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❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
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@discovery-at-sea
Guess who? 🥰
Say hello to the adorable arbiter snailfish (Careproctus kamikawai). Snailfishes are a diverse and thriving group of fishes with over 400 described species. Their pelvic fins are modified into suction cups that allow them to fasten onto rocks, corals, or even research equipment and hold on in strong currents.
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i just feel like we dont have time for this right now
Ok, lets have a look at this: Over the last few days a new paper in Science has led to MANY discussions in the paleo community and it appears to have breached containment into the wider world, judging by headlines and google results.
"Earliest octopuses were giant top predators in Cretaceous oceans" by Ikegami et. al describes a new beak of the basal octopus genus Nanaimoteuthis. And yeah, it's a whopper! Just look at the specimen next to a giant squid beak in this figure! They also note that...
...beak shows some intense, asymmetrical wear, indicating a lot of hard objects being processed by this beak. On top of that they assign the genus to the group Cirrata (finned octopuses and relatives) instead of Vampyromorpha as it was in past papers. This is were the hard facts end though.
Don't get me wrong: This must have been a huge animal, but I also think that anything beyond this is purely speculative. The authors give a total length of 7 to 19 meters, an enormous range, with an estimated mantle length of max 4.4 m. They base this on the proportions of finned octopuses and other close relatives but I would argue that is just math for the sake of math. We know VERY little about early octopuses. Their beaks are often the only thing preserved and their diversity in the Cretaceous remains murky.
That's the size part, what I have an actual problem with though is the way they deduce behavior, died and even cognition from this fossil. Based on the size, wear and asymmetry they propose that this animal would compete, maybe even hunt large marine reptiles, in a smart way.
That's plain bullshitting in my eyes. Intense wear on a beak suggests this animal would be durophagous, going after armored or hard shelled prey. cracking the bones of marines reptiles feels very contrived and modern day octopuses (that often eat crabs) don't look much different.
The asymmetry of the beaks is an interesting detail but I would NEVER derive an argument for higher cognition from that. Cognitive abilities are next to impossible to grasp from the fossil record even IF you have the brain. Which leaves the question what was this guy doing?
Short answer is: we don't know. As I hopefully illustrated here we have simply too few data points to make any concrete arguments for this animals appearance or lifestyle. HOWEVER
As people pointed out on Discord: crushing shells in an pelagic habitat is something that was a breeze in the Mesozoic. Ammonites in the cretaceous come in many different shapes but also sizes. 50 cm plus species are not rare.
We also know from the Jurassic there were likely other cephalopods that went after ammonites. So if the ammonites grew in the Cretaceous why shouldn't their predators as well? Beyond ammonites the Late Cretaceous also gave rise to a large to gigantic bivales like many inoceramids
This abundance of durophagous prey is also reflected in the predators, large sharks, mosasaurs and even giant chimeras took advantage of this plentiful food source. I therefore think a large ammonite predator is a much more likely niche for Nanaimoteuthis.
In my interpretation I pair the octopus with the giant ammonite Parapuzosia, these animals aren't known from the same localities but their time ranges overlap which makes it plausible to me that these guys, or close relatives, could have met.
Lastly I want to quickly talk about the promotion and reception of this publication. While I don't completely fault the authors for their writing - after all LOOK AT THE MODERN ACADEMIC CLIMATE - I do think it's troubling that the editor's note, the journal itself, immediately evokes the image of the Kraken, a mythological creature, to sell it's new paper. This in combination with Science being a high profile journal makes it feel as if the claims in this publication are standing on more solid ground than they do. This is just my personal opinion but I think this is just bad science communication. It is something that will echo through the online sphere for years to come and does not in any way promote the caution that I would expect when claims like these are presented. Subsequently the ideas and evocative speech of the paper have already spawned a large amount of paleoart that goes for the largest and most speculative sides of it. Again: I think the size estimates in the paper are certainly possible, but I also think a more critical examination of the text is warranted when presented with such incredible claims. I am not here to kill your fun. But I also think that we are maybe looking at something even more interesting that the (at this point) already rather old trope of the mosasaur eating squid. At least to me a giant mollusk eats mollusk world is cooler.
AS ALWAYS, these are simply my opinions on these matters, but I thought there was enough uncritical yay and nay saying about this paper that I felt like it should warrant a reaction. I think the paper describes fascinating material and I eagerly await more!
Tube Anemone
stop using hospitals as horror settings
fun alternative: cruise ships. cruise ships exploit workers and can pollute as much as a million cars on a daily basis while dumping endless shit into the ocean and endangering all passengers on board because the on board air quality rivals some of the most polluted cities in the world while being a breeding ground for disease. cruise ships deserve to have negativity associated with them
also all crimes commited aboard a cruise ship is under the juristiction of whichever country they’re registered to once they’re a certain distance away from land so you have the added bonus of the crimes being very unlikely to be properly investigated (due to usually being physically so very far from the actual police whose juristiction they’re under)
terrifying!
On top of THAT cruise ships tend to have their own morgue, as people tend to die on ships all the time. Good for those spooky scenes.
plus u can just like…leave a hospital. good luck escaping a killer or a monster or a curse or w/e in the middle of the fucking ocean
As an ex cruise ship employee, let me give you some stuff to work with!
Water tight doors! You get a special training video on interacting with these correctly because they will literally cut you in half if you try and go through them while they’re closing!
Freezer vaults for food in the sub decks - you can only get into these with the correct code and they have very thick walls. Good luck if you get shut in one of these just after the last round of checks bucko
There are cameras everywhere…except in the crew cabin corridors. Also there are no windows down there because unless you’re an officer, you live below the waterline. Day and night have no meaning because everything is in the same slightly unsettling yellow light.
Don’t piss off the guys who deal with the rubbish. They have machines down there that can crush metal barrels
As well as morgues, cruise ships usually have one basic operating theatre with all the attendant horrifying equipment in it
One cigarette thrown carelessly in the wrong place WILL start a fire that will gut half the ship.
When we’re pitching side to side, the anchor swings out and then back in, striking the metal outer shell with a noise that shakes half the ship
People disappear overboard more often than you’d really want to be a thing
A lot of cruise ships now have theatres on board (usually towards the front) with all the potential for dark corners, creepy costumes and electrical calamities you could want.
And as op says, you can’t really escape a ship in the middle of the ocean. Particularly during a storm, as then you can’t even evacuate to lifeboats unless the whole ship is going down. On the upside being on board during a storm means most guests hide in their cabins and the staff walk around like drunks, which would likely throw off a skilled murderer’s plans.
Takes notes
You also have the bonus of a corporate overlord who doesn’t give a shit about anything but profits and can be reliably counted on to downplay any disaster in an attempt to avoid publicity.
Another reason to be afraid of starfish: they have a special tissue called catch collagen, which can solidify at will. They use it to grab hold of clams and yank them apart persistently with no effort frozen in place while the clam has to squeeze together with all its force. Eventually the clam is exhausted and releases, and the starfish oozes its gut inside to eat it :) Also, starfish are persistence hunters and they can see you.
so i was NOT prepared or interested in learning starfish are persistence hunters
As long as they stay small enough to yeet back to sea, it’s fine.
got some news for you bitch
my pet seaweed
I thought you threw a Playstation 2 controller into the sea
‘I Lived, Bitch!’ Beatdown [FINALS] Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) VS Coelacanth
Buffy Summers
Coelacanth
She did her best, but like all things - like species themselves - she has fallen before,
THE COELACANTH
DEAL WITH IT
THE MIGHTY COELCANTH CANNOT BE DEFEATED
COELACANTH REIGNS SUPREME
its been two years, ive grown as a person (watched btvs) and buffy should have won this tbh. hate to betray my whole deal but sometimes you have to admit when you were wrong. and i wasnt necessarily wrong but i didnt have all the information. the information being that buffy deserves the whole world and especially this. i mean talk about i lived bitch
How do I explain Plato's allegory of the cave to my cat?
gato’s allegory of the fishtank
military recruiter: so what got you guys interested in the marine corps
enormous horde of hagfish, ispods and bottom-feeding crustaceans: oh. uh. is that how you pronounce it
whale fall side of tumblr you understand me
Some good news for everyone today.
I went to a conference showing off this tech back in 2013 and I am so glad to see a TikTok because it means that the technology is getting more popular and ubiquitous
