wait for a hapless morsel to wander too close. At this point they lunge forward with sickening speed, grasp their victim and take it down into the darkness of their lair. A nasty hump on their back is covered in spines to keep a grip on the walls of the den should there be a struggle, and all the while those jaws do their wicked work.

Image: Biopix, N Sloth
Green Tiger Beetle, Cicindela campestris

Soon this demon-worm will pupate and, in time, an adult emerge. It might be spectacular, it might be about as grim as the Reaper, but it's gonna be significantly more pleasing to look at than the evil maggot it used to be.

It's a heart-warming tale in the end. The ugly, blood-thirsty duckling that became a beautiful, blood-thirsty swan, then broke a man's arm and ate it because it was blood-thirsty.

Immortal Jellyfish

2012-01-27T12:00:00.000Z

Image: Alvaro E. Migotto

Turritopsis nutricula is the Immortal Jellyfish. You might think that your gigantic brain makes you all great or whatever and maybe you can get it frozen after you're dead so that it can be uploaded into a robot in a million years but this here is the real deal.

It's in the class Hydrozoa, like Hydras and Blue Buttons (also Portuguese Man o' War, but I must have linked to that a million times by now) rather than Scyphozoa, which is where your classic jellyfish like the Lion's Mane and everyone's favourite Moon reside.

Image: Alvaro E. Migotto
Hydroid colony.

The lifecycle of the two groups are often quite similar. Male and female jellyfish release gametes, eggs become larval planulae that seek out a surface to rest on before becoming a polyp. But Hydrozoan polyps are called hydroids and they are usually colonial. They make up a little tree, with polyps all connected to each other by a tube. The Immortal Jellyfish uses a stolon that runs along the ground like strawberry runners. It's just that the stuff that grows up from them are polyps with stinging tentacles rather than juicy fruit. Ah, well.

The hydroid colony now releases tiny jellyfish, or medusoids, that are just a millimetre across. They feed on plankton and grow to a maximum size of about 4.5 millimetres (0.18 in) after 2 to 4 weeks. They are now sexually mature and can reproduce in the usual way, but something extraordinary happens if conditions become unfavourable.

You might remember that the Salp was a weird creature that would reproduce until there was no food left and then they'd all die. The Immortal Jellyfish is little more clever than that. An adult will actually revert back into a polyp, absorbing the tentacles and the jellyfish bell as it reattaches itself to the ground. It now extends those same stolons to make a whole new hydroid colony. Lab experiments showed that they will do this as a result of starvation, temperature change or drops in salinity. They can also do this at any stage of jellyfish development, from being a tiny thing 1 mm across to a not quite as tiny, sexually mature adult.

Image: Alvaro E. Migotto

It's quite remarkable because cells have to transform into completely different kinds of cells. And of course, if they can do this ad infinitum it would mean they are biologically immortal! All they have to do is avoid getting eaten. But then again, don't we all?

These jellyfish are found all over the tropical and temperate world, perhaps spread by boats using water ballast. Dr. Maria Pia Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute said "we are looking at a worldwide silent invasion". It is clear. This world is a Jellyfish World. Just like all those other ways that the world or humanity is going to end: It's not if... it's when.

California Horn Shark

2012-01-26T12:00:00.000Z

Image: Chad King / SIMoN NOAA

While not initially impressive, this lovely little shark is a great example of the fascinating things you can find out when you really get down and study an animal.

Firstly, it does indeed come from the coast of California. Youngsters hang out in flat, sandy areas in deeper waters than their parents. They're fully grown when they reach about 1 metre (3.3 ft) long, by which time they will inhabit rocky grounds at shallow depths.

A little cave or crevice might serve as a daytime shelter for over a decade! These sharks are real homebodies, sticking to a 1,000 m² (11,000 sq ft) territory for years. Come the night, the California Horn Shark is finally drawn to activity.

Horn Sharks are sluggish, slow swimmers who eat even slower prey like snails, mussels, sea urchins and crabs. There's some really tough shells to get through in there, so the California Horn Shark is armed with a powerful bite and some really strange teeth.

Image: Wikipedia

The teeth at the front of the mouth are sharp and used to grip onto prey. If something like a mussel is firmly attached to a rock, they will turn their whole body into a lever - push their tail down to push their head up and help pry it off. Their upper jaw can also protrude forward to be used like a chisel.

Prey is then sucked up and left to the back teeth. These are smooth and rounded and act a lot like our own molars, cracking and crunching through shells to reach the meat within. Turns out they have one of, perhaps THE most powerful bites relative to size of any shark in the world!

They will return to their hiding place when the Sun comes up. Oddly, they actually NEED that to happen otherwise they don't actually realise that it's time for rest. One experiment saw them active for 11 days because they didn't turn the lights on! Imagine how much you could get done if your brain didn't insist on making you tired after 16 hours!

Lesson learned. It's so inspiring to see the shock of understanding flash across their face.

Of course, sometimes there are other animals who would quite like to make a meal of a California Horn Shark. Not least our very own Angel Shark hiding in the sandy floors frequented by the youngsters. They have a rather brutal defence; both of their two dorsal fins are armed with a great, big spike. Ouch! That'll teach 'em!

Female California Horn Sharks lay up to 24 eggs and will wedge them into rocky crevices. It will take some 6 to 10 months for the young to emerge and they will mainly eat worms, sea anemones and small clams. The ridiculous power of those shell crushing teeth will have to wait.

Angel Shark

2012-01-25T12:00:00.000Z

Image: Philippe Guillaume via Flickr

Sometimes it's good to be a land animal. Especially a reasonably sizeable one. Take the beach for example. We can go there and play in the sand, build our castles and frolic under the Sun in near total safety. Sure you might get sunburnt or find grains of sand in your hair for days to come, but you probably won't get eaten. I mean, imagine if you were just walking along the seaside and a massive patch of sand reared up, its rapacious mouth ablaze with hunger as it gobbled you up. That would be horrible!

Well then. Spare a thought for the little fish that dwell beyond the lapping waves. For here is where the Angel Shark lurks.

Angel Sharks look like scarcely more than a pile of sand. Not even a big pile, because they're flattened like no other shark and have large pectoral fins such that they look much more like a ray. They also have a spotted colouration for camouflage and will even bury themselves in the sand just to make sure. At this point they are really difficult to see, even though most of the 20 or so species reach about 1.5 m (5 ft) in length and a few even more.

Image: Wikipedia

At this point they pretty much just relax. They can remain motionless for days, an apparent devotee to the art of idleness. Of course, a genus of sharks with representatives across the tropical and temperate world can't really be doing nothing at all! Especially when some Angel Sharks are known to be very selective of their resting place, preferring areas where the sandy floor meets the reef. These are busy areas where fish come and go between foraging for food in the open and seeking refuge among rocks.

No. The Angle Shark is waiting. Hidden in plain view, waiting.

When a fish or squid wanders by, the Angel Shark is finally roused to action. The front half of the body suddenly bends upward, jaws open and extend forward, prey is sucked in and needle-like teeth ensure a strong grip on slippery customers. It all happens with incredible speed, the sluggish Angel Shark brutally revealing her deepest passions.

It's not long before before surviving fish learn to avoid the area. The Angel Shark must now seek out new hunting grounds, merge into the terrain and... wait.

Dear Reader Chloë Langley asked if Angel Sharks are as angelic as Sea Angels. The answer appears to be yes! They're both monstrous and the Angel Shark is clearly all shark!

Image: Nordictiger via Flickr

Apparently, there's an Angel Shark here! Can you see the tail on the top right? They're not known for aggression, so divers are usually safe if they swim by without interfering with them. Phew!

Blanket Octopus

2012-01-22T12:00:00.000Z

The air around here is growing increasingly chilly and I think a nice, warm blanket to hide under is called for. All sorts of animals have lovely fur you can make one out of, but you have to do all the work yourself. Unacceptable! There is a very strange answer to this problem, so long as you can tolerate your blanket being soaking wet. The Blanket Octopus has come to tuck you in. I hope she's brought some hot chocolate along, too.

Blanket Octopus are 4 species of the genus Tremoctopus. They are found throughout the world's tropical and sub-tropical oceans, from the surface to moderate depths. I usually think of octopods crawling around on rocks and such but the Blanket Octopus is pelagic, living life out in the open ocean with no need for coasts or the sea floor at all.

And of course, "living life" is one of her top priorities, so she requires some kind of defence against whatever predators she may come across. She has no octopus ink, so this is when her Giant Security Blanket of Doom makes its dramatic appearance.

A female Blanket Octopus might get to about a metre or 2 (3.3 to 6.6 feet) in length, but her first 2 pairs of legs are extra specially long. Attached to them is a huge span of webbing that is normally hidden away. In times of need, this drapery is unfurled, spread out and left to billow in the water. It's like curtains on a dark and stormy night, when you really ought to close those windows. This makes her look far larger and more threatening than she actually is, hopefully scaring off any predators. If it doesn't seem to be working so well, bits of her blanket can even detach from the rest to act as a decoy. Quite the bag of tricks!

But it doesn't stop there! Or rather, it didn't start there. Even as a tiny youth, this Blanket Octopus was a brawler.

Blanket Octopus are immune to the stings of the Portuguese Man o' War and, not being one to waste a good opportunity, she grabs it by the long and tendrilly. In other words, she rips off a few of their tentacles and wields them like whips. Poisonous, stinging whips. Yowch!

But it's not only the female who does this, the males do too. The thing is, the males never really grow up! I hear a whole bunch of women saying "yeh, you don't have to tell me!" But at least human males can put the shelves up or something, Blanket Octopus males are fully grown at just a few centimetres (inch or 2) long! So they have to continue with the Man o' War tentacle trick for their whole life, never get that impressive blanket and can't even help with putting the shopping away. They're almost useless. Almost...

Image: Dhugal Lindsay/JAMSTEC/CMarZ
A male. All grown up and just one place to go...

Like other cephalopods, male Blanket Octopus have a special arm modified for reproduction. It stores sperm and is offered up to the female. It actually detaches from the rest of the male's body and crawls up into her mantle. His special tentacle really has a mind of its own! She can now produce some 100,000 eggs which she stores in a calcareous packet that she carries around with her until they hatch. The male on the other hand... well, job done. She only wanted him for his special tentacle and he doesn't have it anymore so... he promptly dies.

Excuse me while I go practise putting up shelves.

Lighthouse of the Desert

2012-01-20T12:00:00.000Z

Rising forth from the mud and stone of the sea floor, an edifice strikes out at the darkness. Appearing as nothing more than a community of snowflakes, standing strong against black waters and crushing pressure.

There is snow, but it's marine snow. Crumbs from the top table that fall from sunlit realms, dragged downward by the night. There are stars, but they are brittle stars. A squirming handful of arms, each with a thousand feet. There are flowers, too, but they are sea lilies. Feathers held high on long stalks, like carnivorous palm trees waving in the breeze.

This tower is a home. Sparkling, white walls permit entry to the tiny. One couple will stay and grow too big to escape. A wedding, but a shrimp wedding. A home, but a living one. A crystal prison and a fortress against the wet, desert wasteland.

I'm Venus Flower Basket and I approve this message.