I’m so sick of having to prove “usefulness”. Living things don’t exist for you. A species of ugly inedible bug living under a rock has as much right to keep existing as a pretty deer.
Why is it called a Barreleye? Because it has barrels for eyes, of course! Actually, that’s just half the story…
Each eye is divided into two distinct parts. The larger, barrel section faces upward and is great for discerning the silhouettes of tiny, tasty copepods in the gloom above.
Next to those is the diverticular eye. These face downward and capture light using mirrors instead of lenses. This is particularly useful for gathering light, allowing the Spookfish to spot bioluminescent predators lurking below.
It doesn’t matter how flabby their muscles or gelatinous their flesh, no-ones sneaking up on the Brownsnout Spookfish!
A new chapter in the wild began today for 26 eastern indigo snakes reared at the Zoo in the latest milestone in a conservation partnership to restore a native species to its original range. In a collaboration between Zoo Atlanta, the Central Florida Zoo’s Orianne Center for Indigo Conservation and Auburn University, the snakes were released into the Conecuh National Forest near Andalusia, Alabama, on July 14, 2017.
Previously to the beginning of a reintroduction effort, the eastern indigo snake had not been sighted in the wild in Alabama in around 50 years. The snakes are a keystone species of the longleaf pine-wiregrass and sandhills ecosystem, and their reintroduction carries significant positive ecological benefits for the national forest.
Zoos are known for their conservation work on other continents around the world, but conservation begins in our own backyards. This is a notable example of a project that continues to have a direct impact on re-establishing an iconic species in its native range.
Our Zoo has reared more than 80 eastern indigo snakes for the reintroduction program, which is a cooperation among stakeholders throughout the Southeast. Additional project partners include the Alabama Department of Natural Resources, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and The Nature Conservancy.
The newest group of reintroduced snakes had been reared here since 2015. As they had been designated for release into the wild, the young snakes received care and feeding in behind-the-scenes facilities where they had limited interactions with humans. In this environment, the snakes were able to grow to a size capable of avoiding many of the predators that feed on juvenile snakes.
Prior to their release, the snakes received passive integrated responder tags (PIT) for identification. Preliminary results from tracking efforts have shown that previous groups of reintroduced snakes are surviving, thriving, and reproducing.
To date, more than 100 eastern indigo snakes have been released into Conecuh National Forest, a majority of which have been reared at the Zoo. The goal of the project is to release 300 snakes over a 10-year period at an average of 30 snakes a year.
The largest nonvenomous snake species in North America and a native of southern Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina and Mississippi, the eastern indigo snake has declined across its historic range with the destruction of its ecosystem. This decline is also observed in Georgia’s state reptile, the gopher tortoise, which creates burrows that are often used by eastern indigo snakes and other species.
Eastern indigo snakes play an additional valuable role in their environment by keeping other snake populations in check, as they are known to eat venomous species, including copperheads. These snakes are not constrictors; instead, they overpower their prey using the crushing force of their jaws.
To learn more things people dont realize about zoos here ~>
One of my very favorite reptile species! It warms my heart to see captive breeding programs finally come to fruition and the animals in the programs get the chance to return to their homelands. Go with God, little reptiles. Your planet needs you!
New Scientist- good headline, explains exactly what was found, doesn’t sensationalize Cosmos- ok headline- “bizarre” kinda clickbaity, but hey, it IS bizarre- it’s got this really neat symbiotic sulfur-eating bacteria that lives in its gills and a tiny digestive system- and yes, it was found in the Philippines Popular Science:
If you’re a science writer, then act like it. Calling a harmless shipworm a “horrifying nightmare monster” is irresponsible. It’s not a monster, it’s just a worm. And it’s not a new species, either. Linnaeus described the thing in 1735. It’s just that this was the first live specimen ever found.
Science faces enough challenges in communication. One of the biggest problems is that scientific writing is often inaccessible and jargony to people who don’t know the specific lingo. Popular science writing online can help to change that, but not through clickbait and not through trying to gross people out. Don’t scare people away from embracing discovery for clicks on Facebook.
So someone in a group asked me to tell them why I hate the ocean sunfish so much, and apparently it was ~too mean~ and was deleted. To perpetuate the truth and stand up for ethical journalism, I’m posting it here. [Rated NC-17 for language.]
Disclaimer, I care about marine life more than I care about anything else, for real. Except this big dumb idiot. And it’s not like an ~ironic~ thing, I mean it IS hilarious to me and they ARE THE BIGGEST JOKE PLAYED ON EARTH but I seriously fucking hate them.
THE MOLA MOLA FISH (OR OCEAN SUNFISH)
They are the world’s largest boney fish, weighing up to 5,000 pounds. And since they have very little girth, that just makes them these absolutely giant fucking dinner plates that God must have accidentally dropped while washing dishes one day and shrugged his shoulders at because no one could have imagined this would happen. AND WITH NO PURPOSE. EVERY POUND OF THAT IS A WASTED POUND AND EVERY FOOT OF IT (10 FT BY 14 FT) IS WASTED SPACE.
They are so completely useless that scientists even debate about how they move. They have little control other than some minor wiggling. Some say they must just push water out of their mouths for direction (?????). They COULD use their back fin EXCEPT GUESS WHAT IT DOESNT FUCKING GROW. It just continually folds in on itself, so the freaking cells are being made, this piece of floating garbage just doesn’t put them where they need to fucking go.
So they don’t have swim bladders. You know, the one thing that every fish has to make sure it doesn’t just sink to the bottom of the ocean when they stop moving and can stay the right side up. This creature. That can barely move to begin with. Can never stop its continuous tour of idiocy across the ocean or it’ll fucking sink. EXCEPT. EXCEPT. When they get stuck on top of the water! Which happens frequently! Because without the whole swim bladder thing, if the ocean pushes over THE THINNEST BUT LARGEST MOST TOPPLE-ABLE FISH ON THE PLANET, shit outta luck! There is no creature on this earth that needs a swim bladder more than this spit in the face of nature, AND YET. Some scientists have speculated that when they do that, they are absorbing energy from the sun because no one fucking knows how they manage to get any real energy to begin with. So they need the sun I guess. But good news, when they end up stuck like that, it gives birds a chance to land on their goddamn island of a body and eat the bugs and parasites out of its skin because it’s basically a slowly migrating cesspool. Pros and cons.
“If they are so huge, they must at least be decent predators.” No. No. The most dangerous thing about them is, as you may have guessed, their stupidity. They have caused the death of one person before. Because it jumped onto a boat. On a human. And in 2005 it decided to relive its mighty glory days and do it again, this time landing on a four-year-old boy. Luckily Byron sustained no injuries. Way to go, fish. Great job.
They mostly only eat jellyfish because of course they do, they could only eat something that has no brain and a possibility of drifting into their mouths I guess. Everything they do eat has almost zero nutritional value and because it’s so stupidly fucking big, it has to eat a ton of the almost no nutritional value stuff to stay alive. Dumb. See that ridiculous open mouth? (This is actually why this is my favorite picture of one, and I have had it saved to my phone for three years) “Oh no! What could have happened! How could this be!” Do not let that expression fool you, they just don’t have the goddamn ability to close their mouths because their teeth are fused together, and ya know what, it is good it floats around with such a clueless expression on its face, because it is in fact clueless as all fuck.
They do SOMETIMES get eaten though. BUT HARDLY. No animal truly uses them as a food source, but instead (which has lead us to said photo) will usually just maim the fuck out of them for kicks. Seals have been seen playing with their fins like frisbees. Probably the most useful thing to ever come from them.
“Wow, you raise some good points here, this fish truly is proof that God has abandoned us.” Yes, thank you. “But if they’re so bad at literally everything, why haven’t they gone extinct.” Great question.
BECAUSE THIS THING IS SO WORTHLESS IT DOESNT REALIZE IT SHOULD NOT EXIST. IT IS SO UNAWARE OF LITERALLY FUCKING EVERYTHING THAT IT DOESNT REALIZE THAT IT’S DOING MAYBE THE WORST FUCKING JOB OF BEING A FISH, OR DEBATABLY THE WORST JOB OF BEING A CLUSTER OF CELLS THAN ANY OTHER CLUSTER OF CELLS. SO WHAT DOES IT DO? IT LAYS THE MOST EGGS OUT OF EVERYTHING. Besides some bugs, there are some ants and stuff that’ll lay more. IT WILL LAY 300 MILLION EGGS AT ONE TIME. 300,000,000. IT SURVIVES BECAUSE IT WOULD BE STATISTICALLY IMPROBABLE, DARE I SAY IMPOSSIBLE, THAT THERE WOULDNT BE AT LEAST ONE OF THOSE 300,000,000 (that is EACH time they lay eggs) LEFT SURVIVING AT THE END OF THE DAY.
And this concludes why I hate the fuck out of this complete failure of evolution, the Ocean Sunfish. If I ever see one, I will throw rocks at it.
LIVE OCEAN SUNFISH UPDATE: FISH DISCOVERED TO BE MORE DUMB THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT
So
the top and bottom fins kind of wiggle all of the time and they are not
sure exactly why but think it’s stabilization. BUT they can jump by
turning on their side and using them as
wing type things. It is suspected they do this as a way of “scratching”
their parasite ridden bodies. So learning that I was like “huh okay they
have a skill.”
Then I discovered this: Since they
are so terrible at swimming, the current will carry them into deep cold
water. Then they die. So I have learned that they are so stupid they
just get slowly consumed by a freezing death. All while they have the
full ability for that to not happen. Because they’re fucking worthless
floating garbage
i read this out loud to my marine bio nerd friend and she agrees
my friend is a marine biologist and i remember her describing sunfish as “an evolutionary cul-de-sac”
I am saddened by the announcement from U.S. Fish and Wildlife that confirms the extinction of Stephan’s riffle beetle (Heterelmis stephani) from Arizona, and the Tatum Cave beetle (Pseudanophthalmus parvus) from Kentucky.
This will not be front page news. These are not charismatic species and they’re not widely known. This announcement will not generate widespread attention. I predict it may not be picked up by popular media at all – I learned the news from a tweet by Derek Hennen’s (@entoderek), and he’s an entomologist deeply interested in these topics.
Those reasons ^ are partly why I am upset, because I see the lack of attention as indication that people were never given a reason to care in the first place. I did not know of either species until learning, too late, that they are gone.
But another reason I’m upset is because the dwindling numbers of each population did not happen overnight. According to the announcement, Stephan’s riffle beetle was identified as needing protection under the Endangered Species Act 32 years ago, in 1984.Tatum’s cave beetle was similarly recognized ten years later, in 1994.
We’ve done a video on the Endangered Species Act, and with that episode we highlighted some of the challenges and roadblocks in place when it comes to receiving governmental protection. The ESA has done a lot of good… but it’s nowhere near perfect. Because of our inability to act nimbly and responsively, these species, and the ecosystems in which they played any number of roles, suffer.
With announcements such as this – with the knowledge we’ve lost a little more, and are poorer in diversity – I wonder, what can I do? How can I help? What options do we give other people to help? I’ll never have a comprehensive answer, but I will keep generating small answers, sharing ideas and resources, and continue to promote lifelong learning and curiosity. Maybe along the way, we’ll catch the eye of someone interested in helping us fix some of these systems.
Emily uses her platform for so much good and it makes me proud.
We’re losing lots of species to apathy and the tragedy of the commons.
New Luminous Creatures Illuminate the Mystery of the Red Sea
via: Lomonosov Moscow State University
During the investigations of the biodiversity of coral reefs of the
archipelago Farasan (Saudi Arabia, south of the Red Sea), biologists
observed marine life under the UV-light with yellow filters. As a result
they found “fluorescent lanterns,” that were very similar to hydrae
from the Biology school textbooks.
But unlike their distant relatives
who lead a solitary life in fresh water new species from the Red Sea
form spreading colonies decorating miniature shells of gastropods Nassarius margaritifer
(20-35 mm in length) with garlands of green lights. These molluscs bury
themselves in the sediment during the day and at night crawl out to the
surface to hunt other invertebrates.
“Sea hydroids, unlike hydrae, are often found in colonies and
can branch off tiny jellyfish,” – says Vyacheslav Ivanenko, one of the
authors of the research, the leading researcher of the Department of
Invertebrate Zoology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University. “The
unusual green glow of these hydrozoas (presumably, a new species of the
genus Cytaeis, whose body length reaches 1.5 mm) was revealed in the peristomal area of the body…”
In 1950, a flatworm-like creature (named Xenoturbella bocki) was discovered off the coast of Sweden. It didn’t seem to fit in any existing order of animals.
These strange animals have no brain, not gut, no gonads, no eyes, no kidneys and no anus. They have just one hole: their mouth. The genus name means “strange flatworm.” One of the new species is called Xenoturbella churro after the Latin American fried dough snack.
Jürgen Otto can’t stop discovering new spider species. In 2005, the mite expert stumbled upon the stunning Maratus volans – a brightly colored “peacock spider” – near Sydney, Australia. It danced and postured, waving its tiny legs and unfurling a beautiful flap from its back.
Then came other peacock spiders, including species known as Sparklemuffin, Skeletorus, and Elephans. Now Otto has described a new species – the peekaboo spider, Jortus remus. The remus part of its scientific name means “oar” – a nod to the odd fan shaped structures at the end of two of the males’ legs. When males wave these appendages, females stop and take notice … and then it’s mating time.
You can watch the full videos of these beautiful species here and here.
PiraticOctopus 