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Broad-snouted caiman baby in mother mouth being carried from the nest, Sante Fe, Argentina, 2013 - by Mark MacEwen, English
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Banded Galliwasp (Diploglossus fasciatus), juvenile, family Diploglossidae, found in western South America
photographs by Las Piedras Amazon Center - LPAC
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sand dollars doin their thing
they’re basically sea roombas
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Western Tiger Salamander
The western tiger salamander, also known as the barred tiger salamander, is one of the few native amphibian species in Idaho, and the only salamander found in Yellowstone National Park. They are one of the largest species of salamander in North America - reaching up to nine inches long from nose to tail.
Mostly found in the eastern counties, there are other Idaho zones where they are also found. Primarily nocturnal, barred tiger salamanders are opportunistic feeders, and will often eat anything they can catch, including various insects, slugs, and earthworms. They are primarily terrestrial as adults, but their juvenile, larval stage is entirely aquatic, having external gills. Breeding takes place during most months of the year.
The eggs are laid in water and the developing larvae are exclusively aquatic.Increasingly, scientists are looking to this species as a candidate for aquatic ecosystem health monitoring. Other amphibians have been found to be bioaccumulators of mercury and other contaminants, and these Idaho ‘manders might also prove helpful in that regard.
Photo of larval salamander by Bruce Hallman, Idaho Falls District BLM
via: Bureau of Land Management
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Robust Climbing Salamander (Bolitoglossa robusta), family Plethodontidae, Tapanti National Park, Costa Rica
Photograph by Piotr Naskrecki
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Marbled Polecat (Vormela peregusna), family Mustelidae, found in a swath across parts of eastern Europe and Asia
photograph by zoofanatic
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Excuse me mr bogged leech but why do jellyfish need such unbelievably potent venom? Especially that one extremely tiny jellyfish whose poison makes you feel the worst pain possible for days on end and has a symptom along the lines of "makes you feel impending doom." What evolutionary factors could there be for such a tiny creature to evolve a toxin that makes you feel like Death is personally coming for you
It is Precisely just because they prey on fish! A fish is a highly active vertebrate that evolved for lightning fast movement and reflexes through deep, heavy water, so more than half of a fish’s body is a dense hunk of proportionately high-powered, dense muscle all the way through! Look how little space is devoted to organs in even just an anchovy, muscle and bone fills ALL the remaining space:
That’s muscle for escaping sharks and dolphins! Muscle that can fight currents stronger than hurricane winds! But a jellyfish evolved for an extreme conservation of resources: just barely enough tissue to hold it together, which allows it to grow and multiply on barely a sliver the resources it takes to make a vertebrate, a high efficiency approach to building, growing, and multiplying a living body that has allowed jellyfish to keep thriving in the harshest conditions and through global extinction events.
So, relative to one another, a fish is practically built like a cheetah, a stallion or an ox while a jellyfish is built like...a cobweb, a snowflake or a latex balloon. The only way a latex balloon can possibly hunt oxen for a living is with sheer firepower alone, or some kind of magical instant-death-touch, so that is exactly what evolution resulted in. While box jellies prey on fish seldom larger than themselves, a single sting delivers venom potent enough to kill a THOUSAND little fish in an instant, or completely wreck an entire massive human. The venom equivalent of a point-blank shotgun blast.
This is cool as SHIT
Patently Absurd Item: latex balloon with some kind of magical instant-death-touch.
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The Secret Life of Deep Sea Vents
An expedition to find rare hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Mid-Atlantic uncovers new worlds—and some daredevil shrimp.
More than 6,000 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, some 1,400 miles east of Puerto Rico, a remotely operated vehicle skimmed the seafloor, filming a rocky scene almost devoid of life. Perhaps the trail has run cold, thought Julie Huber, an oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, as she watched a video feed from land. Her colleagues did the same from a research vessel named Falkor (Too), floating above the ROV. Then the vehicle’s controllers steered it up a slope. A few squat lobsters scuttled past, seemingly in a hurry to get somewhere. Patches of pale anemones drifted by—another hopeful sign. “And then, bam! We could see this smoke off in the distance,” Huber says. As the ROV inched closer to the crest, a cluster of colossal chimneys rose into view, releasing torrents of black, smoky water. The oceanographers, geologists, and biologists aboard Falkor (Too) cheered: This marked the first discovery in 40 years of an active hydrothermal vent field on this vast section of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge...
Read more:
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Interesting news for fucked up weirdos who enjoy body horror and exploring differences between Self and Other
What the wine-dark oceanic FUCK.
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I fuckin hate tunicates man
they’re chordates, they’re sessile, they look like a human heart that was pickled in something noxious
the fact that a perfectly respectable proto-vertebrate could evolve into an asymmetrical ocean vegetable makes a mockery of any notion of teleological evolution
lancelets are cool, they’re just basal fish-type creatures. great point of comparison for evo-devo research. kinda cute. whereas tunicates are like if a tomato was made out of muscle
there should be plants that look like that. they should be edible. my garden should have three
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springtail resting in the shadow of an immature slime mold fruit body
by Petter Lilleengen, Norway.
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An Arctic wolf (Canis lupus arctos) preys on a hibernating frog in Northern Canada
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just watched a video of a wildlife rehabber tube-feeding the teeny tiniest orphaned baby opossum and the comments are fucking KILLING me
baby opossum (too teeny, hasn’t finished cooking in the marsupial pouch like it ought to have done, doesn’t even look like it should exist):
the comments:
