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
This link is NSFW or for anyone who knows anything about octopus anatomy—it’s a couple of nudes with dangerously draped octopuses. I don’t mind the nudity but I cringe inside at the thought of where those beaks are.
Since everyone on the planet is sending me this, I’d better post it. Besides, it’s pretty!
You have to see the mascot for Orangina, some fruity drink, to believe it. She’s kind of hot in a peculiarly cephalopod/tetrapod hybrid way, but then…the video. Oh. My. Non-existent. God. Sex and furries. She gives a lap-dance to a bear-man and squeezes orange juice out of her mammaries.
My brain is scarred. I don’t think I could ever drink Orangina without thoughts of bestiality frolicking unbidden through my head.
(No thanks to Jim Lippard for contaminating my brain with this stuff.)
I’m disappointed in Cory Doctorow. Look at the caption he put on this image:
I’m pretty taken with the sculptural work of Rune Olsen, which revels in a kind of twisting, arching form that lodges somewhere between titillating and disgusting.
I looked all over…so where’s the ‘disgusting’?
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.
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.
I’ve been tagged with a HalloMeme, and am expected to describe an ocan-themed scary movie. At least this one is easy. I immediately thought of one movie that traumatized me deeply as a child. It was…
Adam Cuerden sent along this old political cartoon that doesn’t really make much sense to me. Are we supposed to sympathise with William Gladstone? He’s the guy with a big knife trying to murder the lovely creature who just wants to cling to his rock and be left alone. Tattooing his tentacles with the the words “rebellion,” “lawlessness,” “outrage,” “sedition,” etc. doesn’t change the action we’re witnessing.
