Sooooo....we ran out of monkeys?

Oh, Japan.  Land of the Rising Sun, home to Giant Squids, creator of the Calamari Wrestler and Executive Koala.

Now they're sending fish into space.  We could bore you with the details as to the whys, but let's just stop a moment and repeat that: they're sending fish into space.

Because the ocean is apparently way too crowded these days, you know with all the drilling and trawl-killing of habitats.

Micro-chipping your Whale Shark

1. Find a whale shark
2. Make sure it's not looking
3. Stick it with a receiver wand
4. High-five your lab partner without breaking any major bones

This was only made possible by the fact that these whale sharks were being distracted by the buffet of trapped silverfish near Indonesia. 

We assume the purpose of this is to track migration routes, feeding habits, but more importantly mating rituals.  Scientists are such closet voyeurs. 

Tis the season!

The Evolution of the Species...of Octopus

Whew, not writing for months on end about cool ocean-dwelling stuff has really given us a chance to catch up on River Monsters, Deadliest Catch, and Shark Week. Twice.

Octopuses (you thought we were going to say "octopi" didn't you? Well our grammar tutor, who is grossly underpaid, would've made us write "we will not mix Greek and Latin together" a million times. In Greek and Latin.) have long since captured man's interest. Few creatures can be simultaneously cute and creepy, fascinating and terrifying, or logical and cleverly confusing.

(the aptly named Blue Ring Octopus)

The cute and cuddly side:

It sounds ridiculous but cephalopods (phylum subclass mollusks) are actually really charming. They've been known to be playful, inquisitive, intelligent, and amazing gamblers (it's a shame he wasn't around for March Madness, we can only guess the winnings he would've had). In addition their lack of skeletons allow them to do things that just aren't normal. Like squeezing into bottles.

They come in every variation possible, which lends itself to their:

Creepy and fascinating side:

When nature gets something right but starts producing copies of a copy...well you know they're never as sharp as the original. But then you never really know what the original was, or intended to be. Nature also has a propensity to do that thing - creep-us-out-whenever-possible-thing. Just to make sure we stay at bay.

Like what? you ask. Well...we don't know...maybe have one that has 96 arms?? We can see the ha-ha in having an extra set, but 96? That's nature being like "I've got a glue gun and extra collagen...can't let it go to waste." Don't believe us? Japan is the land of Godzilla so naturally it's also home to some of the weirdest ocean catches to date. Like that prehistoric shark, giant squid, and the 96-armed octopus. See creepy picture below. You can't even tell which way is up.

And like many ocean-dwelling oddities the common octopus has a strange biological makeup. As previously mentioned it has no skeleton, it's great for when you need to squeeze into tight spaces, but not so great if you're caught in the mouth of a whale. Octopuses also have three hearts, a beak at the base of its body, and generally a very short life span. This is a little heart-breaking, but they tend to die shortly after mating, nature pre-programmed what is essentially a death ray into their genes. Their bodies begin to manufacture a secretion that kills the flexible little critters. But in their short lifetimes they are also:

Comically logical:

Octopuses are more that just a bunch of arms attached to what sometimes appears to be an inflated condom. They're sensitive and thoughtful. They don't mind working for things they want. Like food. Oftentimes in aquariums caretakers will hide food in objects for the captive animals to find. Good ol' eight-arms loves a challenge. They open bottles, build shelters, and will even break & enter when necessary. They hate boredom that much. And when they get a hankering for munchies...good luck stopping them. They've been documented worldwide as being able to get out of their holding tanks to retrieve food themselves. So if you see one making his way across the room, let him have the right of way.

And finally, the vast majority of species are pretty harmless. They're actually beautiful in many ways. But it wouldn't be a CEF post if we didn't put in the two-word warning: GIANT SQUID. Nature's bouncers in the most mysterious and exclusive of clubs, they are so frighteningly big and so elusive, we can only surmise that the images of Old World krakens were somewhat based in reality. Respect.

And now, as a non-sequitor to today's post we thought you'd have a good laugh at this quasai-related topic.

A Tale of Two Lobsters

You thought we were going to use a pun in there, weren't you?

Back in the day when we talked about your garden-variety lobster we spoke generally of its coolness, and how it should be respected for its rarity. And now if you didn't have enough to appreciate of these stellar crustaceans we bring you the sneaky wonder of nature and what she sometimes does when she's bored.

Lobsters are generally dark-toned creatures, with varying hues of brick to twig to clay. However once in a while (we're talking 1 in 30 million here) you get a pretty great variation:


The Yellow Lobster, or Fiona, to the right is a super-rare mutation. There are few cases in life when it pays to be a freak and she happened to win one of those uncommon chances. Being one of just a couple ever caught she happily (well, as happily as lobsters can be in a tank) dwells in a tank of fellow lobsters which are primarily blue.

Blue lobsters? Yes, blue lobsters are also a rarity (which makes us wonder how this restaurant is catching all these uncommon species...) equating to approximately 1 in 2 million. Being crayon-colored works well for these creatures since they are predominantly kept as "pets" in either restaurants or aquariums and spared the inevitable prospect of being someone's dinner.

Nearly every time a uniquely colored lobster appears we fall in love with it for its combination of rarity and quirkiness. It results in a few small news articles and very rarely release into native habitats. We're fans of leaving these curious creatures alone in their native habitats. There's something really interesting and heart-warming about seeing the ocean's creative side, and we'd like to admire from afar which is safest for us and them.

Plug for River Monsters - Animal Planet you owe us one

And now for an unpaid endorsement of Animal Planet's show River Monsters.

We like the premise. An eccentric biologist (at least he wants us to think he's a biologist) / extreme angler (we think that means crazed fisherman) travels to remote areas of the world to track down underwater urban legends. We're talking the King Kongs of the Amazon. Or India. Or Taiwan. Or wherever he happens to be.

Donned in his flip flops, linen shirts, and manning unusually nice "fishing" gear (you know, the kind you walk into Bass Pro Shop to get when you tell the sales clerk you're looking to reel in your garden variety manta ray this weekend), Jeremy Wade braves Deliverance-type environments that make you just want to scream with fear of catching seven different kinds of diseases.

Wade first scouts out a "deadly" species of freshwater fish, generally it's one that grows to significant proportions and has had a rap for terrorizing non-scaled humans. He then gives a background of the most gruesome stories and promptly hops on his boat to hunt down the "monster. This is where the show kind of breaks down for us.

Many of the species showcased on the series are indeed large, scary-looking critters. And some of them are surprising - you never think a catfish can grow big enough to eat a small child, but hey...people in the Amazon sometimes get careless with daycare. What we don't like is the sensationalistic approach of demonizing a species, witch-hunting it down, and then catching/wrestling/marveling at it like Steve Irwin.

We especially don't like Wade actually yanking the subjects out of the water, suspending it on his boat and then chit-chatting about it while the poor animal gasps for breath. Case in point - the piraiba. Upon dragging it out of the river, Wade discusses the noises that catfish is producing - awful gulping/croaking sounds indicating its need for oxygen. You fool!

What we do like about the show is it showcasing how little we still know about our waters, even fresh. We think so rarely about the aquatic life that thrives in any body of water, and how certain species are learning to adapt between fresh and salt. It's also fun to see fish with teeth, fish without teeth, and species that we had no idea would even think of going upstream. We'd far prefer for Wade to discuss the aspects of what makes these river species so large, so rare, or so mysterious. There is very little biological history, process, or discussion added into these episodes. Rather it's generally edited to be man vs. beast with man usually winning for no clear reason.

If only AP would drop the whole angler-angle we'd be far happier campers.

Holy Crap

Or at least that's probably what the shark thought:

We're no Angela Lansbury, but we can only assume the aquarium workers couldn't seriously think the sharks were just running away. When you discover less and less sharks in a contained area, wouldn't you want to maybe observe for awhile before your entire stock of dogfish disappear? We can only imagine how horrified the workers must've been upon discovering the sharks weren't just hocus-pocusing ala Harry Potter style into thin air.