The Lemming has no trouble understanding why a human would chase after a kleptomaniac octopus. Humans like their tools, and that camera was a particularly valuable tool.
What an octopus would want with a camera: That is what puzzles the Lemming. It's not as if the octopus could have any use for the camera.
Unless, that is, humans aren't the only ones sharing videos on this planet.
(from Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), via LiveScience.com, used w/o permission)
"...the recently discovered carnivorous harp sponge, Chondrocladia lyra, ... in Monterey Canyon, off the coast of California, at a depth of about 11,500 feet (3,500 meters)...."
" A new carnivore shaped like a candelabra has been spotted in deep ocean waters off California's Monterey Bay.
"The meat-eating species was dubbed the 'harp sponge,' so-called because its structure resembles a harp or lyre turned on its side.
"A team from the Monterey Bay Research Aquarium Institute in Moss Landing, Calif., discovered the sponge in 2000 while exploring with a remotely operated vehicle. The sponges live nearly 2 miles (3.5 kilometers) beneath the ocean's surface...."
The harp sponge probably wouldn't make a good movie monster. Mostly it just sits there, waiting for tiny critters to drift by and get caught in in the upright parts. This carnivorous sponge has dreadful table manners: it digests its prey by wrapping a membrane around it.
You might impress your friends by calling the harp sponge by its scientific name: Chondrocladia lyra. Then again, maybe not. Anyway, "harp sponge" takes less time to say.
Those little things at the bottom aren't roots, by the way. They're called rhizoids, and keep the sponge rooted in place.
Now, if only harp sponges were a hundred feet tall, walked on land, and roared: maybe they'd revive good old-fashioned movies like "Them!," "Tarantula," or "Night of the Lepus." The Lemming would say 'they just don't make movies like that any more: but there's "The Thing" (2011). Special effects have changed a bit, and that's another topic.
The article's video video was a bit on the dry side, but the Lemming enjoyed it. Your experience may vary:
"Scientists on an expedition to sample a deep-sea trench got a surprise when their traps brought back seven giant crustaceans glimpsed only a handful of times in human history.
"The 'supergiant' amphipods are more than 20 times larger than their typical crustacean relatives, which are generally less than a half-inch (1 centimeter) long, and thrive in lakes and oceans around the world. They are sometimes called the 'insects of the sea.'
" 'We pulled up the trap, and lying among the fish were these absolutely massive amphipods, and there was no inkling whatsoever that these things should be there,' said Alan Jamieson, a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and leader of the expedition that turned up the fantastical creatures in November 2011...."
(From Oceanlab, via FoxNews, used w/o permission.)
"An elusive supergiant amphipod, recently plucked from the deep sea. (Oceanlab, University of Aberdeen, UK)"
Oh, wow. That's a big bug. Critter. Amphipod.
It's big, for something with an exoskeleton. Even back in the good old days, when some dragonflies had a two-foot wingspan, that's not small.
Things like this were first discovered in 1899, the article says. That's when someone wrote about them, anyway. They haven't been seen much since: no great surprise, considering where these critters live.
"First Muscles Evolved Earlier" Discovery News (February 17, 2010) "Earth's earliest creatures dragged themselves along like a sea anemone some 565 million years ago, newly found tracks suggest."
"Furrows preserved in 565-million-year-old rocks are now the first evidence that some of Earth's earliest and mysterious living things had muscles to move themselves -- and so were truly animals.
"That means muscles may have evolved earlier and been part of a long evolutionary fuse that led to the so-called 'Cambrian Explosion,' 30 million years later, of the many lineages of marine animals still found in the oceans today.
" 'If you saw (these furrows) in rocks the same age as dinosaurs, you'd say it was something crawling along the sea floor,' said Duncan McIlroy of Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada. 'But when it's this old you have to be very cautious about it.'
"The so-called Ediacarans are the earliest complex organisms before the Cambrian Explosion, and debate continues over what the Ediacarans looked like and even, what they were...."
The article gives a pretty good overview of how the scientists went about determining that what they were looking at was actually the track left by something dragging itself along the ocean floor. They even re-created Precambrian mud and studied tracks left by a sea anemone, a boneless, shell-less critter that makes tracks like the one they found.
As I've written before, this won't help you find a parking place or tell you how to have more fun on the job - unless you plan to be a paleontologist - but I'm fascinated by what we're learning about the world around us. And I think it's possible that you do, too.
"Barnacles"
Life on Australian Seashores, Marine Education Society of Australiasia (MESA)
"Barnacles are most unusual animals. They are arthropods, in the same major group as insects and spiders, and are most closely related to decapod crabs, prawns, lobsters and yabbies.
"Unlike most of their relations, barnacles are usually fixed to a rocky surface. The larvae go through several distinct swimming stages as plankton, before settling into place onto a rock. The juveniles pick their place to settle because they can detect their adults by chemical means...."
The page is a pretty good introduction to barnacles, with links to related pages on the website and a list of books 'for further reading.' This is definitely a page created as an educational tool, by dedicated academicians. Kudos, for keeping a fairly easy-to-read style - and useful illustrations.
One thing you won't find in the diagram of an adult barnacle's anatomy is a nervous system. There's a reason for that: Although barnacles have a central nervous system, it degenerates a bit when they settle down as adults.
I think most of us have known people like that: folks who dropped into a familiar routine after their teens, and don't seem to have done much with their brains after that.
Never could see the appeal in that sort of life, myself: but then, one of my favorite quotes is "There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person." (G. K. Chesterton, The Quotations Page - quoted May 31, 2009 in this blog)
Enough philosophizing.
More, decidedly not light reading, about barnacle brains:
"The octopuses of the genus Grimpoteuthis are also known as "Dumbo Octopuses" from the ear-like fins protruding from the top of their head-like bodies, resembling the ears of Walt Disney's flying elephant. They are benthic creatures, living at extreme depths: 3000-4000 meters, and are some of the rarest of the Octopoda species. They can flush the transparent layer of their skin at will, and are pelagic animals, as with all other cirrate octopuses, and unlike many other incirrate octopuses.
"They hover above the sea floor, searching for worms, bivalves, pelagic copepods, and other crustaceans. They move by pulsing their arms, shooting water through their funnel, or by waving their ear-like fins...."
"Cirrate?" "Benthic??" I'll grant that this isn't the easiest-to-read post you'll ever find.
A rough translation: Dumbo octopi live really deep in the ocean. and have fins.
The dumbo octopus is of the Cirrata suborder of octopi. From the writeup on the other side of that link, I gather that "cirrata" means "finned" - in this case.
"Pelagic" means "relating to or occurring or living in or frequenting the open ocean". (Princeton's WordNet)
Just about every article on these deep-sea octopi say that those fins look like ears. I see what they mean: but they're more like wings.
This post does a pretty good job of describing these strange and - I think - beautiful creatures. From the looks of it, the blogger picked up quite a bit of the information at BBC's "Dumbo octopus" page.
"This white octopus was filmed with a high-definition underwater video camera at 6600 feet depth 200 miles off the coast of Oregon in September 2005 as part of the...."
An octopus - Grimpoteuthis bathynectes - swimming. Set to music. Maybe that'll help more people see the beauty and grace of these creatures. This YouTube video seems to be derived from "Octopus Ballet," WUTV, University of Wisconsin.
"A dumbo octopus visited the Microbial observatory for Fe-oxidizing bacteria at Loihi Seamount Hawaii"
No music with this one: but you see the creature from a different angle.
"Graceful?" "Beautiful?!" "That?!!"
I'll grant that the Dumbo octopus isn't as cute and cuddly-looking as the creature's namesake. You may think they look more like Cthulhu than anything that belongs in this universe.
I'll grant that octopi, along with quite a few other marine creatures, don't 'look right,' from our land-living point of view. A - thing - with all-too-human-appearing eyes, a body that looks like a floppy head, and tentacles where the mouth should be (the mouth's there, actually, in the middle of them) isn't the sort of creature that makes for a good plush toy model. Title character in a horror story? yes. Cute? No.
But I also see creatures that move with wonderful grace through the water that's their home.
One more thing: I've heard that octopi don't make very good pets. They get out of their tanks easily, and can live in air for a while.
Pleasant dreams.
Not-exactly-related post about another strange critter:
"Recreational divers are essentially underwater sightseers. Just like sightseers on land, they take in the scenery and observe 'the locals' going about their business. In this case, of course, the locals are the critters that inhabit the reef....
"...At least we knew Brutus [a barracuda] was there -- really, you couldn't miss him! But sometimes creatures in the sea watch or even stalk divers while the diver is oblivious to their presence. As an example, we once posted a photo of a sneaky shark approaching a diver from behind, while the diver -- engrossed in what he was photographing -- remained unaware of the shark. Based on our own experiences, we think scenarios like that happen very often...."
There's quite a bit more - anecdotes and a discussion of why divers may not be all that aware of their surroundings - ending with this bit of good advice:
"...What to do? When you are diving, we suggest that you periodically glance up, and down, and look over your shoulder to see who or what may be watching you."
There's a photo with the article - but not of the shark and the diver.UPDATE (January 26, 2010)
"The old idiom "eyes in the back of your head" holds somewhat true for scalloped hammerhead and bonnethead sharks, according to new research that found these sharks possess a 360 degree field of vision. Virtually nothing can escape their view.
"The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, also helps to explain why hammerhead sharks have such unusual shaped heads...."
The researchers used pickups that detected electrical activity in the shark's eyes. And detected activity in a full 360° range. Those critters can, literally, see what's directly behind their heads.
I was glad to see that the article said "helps to explain why hammerhead sharks have such unusual shaped heads...." [emphasis mine]
I don't doubt that having full-circle vision helps explain their odd head shape, but there's probably more to the function these odd-looking fish's heads. It's not entirely unreasonable to think that they've got 'stretched' heads to help them pick up variations in Earth's magnetic field.
The excerpt from a learned periodical is about as accurate as I've come to expect. The "unique sensory capabilities of the hammerhead" are shared by the platypus and other critters, but never mind that.
The point is that hammerhead sharks are one of the creatures that are able to sense electric fields, and apparently use this for navigation - and quite possibly other purposes.
"...Knowing the unique sensory capabilities of the hammerhead (it detects faint bioelectric fields, which help it find hidden prey), we later surveyed the geomagnetic field around the seamount and discovered that the paths of the sharks coincided with magnetic valleys (intensity minimums) and ridges (intensity maximums) leading away from El Bajo EspÃritu Santo like spokes from a hub. These magnetic traces were likely produced by the flow of magnetite-impregnated basalts from the seamount during volcanic eruptions. Taken together, the evidence suggests that this predator, unlike some others, does not congregate at the seamount because it is a biotic hotspot, but because the area provides a network of 'paths' that enables it to find a constellation of productive feeding grounds in the surrounding waters..."
"It sounds like a classic horror story—eyeless, mouthless worms lurk in the dark, settling onto dead animals and sending out green "roots" to devour their bones. In fact, such worms do exist in the deep sea. They were first discovered in 2002 by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), who were using a robot submarine to explore Monterey Canyon. But that wasn't the end of the story. After 'planting' several dead whales on the seafloor, a team of biologists recently announced that as many as 15 different species of boneworms may live in Monterey Bay alone."
Depending on how fast boneworm DNA mutates, this sort of creature may have emerged 45,000,000 years ago, around the time that the first large whales swam the open ocean. Or, boneworms may go back 130,000,000 years: when they could have lived on bones of large oceanic contemporaries of the dinosaurs.
Boneworms don't have the cute and cuddly appeal of koalas, or even weasels. But I think they're another fascinating example of how creatures live and grow: in this case, in very unfamiliar ways.
"Some truly strange creatures can be found on the ocean seafloor, and boneworms are among the most bizarre — they have no eyes or mouth and feast on the bones of dead whale carcasses.
"Now scientists have identified even more species of this recently discovered worm, and their analysis reveals additional clues to when the creatures first evolved.
"Boneworms, belonging to the genus Osedax, were first discovered back in 2002 off the coast of California in an underwater valley called the Monterey Canyon. Since then, the researchers that made the find have been uncovering details about the life cycle and eating habits of these worms. ..."
They're animals: a kind of worm, apparently. But in their adult form they look - and act - like tiny trees, with 'roots' that (presumably) take in nutrients with the help of bacteria, and 'branches' that take in oxygen. Also, by the time they're trees, boneworms are all female. The larvae are male - and stay that way if they land on a female.
Boneworms have a life cycle that isn't very much like that of animals we're more familiar with, like dogs and cockroaches.
We've only known about these oceanic oddities for about seven years, so I expect that there will be fewer 'presumablies' in a few more years. Like how many species there are. The first estimate was five species. Then, according to the LiveScience article, researchers started analyzing boneworm DNA and found that there were 12 species. The MBARI press release said "as many as 15 different species of boneworms may live in Monterey Bay alone." - So my guess is that there are a whole lot more that haven't been found and cataloged yet. Particularly since boneworms have been found off Japan, across the Pacific from Monterey Bay, and Sweden, in the northeast Atlantic Ocean.
Most (known) boneworm adults live on the surface of bones, but at least one species lives on the seafloor, near whale bones.
"At first, New Hampshire lobsterman Bill Marconi thought he had caught a shiny blue beer can in his trap. It turns out it was a rare, cobalt-blue lobster. The 52-year-old lobsterman was out hauling 400 traps with his son Wednesday when he snared the 1 1/2-pound lobster in between his dock and the Isle of Shoals, about six miles off the coast...."
That's an odd lobster, but they do show up now and again. The AP article quotes a newspaper, saying that 1 in 5,000,000 lobsters is blue.
It's not that there's something wrong with the blue lobsters - it's that they're better at metabolizing astaxanthin. Never heard of astaxanthin? You're not alone. It's an antioxidant that's in some algae. And, before these odd lobsters get at it, it's red.
And, since it's an antioxidant, it's astaxanthin has its own website. Looks like antioxidants are still fairly hot in the health-food circle. Sort of like spinach was, back in the glory days of Popeye.
Astaxanthin might - or might not - help with high cholesterol, heart disease and diabetes. The Mayo Clinic website has some information about the stuff, in its discussion of Red yeast rice (Monascus purpureus)" - astaxanthin shows up under "Synonyms," a page later.
Back to that New Hampshire lobster: the article isn't very long, but shows what can happen when genetics and fishing meet. Related post:
"Aquarium staff have unearthed a 'giant sea' worm that was attacking coral reef and prize fish.
"The 4ft long monster, named Barry, had launched a sustained attack on the reef in a display tank at Newquay's Blue Reef Aquarium over recent months.
"Workers at the Cornwall-based attraction had been left scratching their heads as to why the coral had been left devastated and - in some cases - cut in half...."
The article calls Barry a "four-foot polychaete worm" - which is accurate enough, but doesn't narrow things down all that much. There are thousands of species of polychaete worms.
Polychaete means "means 'many-bristled'" - and they're found around the world. Aside from the bristles, this sort of worm has an unusually well-developed head. (Guide to the Marine Zooplankton of south eastern Australia) And, in the case of Barry's sort of polychaete worm, quite effective jaws.
The Mail Online article is fairly light reading, intended as much to entertain as to inform: but it's a reasonably good writeup of how Barry was found - and his current living accommodations.
More:
"Polychaete Larva" Guide to the Marine Zooplankton of south eastern Australia, Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and Arts, Australian Antarctic Division, Australian Government
"Something big and strange is floating through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow.
"Hunters from Wainwright first started noticing the stuff sometime probably early last week. It's thick and dark and 'gooey' and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters, according to Gordon Brower with the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department.
"Brower and other borough officials, joined by the U.S. Coast Guard, flew out to Wainwright to investigate. The agencies found 'globs' of the stuff floating miles offshore Friday and collected samples for testing...."
Samples of the blob have been sent to a lab for testing, but it seems clear that it's not oil: and it's not anything that people have seen in the area. At least, not recently.
The North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department's Brower have a pretty good description of it: "...'From the air it looks brownish with some sheen, but when you get close and put it up on the ice and in the bucket, it's kind of blackish stuff ... (and) has hairy strands on it.'..."
If this were a 1950s low-budget science fiction movie, I'd know what it was, and I'm pretty sure that some people today will jump to conclusions. My guess is that it's natural, nothing new, but not all that common.
Far from 'boring,' my expectation is that whatever this blob is might be a new sort of creature - or maybe the world's biggest hairball.
"Scientists have discovered what may be the least inhabited place in the ocean.
"The seafloor sediments in the middle of the South Pacific have fewer living cells than anywhere else measured, a new study found.
"Oceanographer Steven D'Hondt of the University of Rhode Island and colleagues took a boat out to the middle of the ocean and collected cores, or cylindrical samples of sediment, from the bottom of the sea about 2.5 to 3.7 miles (4 to 6 km) deep.
"They found about 1,000 living cells in each cubic centimeter of sediment — a tally that is roughly 1,000 times less than in other seafloor sediments...."
Before this, seafloor sediment samples had been taken fairly close to shore, where the water moved round, and there was a reasonable supply of nutrients. These samples were taken in a gyre in the South Pacific, where the water is relatively calm and the nutrients thinly spread.
"...The sparse microbes the scientists discovered appeared to be partially subsisting on hydrogen atoms released when radioactive elements at the bottom of the ocean decayed and broke apart water molecules.
"This somewhat rare process produces only small amounts of food. The other half of the microbes' diet comes from organic matter that drifts from the surface down to the depths of the ocean...."
If organisms can live on nothing but radioactive decay and the odd bit of organic debris, the damp sands of Mars might hold life: and we might find little critters in Europa and elsewhere.Related posts, at
"A robotic submarine named Nereus has become the third craft in history to reach the deepest part of the world's oceans, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean.
"The dive to Challenger Deep, an abyss within the Mariana Trench that reaches 11,000 metres beneath the waves, was completed on 31 May by a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Massachussetts, US...."
Nereus is the third vehicle to intentionally visit the Challenger Deep, a particularly deep part of the Mariana Trench. The first was the U. S. bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960, the second was the Japanese robot Kaiko, in 1995.
That photo is the only one released so far from the Nereus descent. It shows part of the robot submersible, at the bottom of Challenger Deep.
Quite a lot has happened since Kaiko was designed. One feature of Nereus that its makers discuss is its tether-free operation. Without a cable running up to the surface - a matter of miles - Nereus has much greater mobility, they say.
"The 'great' Blue Hole on Lighthouse Reef Atoll is a popular diving spot off the coast of Belize. Visible in a flyover, the hole is about 1,000 feet in diameter and 412 feet deep. The late Jacques Cousteau and a filming crew explored the underwater cave whose roof collapsed about 10,000 years ago...."
"[Note: Last week we saw some interesting speculation that Atlantis had been found in Google Earth. As much as we'd love for that to be the case, there is a scientific explanation for the odd markings found on the seafloor. We've invited two of the scientists who gathered the data that appears in Google Earth to answer some questions that came up. - Ed.]
"Since the launch of Ocean in Google Earth, millions of people have started to explore the ocean, and many have been surprised by their discoveries...."
This is the image that got in the news last week:
(from the Official Google Blog, used w/o permission)
The idea that it's Atlantis is what was in the articles I saw. Google reports that farms run by space aliens was another explanation.
Turns out, those odd marks are artificial after all. They're called "ship tracks." What we're looking at are marks left in the mapping data, showing where the mapping ships went.
Google goes into more detail about it.
Of course, space aliens still might be involved: or Elvis. Somehow, though, I doubt it.
"A giant Pacific octopus called Mavis has helped researchers to prove that the one thing everyone knows about the creatures is wrong...."
"...Octopuses are among the most intelligent of marine creatures and can learn to open jam jars and manipulate small objects such as the Rubik’s Cube – although, so far as is known, none has yet succeeded in solving the puzzle...."
I wonder: has anyone checked, to see if octopuses see colors the same way we do?
"It's the basement apartment like no other. Life has been found 1.6 kilometres beneath the sea floor, at temperatures reaching 100 °C.
"The discovery marks the deepest living cells ever to be found beneath the sea floor. Bacteria have been found deeper underneath the continents, but there they are rare. In comparison, the rocks beneath the sea appear to be teeming with life.
"John Parkes, a geobiologist at the University of Cardiff, UK, hopes his team's discovery might one day help find life on other planets. He says it might even redefine what we understand as life, and, bizarrely, what we understand by 'age'...."
This article discusses a study of living organisms under the ocean. Not deep in the ocean: deep in the sediment under the ocean.
"The Right Blue Recounting a lifetime of ocean devotion" - a multi-author blog that's "a memoir of those thousands of dives -- with pictures!"
Today's post, "What a wreck!" takes a personal approach to the experience of diving in shipwrecks: 'real' ones, and those created by scuttling ships to provide habitats for reef-dwellers and diving spots for people.
There's some deep philosophizing in that post.
Sorry. That's the last play on words I'll make. Today. In this blog.
Whether you call it trafficking in persons, human trafficking, or slavery, buying and selling people isn't nice. And, in quite a few cou...
Today's News! Some of it, anyway
Actually, some of yesterday's news may be here. Or maybe last week's. The software and science stuff might still be interesting, though. Or not. The Lemming thinks it's interesting: Your experience may vary.
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