ZOMG SMELLS RUNS FREE

The honest-to-goodness serious-ass real-time deal from ZOMG Smells. Usually driven by Holly. Not guaranteed to be safe for work unless your workplace is okay with us saying "shitlords". We will endeavor to be real at all times.

[dieselotherapy]

[birdnerdpearl]

WHEN I WAS IN BIOLOGY LAST YEAR I ENDED UP TALKING OUTLOUD ABOUT HOW I WANT THE UTERUS AND THE SPLEEN PLUSHIE AND NO ONE UNDERSTANDS HOW PERFECT THESE ARE EVERYONE TAKE ONE

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

the uterus looks like it’s about to drop some sick beats

[zomgsmells]

That ovary with its little fallopian is kind of making my day. ZOMG did assorted organs for Valentine's Day in 2010, and this makes me want to do it again.

[zomgsmells]

===> January Seventh: Ride

Okay, so it's the eighth. One hopes you'll excuse this one's shameful tardiness and feel the good wishes emnating from its unworthy self.

January's Seventh is....

The Thousand-Fingered hand of Fortune Crosses its Fingers

This one was fun to make and to do the art for. There's only forty fingers but you can imagine the rest of them skulking around.

Also, because I've seen this wonderful goddamn seal blebbing around for a while and hadn't really had an occasion to post about it, allow me to share it with you. Bleb Seal is us. Me. You. The world. Bleb Seal knows it's cold and grody and sucks and it DUN WANA but...it gotta. And it do. BLEB!

[asapscience]

The biggest snail on Earth?  It’s the largest species of gastropod in American waters, anyway. Lovingly referred to as the Florida horse conch, Triplofusus giganteus is a marine mollusc, whose enormous size and orange body makes it distinguishable on the ocean floor.

[zomgsmells]

VERY CONCH, MUCH ADMIRE! Bright orange body being good camo in a grey-brown environment: not actually weird at all. Suspended solids in seawater absorb light, and so do dissolved minerals. And once you get past all that, water itself absorbs the remaining visible spectrum starting with the shortest wavelengths--first reds, then oranges, and so on down the line. Scuba divers tend to notice this as they descend.

Short-wavelength colors on marine critters in shallow water are often threat displays or Batesian mimicry (a harmless beastie fronting like a dangerous one). Short-wavelength colors in deeper water serve the dual purpose of blending in with sandy or silty seafloor and offering the same don't-touch-me warning if it should find itself somewhere with enough visible light to reveal it. This conch truly has it all. WOW.

Also, it's a boulder with a huge red tonguefoot and as far as we're concerned it's already a rock/water Pokemon. Certainly more deserving than Barbaracle. Look at this thing.

C'mon. Gooseneck barnacle vs HORSE CONCH. You know what needs to happen.

[rhamphotheca]

A 6.6x image of a benthic fish egg cluster,

photo by Dr. Jaime Gomez-Gutierrez, Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Marinas, Mexico. 

[planktonforlife]

Also plz enjoy that pretty blue blood there; not all fish have it. It’s copper-based! Instead of hemoglobin, the metallic oxygen-carrying protein is called hemocyanin. Since it’s free-floating in the blood instead of being incorporated into a cell, it oxygenates more easily. This is important—in low-oxygen water, like these benthic fish live in, maintaining the circulation needed tor hemoglobin requires more energy than the fish can spare. Hemocyanin carries less oxygen (one molecule) than hemoglobin (four) but it does it very efficiently.

It’s only blue when it’s oxygenated, though. Otherwise it’s clear!

Octopuses have it too, and so do most other molluscs. Here’s something neat about octopuses directly related to their hemocyanin: octopuses are musclebeasts. Really strong. An octopus can lift about three times its body weight, which is especially rad as hell without the bracing structure that a skeleton or exoskeleton provides. But…because hemocyanin doesn’t carry much oxygen, it means those octopuses run out of gas quickly. Basically, they have shitty stamina.

And yeah, I’m pretty much mentioning this in the hopes of of humorously accurate tentacle porn. :)

^ runs the 3-minute mile if you get me

[zomgsmells]

Please enjoy this weirdly macabre time-lapse imagery of Comet ISON's close approach to the sun and its slingshotty crumble into a smear of drifting motes.

We've been keeping a hobbyist eye on it for months now, but it looks like the scent we developed to commemorate its survival might have been a little premature. We're not quite Spacebat-tribute-video inconsolable here, but definitely a little misty. We enjoyed you while you lasted, ISON.

(We'll probably figure out something else to do with the scent tho. ;) )