くコ:彡

Jotaro - He/Him Read the about. I'm not kin. I'm an alter in a system. HP Bar: 100/100

[lelouch]

Himantolophus sagamius found washed ashore on Crystal Cove State Park

[woolay]

I wish things like this didn’t happen

[platycryptus]

who’s a good girl

[astraldemise]

[astraldemise]

sea slug saturday lets go

[calmsmedown]

black tip reef sharks stim board for anon - all gifs made by me - credits below

Keep reading

[magnificogreatwhites]

Discover Sharks

Words by @calypsostarcharters female shark showing off swimming on her back! We do not see them do this very often at all, in fact it was the first time Captain Dave had seen it himself! Footage by guest @wendy_b_l_.

[kickassfu]

Shark Moodboard for @definitelyyessnakedemons (hope this is what you had in mind?)

[ampervadasz]

[squiddoodle]

how what???

[tandicoofficial]

I’m not good with the science of this or anything (someone who knows more feel free to add) but fish can play??? Fish can play like any other animal?? People saying it couldn’t breathe, do human kids not hold their breaths to go under water for fun? It’s just the opposite. Air is water, water is air. In the same vein as a kid being thrown up and into the pool and enjoying it, the fish is playing.

[shiekah]

okay… as someone who studies marine biology I need to clarify something:

fish are unable to hold their breaths. They literally cannot take a deep breath like mammals do.

We have lungs that can take in a specific volume of air, fish have gills that work when they are ventilated enough. There are different kinds of gills, yes. Some fish have something called ‘operculum’ which is like a cap on top of the gills, helping to protect them and increasing the water circulation through the gills. Some fish DONT have this structure and need to swim in order to be able to breathe.

But the fact that they cannot hold their breaths doesnt mean that they cannot survive without water for a while - in fact, fish can (usually) survive being without water WAY LONGER than we could survive being without air.

I cannot tell if this fish does this for fun, but it sure looks like it. But I am not a behavioural biologist, so I can’t tell for sure.

[dovewithscales]

It is abundantly clear the fish is a willing participant. It’s sort of arrogant to assume animals other than humans don’t play like humans.

[slimedivine]

Im not a behavior biologist either, but I have spent a lot of time around fish and ive spent a lot of time talking to and helping people that care for fish. (Former petstore fish guy that took his job too seriously)

That fish is having fun, and fish absolutely DO have fun!

There was a regular who came into the store I worked at a lot, and he kept several varieties of chichlids, a very smart, aggressive type of fish.

He would come in and talk to me about all the drama his fish get into. The different territorial disputes they were having, who had paired off with who, who broke up (yes chichlids are like this)

But he had a jack dempsey in particular that LOVED to chase his hand around the tank, not his wife’s hand, not his friend’s hand, it HAD to be him. He said that as soon as he entered the room where this fish’s tank was kept, the fish would TEAR UP the tank decor, knocking things over and acting a fool off his shits until this dude stuck his hand in there and let the fish chase it around back and forth.

He theorized that his fish learned that if he knocked the tank decor around, his owner would obviously have to stick his hand in to fix it. So when he wants to play “chase dad’s hand” thats naturally how he knows he can get the hand to appear. He wont do this behavior for anybody but this one guy and he won’t tear up the tank anymore after he had received sufficient “play time”, usually once a day when the guy got home from work. He likened it to having a dog that wont leave you alone till you play tug o war for a bit.

I had a betta that would spend twenty minutes at a time just swimming up to the waterfall of the filter, letting it push him down to the bottom of the tank, only to swim back up and do it again, like it was a fucking slide.

Bettas are weak swimmers, and they dislike strong currents, but this guy was using the filter current like a slide. Kinda like how we don’t really like getting thrown around, but we still enjoy rollercoasters.

I also have countless stories about goldfish trying to “give hugs” (re: shove themselves into their owners hands during tank maintenance)

My betta knows how to lie and he will only beg for food in front of those he knows have not fed him yet.

There is so much evidence I’ve seen that fish are waaaay smarter and affectionate than we think. They absolutely have fun and I honestly don’t think enough studies have been done on fish brains and fish behavior in general.

And honestly, having worked in a pet store, fish are generally treated like they don’t have brains by even the fish care brands that claim expert knowledge.

Its definitely worth noting that hard scientific evidence presenting that the very opposite is true would probably lead to more robust animal welfare laws that would definitely upset the aquatics industry. Food for thought.

[dovewithscales]

I think you’re absolutely right on that last point. The misconception that fish are too thoughtless to have feelings facilitates the abhorrent conditions in which they are kept and ways they are treated by the industry.

I used to have a lovely tank, I think it was 50 gallons, and among other things I kept glass catfish. All the research at the time said they were hard to keep in captivity and prone to refusing to eat and starving themselves, and that they did not live long in captivity. But I was fascinated and had to try it. It took me about three days to realize none of the literature said a word about them being nocturnal. I started feeding them at night right before bed, and had zero problems getting them to eat, saw they were incredibly active as soon as the lights went off (I have exceptional night vision) and I kept them in excellent health for years. Exponentially beyond their captive life expectancy.

I think the commercial pet fish trade is abysmal in terms of actual working knowledge of fish.

[kedreeva]

Fish Intelligence (a link at which you will also learn there is a fish called the bony-eared assfish) has been studied on a pretty broad scale, actually and there’s a lot of scientific evidence to suggest that they are very smart creatures.

[seatrench]

The “Squidworm” is believed to be a transitional organism from benthic worms to free-swimming pelagic worms.  They are named Squidworms due to their tentacle-like branchiae and palps.

(source)

[bunjywunjy]

Hey got any fun facts about goblin sharks? I think they are honestly my second favorite animal, they are so cool!

we’re probably all familiar with the goblin shark’s nightmare jaws at this point, their distinctive pouty face can be seen on pretty much every pop culture image of a goblin shark that exists! 

the thing is, goblin sharks don’t actually look like that!

see, for a long long time, all we had to go off of for how a goblin shark actually looks were the dead ones we occasionally fished up:

which sure, is how the shark became famous and their jaws became popularized! but the thing about dead specimens is that they can only tell us so much about how an animal actually looked when it was alive, and in this case there was a pretty big omission that we didn’t notice until we started encountering live goblin sharks in the wild:

they really don’t run around with their jaws out! in fact you won’t see the jaws at all unless the shark you’re watching happens to find something interesting to chew on while you’re standing right there.

*homg homn homng homn*

live goblin sharks use special muscles to hold their jaw in place to keep their face all streamlined, but in a dead shark those muscles relax and the jaw pops out like a really gross jack-in-the-box.

tldr: live goblin sharks are beautiful and they deserve at LEAST as many toys and plushes as the dead-shark variety!

[libre07]

[terrible-tentacle-theatre]

Are these boys cownose rays? They’re known for schooling and coming up near the surface in the water column, which is pretty unusual considering their benthic swimmers.

[thefabulousweirdtrotters]

[bunjywunjy]

Cursed fact about salmon sharks please 🥺

salmon sharks are small adorable relatives of the great white!

they do occasionally beach themselves, at which point they almost always get mistaken as “baby great whites” so if you see a clickbaity news article that goes LOCAL COUPLE RESCUES BABY GREAT WHITE FROM SANDBAR, chances are it was actually a salmon shark!

they can’t help it, they’re just babey.

[wittyusernamed]

This is clearly blessed look at that face

[catchymemes]

[dat-soldier]

[seatrench]

Giant Isopod (Bathynomus sp.)

(source)

[wizardsexmachine]

OOHHH FUUBLBLBLBLB

[thefabulousweirdtrotters]

These are Skeleton Panda Sea Squirts, also known as Ascidians. They’re marine invertebrate filter feeders that will probably end up in a Tim Burton film at some point.

[gentlesharks]

[fuliajulia]

[gentlesharks]