Octopus bocki
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I got a request to help identify this bizarre creature. I’m guessing it’s a slug caterpillar, from the family Limacodidae, although I couldn’t possibly narrow it down further, and could be completely wrong. Whoever was filming it can be heard telling someone not to touch it—which is a good idea. These things shed fine hairs that can cause a painful allergic rash.
It’s kind of cute, anyway.
I think the collective wisdom of the internets has convinced me that it is a puss caterpillar, Megalopyge opercularis.
People, scientists included, are always looking for simple, comprehensible explanations for complex phenomena. It’s so satisfying to be able to easily explain something in a sound bite, and sound bites are so much more easily accepted by an audience than some elaborate, difficult collection of details. For example, we often hear homosexual behavior reduced to being a “choice,” the product of a “gay gene,” a “sin,” or something similarly absolute and irreducible…suggesting that it is part of a diverse spectrum of sexual behaviors with multiple causes and that different individuals are different in their behaviors is almost certainly the more accurate description, but that doesn’t satisfy our need for straight, simple, linear causal mechanisms. This is true of most animal behavior, I think—you just can’t crunch it down to one single agent that drives much of anything.
I thought there was one excellent counter-example, though, one that suggested at least some complex behaviors might be reducible to a discrete source: the mating behavior of Microtus voles. It was such a simple, clean story; new results suggest that it was too clean, and that there’s much more to the behavior than was thought.
Yunnanozoans and Xidazoon…there are some very pretty early Cambrian critters on display at Sinanthropus.
That army of undead cyborg squid-human hybrids idea? It looks like it might be old hat. Owlmirror found an old and rather cryptic
Japanese print of armored warrior cephalopods…and there’s a much, much higher resolution image of the same at that link. I can’t quite make out what they’re fighting, though…an army of dumplings? Meatballs? Who reads Japanese out there?
I have no idea what the cephalopods flying over the city have to do with the ecological message in the small print, but heck, it’s a cool picture anyway.
Maybe it has something to do with octopuses swimming over flooded cities, but they look airborn to me.
Seattle is experiencing a surge of homicides (which are probably not statistically significant in number.) Seattle is also experiencing a surge of squid. Some irresponsible journalists are suggesting these two observations might or might not be linked.
These scurrilous allegations should be addressed by a trustworthy source, like The Typing Octopus. I mean, seriously, the murders are on dry land, with guns. I’d suspect the Sasquatch before I would some disgruntled cephalopod…and even there, the fact that the victims weren’t slammed with hurled tree trunks should let Bigfoot off the hook.
Some light reading, and otherwise…speak your mind in the comments.
The story of the Australian lungfish has made this week’s issue of Nature. Remember, it’s not too late to keep the pressure on.
