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?
No? Maybe it’s because you’ve only seen them illustrated like this:
Anthony K says
Wait, what? Sea monkeys are brine shrimp. That looks (to my untrained eye) to be a copepod.
Anthony K says
Sorry, nope, I’m wrong.
Anthony K says
So, is that a nauplius?
Anthony K says
Anyway, cool camera. I’ll, just, uh, let myself out.
PZ Myers 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!
Anthony K says
Aww, cute! Happy!
What? That’s awful!
Aww, cute li’l babies gettin’ fed!
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.
David Marjanović says
Frankly, I couldn’t do it.
PZ does it so we don’t have to.
chigau (違う) says
Shopped!
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!
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.
PZ Myers 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.
NitricAcid says
I think I actually bought those once when I was a kid. They never hatched.
chigau (違う) says
oooh
poop porn
Sili says
If only you could have gotten a Leica Rangefinder, the image wouldn’t look so blurry.
Sili says
There’s an audience for that. Could help you fund your research.
Naked Bunny with a Whip says
So that’s what a middle class white family looks like under a microscope!
Al Dente says
So you’re talking pictures of ex-brine shrimp.
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.
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.
Hortan says
You’ve been scammed, that’s no sea monkey..
steve oberski says
You could be onto something big here, there may be some overlap with the Bigfoot erotica crowd.
Lyn M: ADM MinTruthiness says
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.
Lithified Detritus says
I didn’t come from no Sea-Monkey.
Avo, also nigelTheBold 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
CaitieCat, getaway driver 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!
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.
Tony! The Fucking Queer Shoop! says
Anthony:
Never tried that.
I did try
dissectingdiagramming a sentence years ago. Failed miserably.chigau (違う) says
Avo
Happy Birthday!!
You young sprout!
knowknot says
It’s a baby Predator! Cute! Are those the remnants of an amoeba’s spine to the left?
birgerjohansson says
South Park dedicated a whole episode to this. It was pretty gross.