Snottite

Oh dear. Are you sure that was a cave you entered? Or was it a really huge nasal passage? It's an easy mistake to make!

Bathysaurus

Image: NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program, INDEX-SATAL 2010

You don't get lions and tigers in the sea. You barely get crocodiles, either. Go a little deeper and you even run out of sharks! Here is where Bathysaurus reigns supreme.

The Hidden Life in Pond Water

ALIENS! They're all aliens! Aliens from outer space! Either that or pond water. I always get outer space and pond water mixed up. It's probably the main reason why my astronautical ambitions have been so thoroughly frustrated all these years. There are only so many times you can ruin a good spacesuit before the powers that be lose all confidence in you. That's what I've discovered.

But enough about me.

Do you remember Daniel Stoupin and his fantastic video Microscopic Worlds: Life That We Don't See? It was an amazing glimpse into the ridiculous otherness of microscopic life.

Well, he's only gone and done it again!

Daniel Stoupin
A little more about The Hidden Life in Pond Water
Check out his microscopic photography!

There are lot's of our old friends, too!

Water Fleas, those transparent crustaceans in all their jittery, hyperactive glory (unless and until they get eaten alive);
Bryozoa, colonial filter filters who are perhaps the closest any non-cnidarian can get to the weirdness of coral;
Ostracods, those crustacean heroes in a whole-shell;
Hydra, those Towers of Malice, stinging hunger and expandable gut. You even see them eat! Horror.

There are also Water Mites, which we barely touched on a million years ago (rounded to the nearest million), with their flailing, feathery legs;
Insect nymphs, larvae and pupae in all their abhorrent detail;
and Ciliates, those protists with their cilia waving away to draw food toward them.

And of course, glittering baubles of algae. Where would we be without glittering baubles of algae? Probably on a moonbase, staring down at a dead and desolate world. But we're not! So I guess I don't need to be an astronaut after all. I can just go to the pond.

Chocolate Chip Starfish

Image: wildsingapore via Flickr
Protoreaster nodosus

Run, run as fast you can,
You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!

Stroll, stroll as slow as you wish,
I barely move, I'm the Chocolate Chip Starfish!

The Blues II

Image: Pierre Dalous
Alcedo atthis

I hope you're feeling suitably miserable and depressed in preparation of tomorrow's solemnities!

It's Blue Monday! Mathematically proven by some PR guy to be the most miserable day of the year because it's cold, Christmas is gone and you've already failed your New Year's resolution to stop being such a horrible failure.

Yaaaaay!


Of course, there are creatures out there who are blue all year round. They do quite well on it, too.

Unidentified Floating Object

Alien spaceship with tentacles attached?