OCTOPUS I LOVE YOU

octopus steals my video camera and swims off with it (while it's Recording) from Victor Huang on Vimeo.

The perils of filming mating octopus.

LIVING THE COLONIAL LIFE

CreatureCast - Siphonophores and Individuality from Casey Dunn on Vimeo.

Is it one animal or hundreds? Am I one animal or billions? I <3 siphonophores for making my head hurt with questions.

H/T Pharyngula.

HIPPOPOTAMUS �TOCKS

Photo from here.

THE LIFE AQUATIC

Great scene from a favorite movie, accompanied by a favorite band.

HIGH TIDE HEELS

High tide heels by Australian designer Lisa Carney.

I have just the neoprene dress for these.

SUNDAY POETRY: "THE MERMAID IN THE HOSPITAL"

The painting, Ondina, is by Brazilian artist Walmor Correa, who creates cryptozoological medical portraits of mermaids, cyclopses, anteater men, and other fictional animal hybrids.

THE MERMAID IN THE HOSPITAL

by Nuala N� Dhomhnaill

translated by Paul Muldoon

She awoke   

to find her fishtail   

clean gone   

but in the bed with her   

were two long, cold thingammies.   

You'd have thought they were tangles of kelp   

or collops of ham.

"They're no doubt   

taking the piss,   

it being New Year's Eve.   

Half the staff legless   

with drink   

and the other half   

playing pranks.   

Still, this is taking it   

a bit far."

And with that she hurled

the two thingammies out of the room.

But here's the thing   

she still doesn't get�

why she tumbled out after them   

arse-over-tip...

How she was connected   

to those two thingammies   

and how they were connected   

to her.

It was the sister who gave her the wink

and let her know what was what.

"You have one leg attached to you there   

and another one underneath that.   

One leg, two legs...

A-one and a-two...

Now you have to learn   

what they can do."

In the long months   

that followed,   

I wonder if her heart fell

the way her arches fell,

her instep arches.

THE SECRET LIFE OF SEA BISCUITS

 

(Clypeaster rosaceus, by Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur, 1904)

I spent the better part of an entire chapter of DEEP BLUE HOME describing the fascinatingly complex life history of jellyfish. Here's a lovely short film from the Brazil's Centro de Biologia Marinha, Universidade de Sao Paulo, telling a similar story for the Caribbean sea biscuit, Clypeaster rosaceus, a sand dollarlike echinoderm. 

The film circumvents language to deliver an elegant lesson on one of nature's most economic solutions to dispersing sessile organisms in the ocean.

HT The Artful Amoeba.