Sepia officinalis
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
Last August, when I was at the Sci Foo camp, Paul Sereno brought along the skull of one of his latest discoveries…and whoa, is it ever a weird one. This is Nigersaurus taqueti, an herbivorous dinosaur with specializations for ground-level grazing. Look at this picture; in reality, it’s even more striking.
Those jaws and teeth—they are so neatly squared off and flat-edged. In addition, the skull itself on the spinal column is turned habitually downward. This is a creature that kept its face pressed to the ground as it nibbled its way across the landscape.
Another feature that was apparent is that the skull is awesomely light — it’s mostly empty spaces with a delicate webwork of bony struts holding it together. It’s so specialized it’s almost comical, and you can imagine something like this appearing on the Flintstones as a lawn mower or hedge trimmer.
Bora has more, and you can read the original on PLoS.
Sereno PC, Wilson JA, Witmer LM, Whitlock JA, Maga A, et al. (2007) Structural Extremes in a Cretaceous Dinosaur. PLoS ONE 2(11): e1230. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001230
I was sent this story of Russian workers in Chelyabinsk discovering a 5-foot long monster prehistoric fish that attacked them and that they had to kill with their equipment. Does this look like a horrible monster to you? Does it even look like a fish?
I’m off at this meeting and neglecting the site a bit, so when you’ve got little time and you want something cute to make everyone go “awww,” what do you do? Find a picture of a cuttlefish, of course.
If you are wondering who that little guy is on my shoulder, you need to be enlightened. Of course they’re beautiful. I keep a model right next to my spring-loaded squid toy.
So you want a closeup?
A friend of mine has a badger preoccupation. It was his expertise I consulted for last week’s blurb on badger culling. Between speaking with him and trying to plan a mad dash to Madison for its famous Halloween party, I’ve had badgers on the brain all week, so for this week’s post, I decided to couple “badger” and “neurobiology” in a literature search.
I found a delightful 2001 article on “Daily Activity Budgets of the Taiwan Ferret Badger (Melogale moschata subaurantiaca) in Captivity” by Kurtis Jai-Chyi Pei. It turns out ferret badgers spend most of their awake time traveling about followed by eating, drinking, playing and “staying alert.” But don’t give a ferret badger cause to think unfavorably upon you. The article goes on the describe how “…the noxious anal secretion is the most apparent weapon of the ferret badger.” This works best on mammals; apparently if you’re a bird of prey it isn’t so bad.
The point is… I want to be a ferret badger. Besides avoiding predation and competing for mates etc., it sounds like my kind of fun. We humans do too many activities that make us unhappy. I mean, what would a badger analysis of my activity budget look like?
Individual spends 33% sleeping, 15% eating/drink, 5% feigning disinterest in prospective mates, 5% time running in place, inordinate amount of time depleting natural resources, and somewhat less time complaining about the depletion of natural resources. For the remainder of active time, individual toils at some task or another the direct benefit of which is not apparent at this time. There is a curious lack of play exhibited– a behavior that has myriad benefits (Bandit and Thumper, 1996).
I think one of these days I’m going to relax and have myself a ferret badger day. If anyone nags me…POW. I’ll hit ’em with the noxious secretions.
This is pretty nifty: it’s a nine-tentacled octopus. Count ’em!
If I may be so bold as to remind you all of the basics of cephalopod development and evolution, the primitive condition in cephalopods is to form ten arms; in the octopods, one pair is secondarily lost by some unidentified suppression in development. It’s not too surprising that there would be some low frequency of re-expression of members of the fifth and normally missing pair — and the article mentions that the Akashi Seafood Council reports that they see this once in every 20 years or so.
They should keep an eye open for these kinds of developmental abnormalities — they can be an indicator of stressors in the environment if the frequency starts to rise.
