New camera day!


Oh, boy, my new lab toy arrived today: a ProgRes C3. I did a quick setup and took a few uncalibrated photomicrographs, but I am resisting the temptation to play with it all weekend — I want my students to tinker first.

OK, one picture. Recognize it?

artemia

No? Maybe it’s because you’ve only seen them illustrated like this:

seamonkey

Comments

  1. Anthony K says

    Wait, what? Sea monkeys are brine shrimp. That looks (to my untrained eye) to be a copepod.

  2. says

    Yes, nauplius larva. It just hatched yesterday, so it hasn’t had time to grow into an adult. And it never will: the baby brine shrimp all get fed to the zebrafish! Bwahahahahahaha!

  3. Anthony K says

    It just hatched yesterday, so it hasn’t had time to grow into an adult.

    Aww, cute! Happy!

    And it never will:

    What? That’s awful!

    the baby brine shrimp all get fed

    Aww, cute li’l babies gettin’ fed!

    to the zebrafish!

    Oh no! [Starts crying.]

    Developmental biology is an emotional rollercoaster. I don’t know how you deal with it.

    This is why I do population stuff. All numbers, for the most part.

  4. David Marjanović says

    Developmental biology is an emotional rollercoaster. I don’t know how you deal with it.

    Frankly, I couldn’t do it.

    PZ does it so we don’t have to.

  5. Trebuchet says

    @Anthony K: It gets worse. After they eat the shrimp, PZ is going to make poor innocent grad students kill the fish and dissect them, documenting each step with pictures for PZ’s sick atheist pleasure!

  6. Anthony K says

    Biology is the worst. I once dissected a seven, and ended up with a hyphen and a virgule. I lost the pieces. Now I have to do all my math in base-9.

    Wait, I think I found that missing hyphen.

  7. says

    Hah! Worse! The fish haven’t been laying eggs lately — it’s very annoying — so every morning the students sort through little piles of fish poop, the product of their digestion. So most of what we’ve got are pictures of fish feces right now.

  8. NitricAcid says

    I think I actually bought those once when I was a kid. They never hatched.

  9. Sili says

    If only you could have gotten a Leica Rangefinder, the image wouldn’t look so blurry.

  10. Sili says

    So most of what we’ve got are pictures of fish feces right now.

    There’s an audience for that. Could help you fund your research.

  11. Al Dente says

    So most of what we’ve got are pictures of fish feces right now.

    So you’re talking pictures of ex-brine shrimp.

  12. gillt says

    I just saw fundulus (aka mummichogs) eggs under the scope for the first time today. They’re covered in oil droplets. So weird.

  13. boygenius says

    That Sea-Monkey® ad is a marvel of marketing. Even down to the clip-out order form, they’re sellin’.

    I’d had my Sea-Monkey® colony thriving for a while, and one day my mom told me that they were actually brine shrimp.

    They didn’t taste like shrimp.

  14. steve oberski says

    So most of what we’ve got are pictures of fish feces right now.

    You could be onto something big here, there may be some overlap with the Bigfoot erotica crowd.

  15. Lyn M: ADM MinTruthiness says

    OK, one picture. Recognize it?

    I know this one! I see it! Jesus standing near the top of the picture in a yellow robe! There’s even a halo, slipped down, but whatever.

  16. says

    Awww. Y’all are going for the old-timey nostalgia thing on my 47th birthday. How fucking sweet.

    Really, though, I saw the ad and I thought, “I REMEMBER THOSE!” So I reckon I was dating myself.

    Nobody else will.*

     

    * Rimshot

  17. says

    So…wait, doesn’t this mean we finally have a picture of the elusive aquatic ape?

    Isn’t that what a sea monkey is?

    PZed! You’ve done it! You’ve found the soggy-primate missing link!

  18. Larry says

    That’s a nice camera you got there, Professor. Be a shame if the PETA people knew what you’re doing with them sea monkey people.

  19. knowknot says

    It’s a baby Predator! Cute! Are those the remnants of an amoeba’s spine to the left?