What makes the dark shyshark (Haploblepharus pictus) so shy? When threatened, this critter might curl up into a ring and cover its eyes with its tail. Scientists think this defensive posture makes it harder for predators to gulp the dark shyshark down for an easy meal. Found in parts of the southeast Atlantic Ocean, this shark can grow to about 22 in (55.8 cm) long. Its diet includes crustaceans, mollusks, and fish.
Photo: Raoulco, CC BY-NC 4.0, iNaturalist
アオミノウミウシ-神奈川、東京、埼玉、千葉から伊豆の海への玄関口 小田原ダイビングスクール
An entirely new structure of light is helping to measure chirality in molecules more accurately and robustly than ever before, in a major potential step for the pharmaceutical industry. Published in Nature Photonics, a team from King's College London and the Max Born Institute have created an entirely new structure of light that traces out a chiral curve over time. This chiral curve has different shapes at different points in space, forming a vortex structure. By interacting with chiral particles it moves through over time, the new "chiral vortex" provides an accurate and robust form of measurement.
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Anomalocaris? Isn't that the vice president
I met some relatives of my beloved leatherleaf slugs in the mangroves of Singapore, the onch slugs! they’re perhaps some of the slowest-moving animals I’ve ever encountered; this is one in a hurry:
the species pictured is a Platevindex, which are particularly interesting to me since their backs are studded with extra eyes! the dorsal papillae each have a little black dot that’s a photoreceptor, which helps the slug detect changes in light exposure.
onchidiids are marine animals, living on costal rocks and in mangroves, but breathe air and spend much of their time out of the water. like the leatherleafs, they’ve got a dry, tough hide that maintains water balance, but Platevindex takes that to an extreme—when I picked one up, it felt like a vulcanized rubber tire!
Deep sea Sept 17- Oct 8
Squid Class Oct 15-Nov 12
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhekuli_Biya
Did you know that Chiton (specifically the wandering meatloaf chiton) produce the hardest known biologically made material? Their shells are also covered in microscopic lenses that combine to almost make their body into one compound eye. Why they need to look so much, who knows?
Even though they have a clam like shell, with 2 sections, they are in fact snails (class Gastropoda). They are marine snails, found throughout the Ino-Pacific. There are 6 species which are various shades of green. Julia are tiny, only reaching a length of up to 6 mm long. They feed on algae, and incorporate the chloroplasts from the algae into their bodies. Some of the chloroplasts remain photosynthetic, and the snails are able to feed on the products of this photosynthesis. This process is called kleptoplasty.
Photos: Julia sp. from Australia - profmollusc | Inaturalist cc; Julia exquisita from Reuinion Island - Alexandre LaPorte | Wikipedia cc