]]> http://sciencehax.com/2010/06/bird-plays-hide-and-seek-with-sparrowhawk/feed/ 0 http://sciencehax.com/2010/03/when-worms-attack-your-car/ http://sciencehax.com/2010/03/when-worms-attack-your-car/#comments Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:46:25 +0000 Admin http://sciencehax.com/?p=1150 If you ever wondered how it looks like when your car is transformed into soil then, you could find some answers to your questions here.

I am sure that unfortunate owners of those cars were very surprised when they came back after a few days and found their cars almost transformed into soil by a bunch of weird worms. Next time they will care more where they left their car and how long

An examination of a fungus that is found in the ancient dung and preserved in lake sediments has helped build a picture of what happened to the beasts.The study sheds light on the ecological consequences of the extinction and the role that humans may have played in it.Researchers describe this development in the journal Science.

The study was led by Jacquelyn Gill from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the US.

She and her colleagues studied the Sporormiella fungal spores contained in the sediment deep within the bed of Appleman Lake in Indiana.

Many very large mammals including mammoths, mastodons and ground sloths inhabited forests in this area of North America about 20,000 years ago.

Sporormiella produces spores in the dung of large herbivores. These are then preserved in the layers of mud and can provide an index of the number of these great animals, or megafauna, that roamed the environment at a particular time.

“Sediment cores are much like ice cores, except with lake mud,” explained Ms Gill. “The spores [and other materials] settle out into the lake mud and get buried over time.”

She and her team simply counted the pollen, charcoal and Sporormiella in these layers of mud, tracking the timescale of ancient environmental changes.

Their results showed a slow decline in megafauna that began about 15,000 years ago and appeared to last for about 1,000 years.

This discovery rules out one idea that the extinction might have been caused by an extraterrestrial object striking Earth 13,000 years ago.

The scientists also spotted signals of major environmental changes around the time of the extinction.

“This study is exciting because we’re getting some solid data about the ecological consequences of the removal of these animals,” said Ms Gill.

“After their decline we see an increase in the more warm-adapted deciduous trees, and an increase in charcoal [which means there was] an increase in the number of forest fires.

“So we can see that the forest is reassembling following the extinction.”

Human or environmen

The study also shows that the decline began about 1,000 years before the Clovis period – when the archaeological record shows that humans were making stone tools designed specifically to hunt large animals.

Prior to this discovery, some scientists believed that Clovis people hunted the animals to extinction.

But Professor Christopher Johnson from James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, said the study still supports the hypothesis that humans were primarily responsible for the mammals’ decline.

Professor Johnson was not involved in the study but wrote an accompanying article in the same issue of Science, outlining its significance.

He wrote: “If people were responsible… they must have been pre-Clovis settlers.

“The existence of such people has been controversial, but archaeological evidence is slowly coming to light.”

Ms Gill commented: “We can’t resolve the climate versus humans debate but we have eliminated one of the main hypotheses for each camp.”

She added that there were “modern conservation implications” to the study.

“We know the large herbivores on the landscape today are some of the most threatened,” she said.

“And we’re starting to learn that they’re ecological keystones. They’re not just charismatic, they might also be ecologically significant.”

Professor Johnson told BBC News: “If we want to understand the history of ecosystems across the planet we really need to understand the effects of megafaunal extinction.” Source:  BBC

Arownas are carnivorous, often being specialized surface feeders. They are excellent jumpers it has been reported that species have been seen leaping more than 2 metres from the water surface to pick off insects and birds from overhanging branches. Arowanas have been rumored to capture prey as large as low flying bats and small birds. All species are large, and the arapaima is one of the world’s largest freshwater fish, at 2.5 metres in length. Arowana typically grow to around 30cm.

Arowanas species exhibit extensive parental care. They build nests and protect the young after they hatch. Some species are mouth brooders, the parents holding sometimes hundreds of eggs in their mouths. The young may make several tentative trips outside the parent’s mouth to investigate the surroundings before leaving permanently. Arowanas tend to merge in groups of five to eight any fewer may show an excess of dominance and aggression.

For the Chinese and those of related cultures, the dragon is a symbol of good luck and prosperity. In the eyes of the Chinese, the dragon fish has the appearance and majesty of the Chinese Dragon, especially the large scales and barbels.

Arowanas are also used for feng shui to bring good luck. As per the feng shui belief Arowanas are believed to possess capabilities to distinguish between Enemy and a well-wisher. It is believed that if the Arowanas fish in aquarium shows aggressiveness the visitor to house is an enemy and if the fish remains calm the visitor should be a well-wisher.

Several distinct, naturally occurring colour varieties are recognised, each found in a specific geographic region.

The green is the most common variety, found in Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia.

The silver Asian is considered part of the green variety by some. It has two subvarieties, the “grey tail silver” or “Pinoh arowana,” and the “yellow tail silver,” each found in a different part of the island of Borneo in Indonesia.

The red-tailed golden is found in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. Mature red-tailed golden arowanas have brilliant metallic gold lateral scales, bellies, gills cover and pectoral and pelvic fin membranes, although the back is dark. In juveniles the areas destined to develop golden colour start out metallic silver

The gold crossback, blue Malayan, or Bukit Merah blue is native to the state of Pahang and Bukit Merah area in Perak, Malaysia.

The red, super red, blood red, or chili redis known only from the upper part of the Kapuas River in western Borneo, Indonesia.

After years of study, the researchers have begun to piece together the bizarre story of the boneworms, all of which are in the genus Osedax. The worms start out as microscopic larvae, drifting through the darkness of the deep sea. At some point they encounter a large dead animal on the seafloor. It may be a whale, an elephant seal, or even the carcass of a cow that washed out to sea during a storm. Following chemical cues, the tiny larvae settle down onto the bones of the dead animal.

Once settled, the boneworms grow quickly, like weeds after a rain. One end of each worm develops feathery palps, which extract oxygen from seawater. The other end of the worm develops root-like appendages that grow down into the bone. Bacteria within these roots are believed to digest proteins and perhaps lipids within the bones, providing nutrition for the worms.

Soon the worms become sexually mature. Strangely enough, they all become females. Additional microscopic larvae continue to settle in the area. Some of these larvae land on the palps of the female worms. These develop into male worms. But they never grow large enough to be seen by the naked eye. Somehow these microscopic male worms find their way into the tube that surrounds the female’s body. Dozens of them share this space, not eating at all, but releasing sperm that fertilize the female’s eggs. Eventually the female worm sends thousands of fertilized eggs out into the surrounding water, and the cycle begins again.

Dr. Robert Vrijenhoek, an evolutionary biologist at MBARI, has been fascinated with these worms ever since he and his colleagues first discovered their unusual lifestyles and bizarre reproductive habits. Vrijenhoek has been trying to find out how widespread and genetically diverse these worms are. He would also like to know how they manage to find and colonize the bones of dead whales in the vast, pitch-black expanse of the deep seafloor.

Between 2004 and 2008, Vrijenhoek’s research team towed five dead whales off of Monterey Bay beaches and sank them at different depths within Monterey Canyon. Every few months, coauthor Shannon Johnson and others on the team would send one of MBARI’s remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) down to study the worms and other animals that had colonized the whale carcasses.

To their surprise, the different whale carcasses yielded different types of boneworms. One whale carcass hosted three or four different types of worms. After examining all of the worms, coauthor Greg Rouse concluded that most of them were entirely new to science. The researchers also discovered that the worms would colonize cow-bones placed on the seafloor, which showed that the worms were not limited to feeding on dead whales.

In their recent paper in the journal BMC Biology, Vrijenhoek and his coauthors describe the results of extensive DNA analyses on all the different types of Osedax worms that have been discovered so far (including two species found off Sweden and Japan). This work suggests that these worms could belong to as many as 17 different species, most of which have yet to be named. None of the worms appear to interbreed, despite the fact that some of them grow side by side.

Based on their appearance and similarities in their DNA, the researchers divided the boneworms into several groups. Some of the worms have feathery palps, which may be red, pink, striped, or even greenish in color. Others have bare palps. One type of boneworm has no palps at all. Its body forms a single, long, tapering tube, which curls at the end like a pig’s tail. This worm has evolved to live in the seafloor sediment near a dead whale. It sends long, fibrous “roots” into the mud, presumably in search of fragments of bone on which to feed.

Knowing how fast the DNA of these worms changes (mutates) over time, the researchers can calculate how long it has been since worms in the genus Osedax first evolved as a distinct group. Using one possible estimate of mutation rates, the researchers hypothesized that this group could have evolved about 45 million years ago — about the time the first large open-ocean whales show up in the fossil record. Alternatively, the worms may have evolved more slowly, which would suggest that the genus is much older, and first evolved about 130 million years ago. If this second estimate is correct, the worms could have feasted on the bones of immense sea-going reptiles during the age of the dinosaurs.

Eventually the researchers will give all these new worms their own species names. First, however, they must collect enough samples of each possible species for additional laboratory analysis and distribution to type-specimen collections. Like a classic horror story, the macabre saga of the boneworms will continue to thrill marine biologists for years to come.

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute via sciencedaily

The deadliest (and easy to miss) critters lurk in dark silence, ready to strike with either the barest of warnings or none at all – and with absolutely fatal venom.
Some you’ve heard about, and so sit there and scoff. Yeah, big deal: rattlesnake, cobra, black widow — either you can hear them coming, avoid going to India, or simply not stick your hands into dark places. They are nothing but annoyances: fatal only to the truly stupid, or very sick… But there are others, nasty little things as vicious and deadly as they are quiet and unassuming.

The Cone Snail: can kill you in less than 4 minutes

Say, for instance, you are happily walking through the low surf merrily picking up and discarding shells, looking for just the right one to decorate your desk back at the office.

With no warning at all, however, you feel a sharp sting from one of those pretty shells — a sting that quickly flares into a crawling agony. With that quick sting, the cone snail’s barbed spear has insidiously injected you with one of the most potent neurotoxins in existence.
“The bright colors and patterns of cone snails are attractive to the eye, and therefore people sometimes pick up the live animals and hold them in their hand for a while.” Meanwhile the snail may fire its harpoon, loaded with venom (the harpoon can penetrate gloves and even wetsuits).
“The bright colors and patterns of cone snails are attractive to the eye, and therefore people sometimes pick up the live animals and hold them in their hand for a while.” Meanwhile the snail may fire its harpoon, loaded with venom (the harpoon can penetrate gloves and even wetsuits)

Nerves short-circuited by this infinitesimally small amount of juice, in seconds the agony of where the stinger struck has faded into a heavy numbness. A relief, perhaps, but then it spreads and moments later the paralysis has seized the entire limb. Then the breathing troubles start … and then, simply, your heart stops beating.

Yes, there are antivenoms available, but, frankly, with something that can kill in less than four minutes you’d have to carry it in your back pocket to survive. It wasn’t just for their fondness for these pretty shells that lead the CIA to develop a weapon using this venom to dispatch enemies.

We’ll be back to the ocean in a few paragraphs, but for the next dangerous denizen we have to visit the steaming Amazon.

Poison Arrow Frog: Lethal Touch
That frog over there, for instance: that tiny, brilliantly colored tree frog. Doesn’t he look like some kind of Faberge ornament, there against that vermilion leaf? Wouldn’t such a natural jewel look just gorgeous in a terrarium back home?

Pick him and you’ll be dead in a matter of minutes. One second frolicking in the undergrowth, the next spasming and foaming on the jungle floor. No stinger, no bite, no venom: just the shimmering slime covering his brilliant body.

The natives in these parts capture these poison arrow frogs (carefully) and coat their blowgun darts with that slime and knock full grown monkeys out of the trees with a single strike.”They are the only animal in the world known to be able to kill a human by touch alone.” They can jump as far as 2 meters – “that’s nearly 50 times their body length. That is like a 6-foot (1.8-meter) human jumping 300 feet (90 meters)”

The lazy clown of the insect world.

Not a long distance from the deep green of the Amazon is southern Brazil. if you are a tired hiker after a good trek you’d want to rest a bit, to brace yourself against a tree for support. So what if you happen to touch a certain hairy caterpillar. It’s just a caterpillar, right? The lazy clown of the insect world. One problem, though: it happens to be a member of the lonomia family of moths.

The adult moth is just a moth, but the hairs of the caterpillar are juicy with nasty stuff, so nasty that dozens of people die every year from just touching them. By the way, it’s not a good way to go, either: their venom is a extremely powerful anticoagulant, death happening as the blood itself breaks down. Not fun. Very not fun.

Many powerful predators are loud, almost comical: they parade their danger; sharks announce their presence with a steady da-dum, da-dum, da-dum of background music; rattlesnakes… well, they rattle; lions, and tigers, and bears roar and bellow…

But the real monsters are more devious than that; they lurk on the other side of invisibility, never make a sound, and kill you faster than the sounding of that first note in a shark’s theme song.

Beaked Sea Snake

Another creature of nightmares that doesn’t come with a theme song is a strange import to the aquatic world. When you think snake you usually think of dry land. But if you go paddling around the Persian Gulf (or coastal islands of India) keep a wary eye out for the gently undulating wave of Enhydrina Schistosa. It might not look dangerous, if anything it just looks odd to see a snake swimming in the sea, but don’t let your fascination for a “creature of the dry that lives in the wet” hypnotize you into getting too close.

The Hook-nose (or beaked) sea snake, to use its less scientific name, has one of the most potent venoms known. How potent? Well, visualize 1.5 milligrams. Not easy, is it? Such a small amount. But that’s all the venom enhydrina needs to, well, leave you “swimming with the fishes”, as the mob likes to say. “The snake is also eaten as meat by Hong Kong and Singapore fishermen and locals alike”

Stone Fish waits for you to step on it

But it’s not time to leave the sea quite yet. There are two nasty things in the blue depths you should spend many a sleepless night frightened of. For the big one you’ll have to wait a bit, for the one right below it in terrifying lethality you just have to watch your step when you’re walking along the bottom of the ocean.

As you can see it’s very hard to notice on the ocean floor. Like all monsters it hides, camouflaging itself among the rocks on the bottom. It’s what’s called an ambush predator: a critter that waits until something juicy walks, or swims, by. But what it could do to you requires no motion at all.

All the stone fish has to do is just sit there on the bottom and wait for you to innocently step on it.

That’s all it takes: the spines on the fish’s back are like a parade of loaded hypodermic needles, each one carrying enough bad stuff to kill even a buff diver in a matter of minutes. But death is not really the worst.

The pain from a stone fish’s sting is said to be so horrible that sufferers have begged to have the pricked limb amputate rather than live with it for another moment.
In a word: Ouch!.

Box Jellyfish should really be called the “coffin” jellyfish

Cone shells, snakes, and caterpillars can be avoided, brilliant frogs warn of their fatality, and I’ve already warned you about the stone fish, but this last terror does not roar or display its danger at all. Let’s take one final swim, shall we, this time off the coast of Australia?

Paddling in the crystal sea, enjoying the cool waters, the warm sun, it’s easy to miss this monster, especially as it’s almost as clear as the ocean. Chironex fleckeri doesn’t sound terrifying, does it? Chironex fleckeri is a tiny jellyfish, only about sixteen inches long. It has four eye-clusters with twenty-four eyes; its tentacles carry thousands of nematocysts, microscopic stingers activated not by ill-will but by a simple brush against shell, or skin. Do this and they fire, injecting anyone and anything with the most powerful neurotoxin known. – Broken tentacles remain active until broken down by time and even dried tentacles can be reactivated if wet;
- Box jellyfish are not actually jellyfish at all; they are the Cubozoans;
- Grows to about the size of a human head, and has tentacles up to three meters long;

As you can see on the top left of the image below, it’s pretty hard to notice Chironex Fleckeri in the wild… The sting of a chironex fleckeri, also called the sea wasp, has been described by experts as horrifying torment:

Stories abound of swimmers leaping from the cool Australian seas, skin blistered and torn from thousands of these tiny stingers, the venom scalding their bodies and plunging them into agonizing shock.

Luckily it doesn’t last long… In fact, the burning pain is over in just about the time it will take you to read this last paragraph (and you don’t have to be a phenomenally slow reader), not even enough time to reach shore and call for help.

And as the venom works itself into your system, causing your nervous system to collapse, you’ll realize that there really are dangerous things out there that’ll kill you by pure reflex, by just crossing their paths – things that are perhaps the easiest to miss

Original post by (tiki)

Could it be a new art form? Painting live sheep and cattle in bright, brilliant colors might become the next big fad in Scotland. One farmer painted his flock of sheep (grazing on a pasture just off M-8 highway at Bathgate in West Lothian) bright red , aiming to entertain passing motorists and to “spice things up” a little. Well, everybody liked the view so much that it became an attraction in itself, and now they even consider using different colors, such as pink. The animals apparently do not mind being sprayed with animal-friendly dye, and will remain red until sheared.

This colorful tradition is ages old in Ireland and Scotland, where farmers were painting sheep red, or marking them with color – to make them easier to find.

Apparently they are also doing it in India

In July 2003, Britain’s “most celebrated graffiti artist” Banksy covered a live cow with the images of Andy Warhol’s face.
Not every similar artistic project ends happily. In East Farndon, Northamptonshire, a number of sheep were targeted by a local graffiti gang. The animals were found distressed but uninjured, but this spray-painting attack is being treated as criminal damage by police.

Another victim of graffiti artists (in Russia)

Soccer fans in England are already displaying their patriotic enthusiasm in a similar way

Original post by  (tiki)

New definition of “lost”:
This moose is not just “hanging around”. It’s actually quite a sad story. “This moose got his antlers stuck in a newly-laid power cable, strung on the ground for miles. When the men (from a big distance) pulled the lines with their heavy equipment, he went too. They could not get the line straight and went searching for the problem. The moose was still alive when they lowered him…”

Voluntary climbing

These Moroccan goats love to climb trees, attracted by the “argo” nuts.
Locals use these nuts to make oil. Goats seem to get a kick from both nuts AND climbing.

The only thing cows can do, though – is to get totally STUCK.

..and some photoshopped

They are perfect, relentless and always hungry. They never sleep and prowl the seas like nuclear-powered torpedoes. That would be a pretty bad rap for anybody, even though few sharks would attack a human without being provoked. Scientists claim that sharks kill without ill will or premeditation and thus cannot be labeled ‘malicious’. Yeah, right

Great White (and Smirking) Killing Machine

These guys hang around the shores of South Australia, South Africa and often approach divers with a friendly nuzzle and a line “Are you talking to me?”
These sharks have reputation as vicious predators, yet they are not unsystematic “eating machines”. They attack from below in order to investigate what is floating on the surface.

Great white sharks not only swim, they FLY

This is definitely going to increase your confidence at sea: the enormous monster breaching the waves and flying at you with bloody dripping jaws. OK, it may not happen with such vivid color, but still….

The Tiger shark is the fourth largest predatory shark. This shark is a solitary hunter, usually hunting at night. Its name is derivative from the dark stripes down its body, which grow fainter as the shark matures. It is infamous for attacks on swimmers, divers and surfers in Hawaii and is often referred to as “the wastebasket of the sea”.

Bull sharks often cruise through shallow waters and can suddenly burst into speed and can be highly aggressive. They are extremely territorial and will attack other animals and humans that enter their territory. Bull sharks are among the four species considered to be most dangerous to humans.
The first image shows the Shortfin Mako shark, one of the species that’s officially responsible for eight unprovoked attacks on humans with two ending in fatality and twenty boat attacks.

In terms of size though, even the largest shark found on Earth today looks simply microscopic, compared to the size of prehistoric monsters, such as this Liopleurodon.
Note that close to Liopleurodon’s mouth is not a shark, but a huge plesiosaur, in itself the size of medium boat.

A few amazing facts about sharks: – via

- A shark does not have one bone in its body. Its skeleton is made up of cartilage. Cartilage is a tough material, like the material that shapes your ear.
- The Swell Shark, found in New Zealand, barks like a dog.
- Weird things have been found inside a shark, such as a bottle of wine, a treasure chest, a suit of armor, a drum and a torpedo.
- A shark’s skin is covered with denticles, which are small, razor-sharp teeth.

Not all huge sharks live in the warm or tropical waters. There is a shark species (still in many ways a mystery to biologists) that lives deep in the Artic water – sometimes as deep as 600 meters:

Greenland Sharks Lurk Beneath the Arctic Ice

The sleeper shark…. the “gurry” shark: the largest of Greenland sharks are comparable in size with the great white shark, although there is no record of them ever attacking humans. Check out these teeth though: small but razor-sharp -

“Forget the cold. I kicked my fins and swam toward the shadowy figure. It turned and began moving toward me. I was face-to-face with a Greenland shark. I’d seen drawings and paintings of the fish, but this was utterly different. It was ghoulish. Its nostrils were the largest I had ever seen on a shark. They reminded me of a giant double-barreled shotgun. Its mouth was slightly open, revealing rows of small sharp teeth. Its eyes looked fogged over, like those of a dead fish, and from each one dangled a tasseled parasite.” (Nick Caloyianis)

These guys are nearly blind, but they have a mouth big enough to eat a full-grown seal as some kind of muffin. There are also stories of these sharks attacking caribou as they drink from the mouths of rivers… and eating polar bears. So here you go.

OK, I am sure you are wondering by now, which shark has the biggest mouth and what exactly size of prey it can swallow. Check this out -

A Megamouth Shark!

This extremely rare (only a few have been seen so far) deep water shark has an enormous mouth with big flabby lips… Not just enormous, but freaking ILLUMINATED mouth (to attract some plankton to the light). Read more info here, it seems it’s more of a relative to the ancient Coelacanth than normal sharks.
This is a species we did not know existed until 1976: only 41 such sharks have been found so far.

Original post by  (tiki)

Pun intended: it does look like nothing until you approach really close, then it springs at you (morphs at you, intimidates and astounds you, you pick the right verb) Here is a video that most tellingly shows how some unassuming clump of weed on a rock can grow tentacles in a matter of moments.
This “invisible octopus” is fine, but “mimicking octopus” is even finer piece of trickery. We’ve already written about this lying critter, so here’s a little refresher.
As shown in this impressive video, the IndonesianMimic Octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus) can impersonate sea snakes, lionfish, flatfish – and in normal form it looks pretty weird, too.

Veined octopus – Octopus marginatus – puts on a neon show

Blue-ringed Octopus is well-known to be one of the “deadliest animal on Earth” (read about others who qualify) Here is a good info page about this species. “Although the painless bite can kill an adult, injuries have only occurred when an octopus has been picked out of its pool and provoked or stepped on. There is no known antidote. Symptoms include:

- Onset of nausea.
- Hazy Vision. ( Within seconds you are blind.)
- Loss of sense of touch, speech and the ability to swallow.
- Within 3 minutes, paralysis sets in and your body goes into respiratory arrest
See it live crawling around (and learn to distinguish it from harmless fish and surroundings) – click to watch >video. At the end of the video it looks just like a little brown fish innocently swimming by!

Some octopi (like legendary Houdini himself) can hide in a most improbable spaces, making themselves seemingly as small as they wish to be. Here is one hiding inside a shell! and another one trying to hide behind a leaf.

When they unfold and get out in the open, they are formidable animals indeed:
(a diver gets acquainted with one old and wise specimen in the Japan Sea, Primorie, Russia – a 23-foot Giant Pacific Octopus Doflein).

Choose Your Alien

Squids are just as outlandish as octopi. Here are some miniature transparent beauties: Teuthowenia pellucida, Deep Sea Glass Squid.
Still not satisfied that Earth can produce creatures crazy and alien-looking enough to come out of some nightmarish imagination?… like this one.

Well, this squid should settle the matter

The Colossal Squid is significantly scarier than a giant squid (we are past the “giant” scale now, into the “colossal”) – it not only has suckers lined with small teeth on its arms and tentacles, but it also has hooks: sharp, three-pointed kind of hooks, wicked and wickedly efficient.

The colossal squid can get as big as 20 meters, which is more than two school buses put together. Their other name is the “Giant Cranch” (I’d say, it’s pretty graphic…), they have the largest eyes in the animal kingdom and enjoy swimming in the ice-cold Antarctic deep waters.
This animal, armed as it is with the hooks and the beak that it has, not only is colossal in size but is going to be a phenomenal predator and something you are not going to want to meet in the water.” (source and more info)

Mesonychoteuthis Hamiltoni are ridiculously quick, equipped with the lethal hooks, with their size most likely understated by reports (judging by the size of colossal squid parts found inside whales, much larger specimens could be existing in the icy murk).
Just to give you an idea, how deadly encounter with squid tentacles can be, here is an image of the razor-sharp squid hooks that can shred a victim in a blink.

A Paranormal Squid Romance, and a Warning
Vampyroteuthis infernalis looks and behaves like it jumped from the fervent concept art portfolio of some CGI studio – for starters, it is able to turn itself inside out (to the utmost confusion of its pursuer). It also perfectly mastered the stealth mode: red color in the pitch blackness of the depths is invisible.

Its body is covered with light-producing photophores, so it can also “light up” like a christmas tree. Its arms and tentacles are covered with…. you guessed it, teeth, razor-sharp spikes. And it’s made out of “jelly” rather like a jellyfish, not a normal squid.
Now see if you can give it a license to dwell on Earth… wait, it already has all that, and loves to haunt our oceanic abyss, preferring depths up to 3000 feet. What lives deeper than that? More cephalopods!. Perhaps you’ve already seen the video of Magnapinna squid, the crooked, elbowed Hieronymus Bosch nightmare.

Original post by noreply@blogger.com (tiki)