Clipmarks | abailart's cuttlefish biosemiotics collection

27 Aquatic lifeforms you never caught while fishing

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:14:21 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Fascinating.

Clip Source: sasthamcotta.wordpress.com

Robot Fish

Deep-sea glass squid

Snaggletooth

Axolotl

Mudskipper

Slander Lanternfish

Deep-sea stargazer

Giant Hatchetfish

Dumbo Octopus

Eelpout

Black-lip Rattail

Humpback Anglerfish

Coelacanth

Northern Seahorse

Longhorn Cowfish

Leafy Sea Dragon

Lumpfish

Atlantic Wolffish

Lionfish

Deep-Sea Lizardfish

Fangtooth Fish

Black Chimaera

Clown Triggerfish

Longlure Frogfish

Prehistoric Frilled Shark

Black Swallowe

Mantis Shrimp

Tags: marine life

Sea of colour

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:22:49 GMT

clipped by: michellezm

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

These wonderful pictures of some of the most beautiful creatures of the deep are the work of just one photographer, taken over the past 30 years. Richard Merritt has won a host of awards for what could be described as holiday snaps.

His full-time job is as a computing lecturer at the University of Plymouth, but he is also one of the world's most talented amateur underwater wildlife photographers.

Broody: A gold specs jawfish with its eggs

Technicolour battle: A harlequin shrimp and a starfish (left) and a harlequin filefish

Mane attraction: The dwarf lionfish hides on reefs to ambush prey

Sucker punch: The venom of the blue-ringed octopus can kill a man

Purple patch: Mating sea slugs lay an egg spiral

What a sight! A close-up reveals the sophisticated eye of a cuttlefish

A real slugger: This Indonesian sea slug has exposed gills and sensory 'horns', acquiring vivid colours from reef life it devours

Pink anemone fish are protected from their host's stings by a layer of mucus

Underwater astonishments

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:42:55 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: Can't clip the video. Go to the site to see this amazing presentation

Clip Source: www.ted.com

Talks David Gallo: Underwater astonishments

David Gallo shows jaw-dropping footage of amazing sea creatures, including a shape-shifting cuttlefish, a pair of fighting squid, and a mesmerizing gallery of bioluminescent fish that light up the blackest depths of the ocean. He focuses on the work of two scientists: Edith Widder at the Ocean Research & Conservation Association, and Roger Hanlon at the Marine Biological Lab.

Tags: science, marine biology, ted talks

P h o t o s o f L u m i n o u s O r g a n i s m s

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:34:58 GMT

clipped by: michellezm

Clip Source: www.lifesci.ucsb.edu

New Research On Octopuses Sheds Light On Memory

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:39:13 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: It is not completely understood how these two systems are interconnected, if at all. However, the organization in the octopus demonstrates a sophistication that was not described yet in other animals. In the octopus, the short-term and long-term systems are working in parallel, but not independently. This is so because the long-term memory area -- in addition to its capacity to store long-term memories -- also regulates the rate at which the short-term memory system acquires short-term memories. This regulatory mechanism is probably useful in cases where faster learning is significant for the octopus' survival in emergency or risky situations.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Research on octopuses has shed new light on how our brains store and recall memory,

Why octopuses?

Octopuses and other related creatures, known as cephalopods, are considered to be the most intelligent invertebrates because they have relatively large brains and they can be trained for various learning and memory tasks, says Dr. Hochner.

Their behavior repertoire and learning and memory abilities are even comparable in their complexity to those of advanced vertebrates. However, they are still invertebrate mollusks with brains that contain a much fewer number of nerve cells and much simpler anatomical organization than that of vertebrate brains. This unique constellation was utilized to tackle one of the most interesting questions in modern neuroscience, which is how the brain stores and recalls memories

Tags: octopuse, memory

20 Things You Didn't Know About Sex

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:16:45 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: 6 Barbary macaques have a distinctive way to get their mates to make a sperm donation: yelling. If the female does not shout, the male almost never climaxes.

7 How do we know this? German primatologist Dana Pfefferle watched a group of macaques, counting the females’ yells and the males’ pelvic thrusts. She says this work is “quite weird, but it’s science.”

8 Here in the US of A, that kind of stuff ends up on YouTube.

9 Because Barry White sounds terrible underwater: Fish can produce a variety of noises with their bones, teeth, and gas bladders. Grant Gilmore of Estuarine Coastal and Ocean Science Inc. says that male fish probably use some of these sounds to woo females.

10 The spiny anteater, an egg-laying mammal native to Australia and New Guinea, has a penis with four heads, but only two fit into the female at once.

11 The tiny male paper nautilus, an octopus, impregnates the much larger female by shooting his penis (a modified tentacle) into her—and leaving it there.

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

And you thought you knew everything...

1 Life emerged on earth about 3.8 billion years ago, but sex did not evolve until more than 2 billion years later. Dirty limericks emerged only quite recently, geologically speaking.

2 Sex—what is it good for? Scientists are not sure, since asexual reproduction is a better evolutionary strategy in some important ways.

3 For those who refuse to commit to one strategy: The hermaphroditic earthworm Dendrobaena rubida has both male and female genitalia. If it cannot find a partner, the worm doubles up so that its female bits and male bits can go to town.

4 Although famously monogamous, female Adélie penguins slip away from their mates occasionally to couple with unattached males. They exact a fee (pdf) for such a dalliance—stones to bolster their nests—not unlike certain people.

5 Some talented penguin teasers can get a gift even without putting out. Again, not unlike certain people.

Tags: sexual behaviour, sexuality, animals, nature

Love in the octopus' garden

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:18:06 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

hey flirt, hold hands and guard their lovers jealously -- yet they don't even have bones.

The love lives of octopuses are far more complex than anyone thought,

"Each day in the water, we learned something new about octopus behavior, probably like what ornithologists must have gone through after the invention of binoculars," said Huffard, now at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Bay, California.

"We quickly realized that Abdopus aculeatus broke all the rules, doing the near opposite of every hypothesis we'd formed based on aquarium studies."

They saw male cephalopods guarding the dens of their mates for several days, warding off rivals and even strangling them if they got too close.

Small males would sneak in to mate by swimming low to the ground in feminine fashion and not displaying their "male" brown stripes, the researchers reported in the journal Marine Biology.

Tags: nature, octopus

Stingray migration

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:57:54 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: Amazing pics

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Gliding silently under the seas these magnificent stingrays resemble a golden cloud stirring in the ocean.

Taken off the coast of Holbox Island in Mexico in July last year these spectacular pictures show the twice yearly migration of thousands of cow-nosed stingrays.

The surface of the water covered by warm and different shades of gold, looked like a bed of fall leaves, gently moved by the wind

Measuring up to 7ft from wing-tip to wing-tip, cow nose rays are known for their long migrations in large schools.

In the Atlantic Ocean, their migration is northward in the late spring and southward in the late autumn.

Cow nose rays have a unique feature - long, pointed pectoral fins that separate into two lobes in front of their high-domed heads.

Despite having poisonous stingers cow-nosed stingrays are known to be shy and non-threatening when in large schools.

"We were surrounded by them without seeing the edge of the school, and we could see many under the water surface too.

Haeckel's beautiful radiolarians

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 13:13:09 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Radiolarians (also radiolaria) are amoeboid protozoa that produce intricate mineral skeletons, typically with a central capsule dividing the cell into inner and outer portions, called endoplasm and ectoplasm. They are found as zooplankton throughout the ocean, and because of their rapid turn-over of species, their tests are important diagnostic fossils found from the Cambrian onwards. Some common radiolarian fossils include Actinomma, Heliosphaera and Hexadoridium.

German biologist Ernst Haeckel produced exquisite (and perhaps somewhat exaggerated)^{[citation needed]} drawings of radiolaria, helping to popularize these protists among Victorian parlor microscopists alongside foraminifera and diatoms.

Clip Source: en.wikipedia.org

Flatfish caught evolving, thanks to its roving eye

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:33:06 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Now Friedman reports finding two different missing links. They are fossil fish with their eyes in different places on the two sides of their skulls - one in the normal position and one closer to the midline (see Diagram). One is Amphistium, a previously described genus found in several fossil deposits in Europe, in which the asymmetry went unnoticed because in fish fossils only one side of the animal is generally preserve. The other is Heteronectes, a new genus. At 10 to 20 centimetres long, the specimens were clearly adults and not larvae in which the eyes were migrating

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

THE slightly skewed faces of two fossil fish have caught the evolution of flatfish eyes in action, filling a gap in the fossil record that has plagued the theory of evolution since Darwin's day.

The asymmetric placement of flatfish eyes has long been a puzzle. Larval flatfish have their eyes on opposite sides of the skull, but when they are still tiny - around one centimetre long - one eye migrates to the opposite side so that both eyes point upwards when the fish lies on its side on the sea floor.

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

"Both the initial and final states make sense" because they offer evolutionary advantages for swimming in open water or along the bottom, respectively, says Matt Friedman at the University of Chicago. The problem for natural selection is that intermediate forms seemed to offer no clear advantage, and no examples had been found. As such, flatfish eyes have been used to challenge Darwin's theory ever since it was published in 1859.

Tags: evolution

Biomimetics - Design by nature

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:26:25 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: "What has fins like a whale, skin like a lizard, and eyes like a moth? The future of engineering."

Clip Source: www.core.form-ula.com

An electron micrograph reveals sharkskin’s secret to speed: tooth-like scales called dermal denticles

sharkskin denticles spurred the design of his Speedo Fastskin, whose texture functions to reduce drag, bumping up speed

via> National Geographic (April 2008)

Behind the squared-off contours of the boxfish lies a lesson in sleek design. Low drag helps the fish swim up to six body lengths per second, stabilized by the keel-like edges of its carapace.

the thorny devil lizard of the arid Australian desert demonstrates its ability to wick water to its mouth via channels between its scales. Scientists hope to mimic the mechanism to develop water-capture technologies for dry regions

burs

invention of Velcro

NASA was an early user

a fly trapped in amber

striations on its surface that seemed to reduce light reflection

has been adapted to dampen reflection on computer monitors and solar cells

the lotus leaf a naturally self-cleaning, water-repellent surface

flipper of a humpback whale

U-shaped motion

Colourful beetles

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:03:49 GMT

clipped by: michellezm

Clip Source: www.zin.ru

Clip Source: www.photographyblog.com

Clip Source: images.etsy.com

Clip Source: www.living-jewels.com

Clip Source: www.bugman123.com

Clip Source: www.trp.dundee.ac.uk

Clip Source: thumbs.photo.net

Clip Source: www.rdps.co.uk

Tags: insects, entomology, beetles

Exotic sex lives of oysters revealed

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:26:48 GMT

clipped by: CarnivalBorn

Clip Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

In keeping with their supposed aphrodisiac properties, a study has revealed that oysters have exotic sex lives, with females and males producing thousands of types of eggs and sperm.

Each oyster spends the start of its life as a male, when it releases vast numbers of sperm that compete to fertilise the 100 million eggs that each of the older, female oysters produce annually.

They are different from many species that have diverse ornamentations and behaviours that help males show off and females choose a suitable mate. This diversity results from an evolutionary 'battle of the sexes'

Pacific oysters have an extraordinarily diverse range of proteins on the surfaces of their sperm and eggs and "these proteins take the place of the behavioural mechanisms that act in other organisms

Instead of simply accepting the first sperm to arrive, oyster eggs constantly evolve to all be slightly different, which cuts the proportion of sperm that are compatible with a given egg

The Nameless Dread

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:33:45 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: trashblanc.blogspot.com

All hail the mighty and powerfull Cthulhu!!!

Tags: nameless dread

Dolphin Woos with Wood and Grass

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:27:00 GMT

clipped by: abailart

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A South American river dolphin uses branches, weeds and lumps of clay to woo the opposite sex and frighten off rivals, scientists have discovered.

Researchers observed adult male botos carrying these objects while surrounded by females, and thrashing them on the water surface aggressively.

Writing in the journal Biology Letters, they say such behaviour has never before been seen in any marine mammal.

"You see them coming up with bits of wood or lumps of rock in a very ritualised manner,"

"Quite often they'd slowly come up above the surface in a vertical posture holding this stuff in their mouths, then sink down rotating on their own axis.

"They would also throw it or smash it against the surface, and it does appear that the waving around and bashing is to impress the ladies; but at the same time there's a lot of aggression between adult males, and we have to infer that's part of it."

using objects for socio-sexual display is a novel finding.

Tags: dolphins, culture, biosemiotics