Jellyfish gettin’ it on, baby

This is too much verisimilitude. The movie below is of the mating behavior of the jellyfish Carybdea sivickisi, and the first thing you’ll notice is that the scientists have set it to good old classic porn music.

The second thing you’ll notice, that I found annoying, is that they used too high a power objective to film it, so everything is jerking everywhere and none of the participants stay in the field of view for any length of time. Why is it that porn is afflicted with so many gynecological close-ups? Come on, set the mood, show us whole individuals instead of fragmented zooms of body parts.

Blog monkey

Blog monkey

Here’s an interesting strategy for raising money for research: Marc van Roosmalen is asking for internet donations to fund his work on Amazon primates. He’s not trying to raise much — his goal is $31,000 — and it’s a good cause. There’s also a prize! He’ll name a newly discovered monkey after the blogosphere, calling it Lagothrix blogii, the blog monkey. It will invite the obvious jokes about monkeys typing, but hey, it’s a cute monkey.