All right, the last few times I’ve done this, I’ve hit you with concentrated cuteness. Now, though, it’s a shotgun-blast of multiple qualities: cute, colorful, squishy, stingie, and slimy, all the things we look for in an adorable critter. Nudibranchs!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Where’s “covered with fur” and “purrs” in this list of adorable critter attributes?
Oh how cute, it’s covered in snot.
Glen Davidson
And of course the always horrible National Geographic narrators.
SLUGS! Why did it have to be slugs?!
What about “monstrously ravenous”?
Does the snot inhibit firing of the nematocysts? (Could be useful info.) How are the nematocysts separated out from the rest of the eaten tissue? How weird are the immunological systems of creatures that can incorporate alien species’ tissues?
Very, very cool. Cute? not so’s you’d notice… but who cares?
Whoops. Totally screwed up blockquote. That was in response to culchpile’s comment: Does the snot inhibit firing of the nematocysts? (Could be useful info.)
And here I was all set to complain if there was no Glaucus Atlanticus in the vid.
‘Tis Himself:
What? That wasn’t in there after evil, wicked, and stingy? I’ll have to read that again.
Doc Myers:
Your obsession with Jerry Coyne’s brilliant “Caturday” innovation is becoming an… er, obsession.
And truly Sir, do you really expect the average onlooker to derive even a whisker of warmth from your peculiar, multi-limbed denizens of the dark, cold, and slimy ocean depths?
Please cease and desist. Professor Coyne has trouble enough sorting through hundreds of cute and cuddly cat-capture categories without your continual Cephalopodian crusade contaminating the clockworks.
Hissssssss…
Iono. That description fits my cat to a t.
Is this really all that important? Cats and nudibranchs share a recent common ancestor between 780 and 910 million years ago. Cat accommodationism isn’t so bad. http://wp.me/pBznu-6E
You had me at “nudi”.
I love nudibranchs. When I was doing my PhD research, we collected a number of ascidians and placed them in an aquarium. After a day or so, I noticed that a nudibranch, Hermissinda crassicornis, had come along for the ride – he/she was a gorgeous little specimen. A week later, Hermy was about twice as big and a whole lot of the colonial ascidians were missing. That’s when I discovered what Hermy ate.
And this was chemistry research – I always thought it was great that I could visit Bodega Bay for my research while my compatriots were trapped in their labs synthesizing something or other.
Sili
If there was something in there about being a begging machine, it would fit my cat as well.
When swimming, I’d rather not run into a Man o’War.
And I most definitely don’t want the honour of meeting something which attacks Man o’War with impunity.
That first one looks like something from the Muppet Show!
(If that was addressed in the video, I’m sorry, but I just watched the clip without sound so I wouldn’t know.)
@johnberg, #15
Did either the nudibranchs or the ascidians have interesting chemical constituents, and did the former absorb them from the latter?
There was an attempt to confuse by switching from the pelagic Glaucus to some brown weed-habitant, but if one assumes that both of them do the nematocyst-recycling trick, it wasn’t actively misleading.
Glaucus would be great on an album cover – something early 70s and trippy, just hovering in space (same colour scheme as Tubular Bells, with a bit of Floyd’s Animals thrown in, or the Nirvana cover with the waterbaby).
But not nomming a tentacle, that would be unsuitable.