The Sea’s Strangest Square Mile

Sit back and let your eyes soak up this goggle-fogging journey to the Lembeh Strait near Indonesia by Shark Bay Films. It’s known as one of the richest homes of odd coral reef creatures on Earth.

Lightning-quick eels! Coral-colored, pregnant frogfish stuffing their bellies with wriggling prey! Baby cuttlefish!! BABY CUTTLEFISH!!!

(via kottke)

Source: vimeo.com

Discovery, Animal Planet, and History Channel exposed for killing animals for profit

climateadaptation:

These channels are failing the spirit of conservationism and education. They are failing inspiring awe in young people. Failing much needed inspiration in a very confused and conflicted world.

These shows are failing their core values, their main purpose, which is leadership in environmentalism and cultural education. Far worse, they are failing millions of young people - millions - who look up to them.

Please join me in asking Discovery, Animal Planet, and the History Channels to stop, apologize, and correct.

That’s an important read up there, folks. These “reality” shows are feeding an outdated and unscientific view of predator species. These are channels founded on principles of education and conservation (TLC, of course, left the building years ago). Are they willing to sacrifice that for what appears to be gratuitous bloodsport?

Like any media, you can vote with your eyeballs. And if you support any kind of rights for wild animals and natural spaces, you can not support these programs. If the account above is true, shame on these networks.

It speaks to part of a larger issue with nature films. The amazing footage we see in shows like Africa, Planet Earth, and Frozen Planet is rarely the result of serendipity. It involves years of careful research and preparation to maximize the chances of capturing nature’s majesty on camera, and what is captured is highly edited to create story, drama and emotion. These are uniquely human interests, and nature doesn’t include them in her original script.

That’s not to say we are being fleeced all the time. People like Sir David Attenborough take these concerns very seriously, and constantly strive to find the balance between entertainment and true nature in every varying instance. What we watch is real. But is it REAL?

I wonder how many people realize that, for instance, the famous polar bear birth scene from Frozen Planet was filmed in a zoo? Disney’s adorable Chimpanzee movie was not a documentary, but rather spliced together to create an emotional tale of adoption. Jason Goldman put together a great collection of opinions on the matter.

How far can we take allowances to deliver good edutainment before we are delivering bad science? The “reality” shows surely fail the test. But the others? What do you think?

Butterfly Stew

What happens inside a pupa stays inside a pupa. Or it used to, anyway. Until recently, when special x-ray imagers were turned on a developing butterfly to elucidate its metamorphosis. 

the process of caterpillar-to-butterfly is a messy one. An overfed worm not only has to convert a lot of the stored energy it gathered stuffing its face for a few weeks into new body parts, it does so by essentially dissolving much of its body and reforming. The pupa isn’t so much a dressing room for a beautiful diva as it is a bag to keep all the goopy globs of proto-butterfly from dripping on the ground. Sounds like both butterfly and human puberty involve a mess of bodily fluids and hiding in your room.

That’s what most biology books would have you believe anyway. This new work (written up in great detail by Ed Yong) demonstrates that while there’s still plenty of goop-globbing, quite a few structures remain intact, migrating and growing into adult forms in a more traditional way (like those blue circulation vessels). For the insect nerds in the bunch, this technique doesn’t revolutionize metamorphosis or anything, but it’s a view inside that most of us have never gotten.

And quite a view it is. 

Happy Mothers Day! Here’s some of the best and most interesting moms in the animal kingdom. Send some love to the Homo sapiens that made ya today! Harp seals have to care for their fluffy, marshmallow-like pups in an icy, scary world patrolled by polar bears. The little snowy cotton balls have to gain weight fast in order to survive the cold and avoid predators. So their moms help them gain five pounds a day for the first 12 days by feeding them milk that is 48% fat! How is that even liquid?! It’s like feeding them butter. Oh, and the moms don’t eat for the whole time! Queen bees are some of the hardest working moms in terms of pure reproduction. If a fertilized (and therefore female) bee egg is laid in a special honeycomb receptacle and continuously fed a secretion called “royal jelly”, it will develop into a queen. That queen will mate with one or many drone males, storing their sperm to lay as many as 2,000 eggs a day (both fertilized female workers and unfertilized drone males) to stock the hive. That’s a lot of kids to look out for. Elephants never forget … that they carried their young for 22 months, the longest pregnancy term of all mammals. A 22 month pregnancy. Just let that sink in the next time your back hurts a little. Of course, that’s nothing compared to the frilled shark, who can carry its young for as long as 3.5 years, probably because it’s so terrifying that it doesn’t want to scare its children to death. Earwigs aren’t known for being a particularly heartwarming species, but the females are unique among non-social insects for attending to their larva, helping them hatch, feeding them regurgitated food, guarding them until they molt into adults, and even allowing them to eat her if they are starving. Of course, sometimes they have been known to eat their eggs too, so it’s not all cuddles and kisses in earwig families. Orangutan moms and babies might take the cake for pure cuteness. I know we aren’t supposed to humanize animals and read our emotions into their lives, but come on. There is something very close to love between mothers and children among these, the most playful of great apes. Orangutan mothers take seven years between pregnancies, and will care for their young for at least two years among the treetops. For the first four months they never break physical contact with their young, and build a new nest of leaves and twigs every night for fresh, comfy orangu-snuggles. Best ape ever (they love puppies!) (images via Wikipedia, Shutterstock)
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Happy Mothers Day! Here’s some of the best and most interesting moms in the animal kingdom. Send some love to the Homo sapiens that made ya today! Harp seals have to care for their fluffy, marshmallow-like pups in an icy, scary world patrolled by polar bears. The little snowy cotton balls have to gain weight fast in order to survive the cold and avoid predators. So their moms help them gain five pounds a day for the first 12 days by feeding them milk that is 48% fat! How is that even liquid?! It’s like feeding them butter. Oh, and the moms don’t eat for the whole time! Queen bees are some of the hardest working moms in terms of pure reproduction. If a fertilized (and therefore female) bee egg is laid in a special honeycomb receptacle and continuously fed a secretion called “royal jelly”, it will develop into a queen. That queen will mate with one or many drone males, storing their sperm to lay as many as 2,000 eggs a day (both fertilized female workers and unfertilized drone males) to stock the hive. That’s a lot of kids to look out for. Elephants never forget … that they carried their young for 22 months, the longest pregnancy term of all mammals. A 22 month pregnancy. Just let that sink in the next time your back hurts a little. Of course, that’s nothing compared to the frilled shark, who can carry its young for as long as 3.5 years, probably because it’s so terrifying that it doesn’t want to scare its children to death. Earwigs aren’t known for being a particularly heartwarming species, but the females are unique among non-social insects for attending to their larva, helping them hatch, feeding them regurgitated food, guarding them until they molt into adults, and even allowing them to eat her if they are starving. Of course, sometimes they have been known to eat their eggs too, so it’s not all cuddles and kisses in earwig families. Orangutan moms and babies might take the cake for pure cuteness. I know we aren’t supposed to humanize animals and read our emotions into their lives, but come on. There is something very close to love between mothers and children among these, the most playful of great apes. Orangutan mothers take seven years between pregnancies, and will care for their young for at least two years among the treetops. For the first four months they never break physical contact with their young, and build a new nest of leaves and twigs every night for fresh, comfy orangu-snuggles. Best ape ever (they love puppies!) (images via Wikipedia, Shutterstock)
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Happy Mothers Day! Here’s some of the best and most interesting moms in the animal kingdom. Send some love to the Homo sapiens that made ya today! Harp seals have to care for their fluffy, marshmallow-like pups in an icy, scary world patrolled by polar bears. The little snowy cotton balls have to gain weight fast in order to survive the cold and avoid predators. So their moms help them gain five pounds a day for the first 12 days by feeding them milk that is 48% fat! How is that even liquid?! It’s like feeding them butter. Oh, and the moms don’t eat for the whole time! Queen bees are some of the hardest working moms in terms of pure reproduction. If a fertilized (and therefore female) bee egg is laid in a special honeycomb receptacle and continuously fed a secretion called “royal jelly”, it will develop into a queen. That queen will mate with one or many drone males, storing their sperm to lay as many as 2,000 eggs a day (both fertilized female workers and unfertilized drone males) to stock the hive. That’s a lot of kids to look out for. Elephants never forget … that they carried their young for 22 months, the longest pregnancy term of all mammals. A 22 month pregnancy. Just let that sink in the next time your back hurts a little. Of course, that’s nothing compared to the frilled shark, who can carry its young for as long as 3.5 years, probably because it’s so terrifying that it doesn’t want to scare its children to death. Earwigs aren’t known for being a particularly heartwarming species, but the females are unique among non-social insects for attending to their larva, helping them hatch, feeding them regurgitated food, guarding them until they molt into adults, and even allowing them to eat her if they are starving. Of course, sometimes they have been known to eat their eggs too, so it’s not all cuddles and kisses in earwig families. Orangutan moms and babies might take the cake for pure cuteness. I know we aren’t supposed to humanize animals and read our emotions into their lives, but come on. There is something very close to love between mothers and children among these, the most playful of great apes. Orangutan mothers take seven years between pregnancies, and will care for their young for at least two years among the treetops. For the first four months they never break physical contact with their young, and build a new nest of leaves and twigs every night for fresh, comfy orangu-snuggles. Best ape ever (they love puppies!) (images via Wikipedia, Shutterstock)
Zoom Info
Happy Mothers Day! Here’s some of the best and most interesting moms in the animal kingdom. Send some love to the Homo sapiens that made ya today! Harp seals have to care for their fluffy, marshmallow-like pups in an icy, scary world patrolled by polar bears. The little snowy cotton balls have to gain weight fast in order to survive the cold and avoid predators. So their moms help them gain five pounds a day for the first 12 days by feeding them milk that is 48% fat! How is that even liquid?! It’s like feeding them butter. Oh, and the moms don’t eat for the whole time! Queen bees are some of the hardest working moms in terms of pure reproduction. If a fertilized (and therefore female) bee egg is laid in a special honeycomb receptacle and continuously fed a secretion called “royal jelly”, it will develop into a queen. That queen will mate with one or many drone males, storing their sperm to lay as many as 2,000 eggs a day (both fertilized female workers and unfertilized drone males) to stock the hive. That’s a lot of kids to look out for. Elephants never forget … that they carried their young for 22 months, the longest pregnancy term of all mammals. A 22 month pregnancy. Just let that sink in the next time your back hurts a little. Of course, that’s nothing compared to the frilled shark, who can carry its young for as long as 3.5 years, probably because it’s so terrifying that it doesn’t want to scare its children to death. Earwigs aren’t known for being a particularly heartwarming species, but the females are unique among non-social insects for attending to their larva, helping them hatch, feeding them regurgitated food, guarding them until they molt into adults, and even allowing them to eat her if they are starving. Of course, sometimes they have been known to eat their eggs too, so it’s not all cuddles and kisses in earwig families. Orangutan moms and babies might take the cake for pure cuteness. I know we aren’t supposed to humanize animals and read our emotions into their lives, but come on. There is something very close to love between mothers and children among these, the most playful of great apes. Orangutan mothers take seven years between pregnancies, and will care for their young for at least two years among the treetops. For the first four months they never break physical contact with their young, and build a new nest of leaves and twigs every night for fresh, comfy orangu-snuggles. Best ape ever (they love puppies!) (images via Wikipedia, Shutterstock)
Zoom Info
Happy Mothers Day! Here’s some of the best and most interesting moms in the animal kingdom. Send some love to the Homo sapiens that made ya today! Harp seals have to care for their fluffy, marshmallow-like pups in an icy, scary world patrolled by polar bears. The little snowy cotton balls have to gain weight fast in order to survive the cold and avoid predators. So their moms help them gain five pounds a day for the first 12 days by feeding them milk that is 48% fat! How is that even liquid?! It’s like feeding them butter. Oh, and the moms don’t eat for the whole time! Queen bees are some of the hardest working moms in terms of pure reproduction. If a fertilized (and therefore female) bee egg is laid in a special honeycomb receptacle and continuously fed a secretion called “royal jelly”, it will develop into a queen. That queen will mate with one or many drone males, storing their sperm to lay as many as 2,000 eggs a day (both fertilized female workers and unfertilized drone males) to stock the hive. That’s a lot of kids to look out for. Elephants never forget … that they carried their young for 22 months, the longest pregnancy term of all mammals. A 22 month pregnancy. Just let that sink in the next time your back hurts a little. Of course, that’s nothing compared to the frilled shark, who can carry its young for as long as 3.5 years, probably because it’s so terrifying that it doesn’t want to scare its children to death. Earwigs aren’t known for being a particularly heartwarming species, but the females are unique among non-social insects for attending to their larva, helping them hatch, feeding them regurgitated food, guarding them until they molt into adults, and even allowing them to eat her if they are starving. Of course, sometimes they have been known to eat their eggs too, so it’s not all cuddles and kisses in earwig families. Orangutan moms and babies might take the cake for pure cuteness. I know we aren’t supposed to humanize animals and read our emotions into their lives, but come on. There is something very close to love between mothers and children among these, the most playful of great apes. Orangutan mothers take seven years between pregnancies, and will care for their young for at least two years among the treetops. For the first four months they never break physical contact with their young, and build a new nest of leaves and twigs every night for fresh, comfy orangu-snuggles. Best ape ever (they love puppies!) (images via Wikipedia, Shutterstock)
Zoom Info

Happy Mothers Day! Here’s some of the best and most interesting moms in the animal kingdom. Send some love to the Homo sapiens that made ya today!

  • Harp seals have to care for their fluffy, marshmallow-like pups in an icy, scary world patrolled by polar bears. The little snowy cotton balls have to gain weight fast in order to survive the cold and avoid predators. So their moms help them gain five pounds a day for the first 12 days by feeding them milk that is 48% fat! How is that even liquid?! It’s like feeding them butter. Oh, and the moms don’t eat for the whole time!
  • Queen bees are some of the hardest working moms in terms of pure reproduction. If a fertilized (and therefore female) bee egg is laid in a special honeycomb receptacle and continuously fed a secretion called “royal jelly”, it will develop into a queen. That queen will mate with one or many drone males, storing their sperm to lay as many as 2,000 eggs a day (both fertilized female workers and unfertilized drone males) to stock the hive. That’s a lot of kids to look out for.
  • Elephants never forget … that they carried their young for 22 months, the longest pregnancy term of all mammals. A 22 month pregnancy. Just let that sink in the next time your back hurts a little. Of course, that’s nothing compared to the frilled shark, who can carry its young for as long as 3.5 years, probably because it’s so terrifying that it doesn’t want to scare its children to death.
  • Earwigs aren’t known for being a particularly heartwarming species, but the females are unique among non-social insects for attending to their larva, helping them hatch, feeding them regurgitated food, guarding them until they molt into adults, and even allowing them to eat her if they are starving. Of course, sometimes they have been known to eat their eggs too, so it’s not all cuddles and kisses in earwig families.
  • Orangutan moms and babies might take the cake for pure cuteness. I know we aren’t supposed to humanize animals and read our emotions into their lives, but come on. There is something very close to love between mothers and children among these, the most playful of great apes. Orangutan mothers take seven years between pregnancies, and will care for their young for at least two years among the treetops. For the first four months they never break physical contact with their young, and build a new nest of leaves and twigs every night for fresh, comfy orangu-snuggles. Best ape ever (they love puppies!)

(images via Wikipedia, Shutterstock)

thekidshouldseethis:

If you couldn’t see an animal, and only learned what they look like by touch, sound, and a verbal description, what might you imagine? In this clip from the BBC’s Zookeepers, Donna, who has been blind since birth, gets to touch and interact with the elephants at the Paignton Zoo.

Watch more elephant and zoo videos.

So cool! This made me think deeply … or what felt deep to me:

This is like a real-life telling of the “blind men touching the elephant” tale. In that old parable, several blind men are each allowed to touch one part of an elephant and then try to describe what an elephant is. And with only a partial sensory experience to guide any of them, they aren’t able to describe an elephant that any of us would recognize as Loxodonta africana or Elephas maximus.

But this leads us to a question of just what is it to describe an elephant? Those of us with the complete toolbox of senses can call on five dimensions with which to describe an elephant. Although why anyone would try to taste a pachyderm, I can’t imagine. So we paint our five-sensed picture and create the mental imprint of an elephant to match. 

But what is an elephant to someone with only four senses? Imagine creating an internal image something like an elephant if you’ve never seen one. And not only have you never seen one, you’ve never seen anything. Not even the color gray. And that’s where our shared experience breaks down.

You can’t think of an elephant without picturing an elephant. It’s not just that we have access to an input that the blind-from-birth don’t have. They just don’t have the perception. It leads you to questions like “Whose elephant is more representative of an actual elephant?” and “Is my elephant the same as her elephant?” and other deep questions that get philosophers all tingly in their tweed.

I think it’s a socially enlightening point of view to remember that the blind see the world the same way that we see out of our elbow. By trying (and inevitably failing) to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who has ears for feet, or some other such empathic non sequitur, we can start to appreciate the multitude of perspectives that exist on Earth about a great many things. That’s always a Good Thing™.

And for what it’s worth, the elephant doesn’t care a lick about any of this. Which is interesting in its own right.

Extreme Tortoise Close-Up!

Arlo Midgett set up his camera near a tortoise and the old creeper moseyed on over to investigate. I promise you, if you set this to full screen and HD, you’ll never look at a tortoise the same way again.

Instead, you’ll probably look at it like this (I can’t be the only one who immediately thought of The Neverending Story right?!):

Morla and other tortoises are true “ancient ones”. Which made me wonder: Why DO they live so long? The short answer is “because it’s an evolutionary advantage based on their environment and reproductive process.”

The long answer is much more interesting, and can be found here at Slate.

(via EarthSky)

Source: earthsky.org

LOLscience of why cats (and other animals) like stroking

Nature covers a nearly purr-fect neuroscience study that looks at why cats and other animals love to groom each other. Specialized neurons respond to stroking, but not poking, and stimulate pleasure circuits in the brain. Humans might share some of these neurons in our own skin, which explains our fondness for massages, head scratching and other gentle caresses.

In short, why pets like to be pet. 

Source: youtube.com

Meet Ronan, a 3-year-old sea lion that loves disco and the Backstreet Boys, and is the first non-human mammal able to keep the beat to music. 

Previously, birds like parrots (like this parrot, and this parrot, and this parrot, and these parrots) were the prime head-bobbers of nature. And it’s not tied to vocals, like the way that parrots mimic human speech (since sea lions don’t do that). It seems like rhythm is a natural part of biology.

So next time you move, feel the beat in your evolution, man.

(via The Two-Way : NPR)

Source: NPR

If you haven’t seen the new comic at The Oatmeal: “Why the mantis shrimp is my new favorite animal”, then check it out. Because that is one bad mofo crustacean. With fists of fanatical fury and the most advanced vision system on the planet, I feel like the mantis shrimp is just evolution’s warning to us all: “Keep your shit under control, or else I’ll make this thing rhino-sized in a heartbeat.” Radiolab featured this little guy’s amazing vision in an episode on colors last year. And Ed Yong was into mantis shrimp before they were cool, so go check out his great articles about their superpowers.
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If you haven’t seen the new comic at The Oatmeal: “Why the mantis shrimp is my new favorite animal”, then check it out. Because that is one bad mofo crustacean.

With fists of fanatical fury and the most advanced vision system on the planet, I feel like the mantis shrimp is just evolution’s warning to us all: “Keep your shit under control, or else I’ll make this thing rhino-sized in a heartbeat.”

Radiolab featured this little guy’s amazing vision in an episode on colors last year. And Ed Yong was into mantis shrimp before they were cool, so go check out his great articles about their superpowers.

Source: theoatmeal.com