Hell as Habitat, part 3

Image: Dr. Bob Embley, NOAA

By now we know a lot about the hydrothermal vents and some of the weird creatures that occupy them. How they keep warm by the heat of volcanic water and are fed by bacteria that have learnt to make sugars out of stuff that usually kills everything. It's all very impressive. Sometimes, though, it's the sheer numbers that make your jaw drop.

We can see that deep sea mussels can cooperate to make an utter spectacle of themselves. Who else wants to outrageously flaunt their ability to survive Earth's most hellish habitat?

A Massive Slab of Robber Fly

Image: Mary Keim via Flickr

Good grief! This spindly piece of nastiness is a Robber Fly in the genus Diogmites. It seems that it's members of this particular genus that are adorned with the name Hanging Thief. You may remember that this was to denote their habit of dangling from a leg or two while the other limbs held onto prey, stabbed it to death with venom and then sucked out the insides. That's all fine, obviously. But look at it! Someone call the death penalty on this thing! We need another kind of hanging! It even has a horribly long neck to accommodate our ever so righteous indignation.

Me and My Shirt!

Bah!

I hate smiling. It's fine when there's an actual reason to smile, but grinning idiotically at a camera like an actor wildly gesticulating at a blue screen? Nah.

Still, it's tradition. Plus you get to see my snazzy shirt from ooshirts.com in the wild!

Southern Ground Hornbill

Image: Arno & Louise Wildlife via Flickr

Black and red. A colour combination of ultimate menace, minx and yes, even jinx. Yet this, the world's biggest hornbill, likes to mix it all up with a bit of wholesome, family values.

Happy Valentines!

I love you all! In a way that's charmingly and excitingly inappropriate but doesn't get all weird and disturbing.

Just in case your beautiful, thoughtful face is attractively deformed by befuddlement and WTF, I'll say it's a female Deep Sea Anglerfish with her attendant male. It's completely normal and natural!

Oooo, shirts!

So I get an email essentially saying "free custom t-shirts from ooshirts.com?"

At first I'm like:

"O RLY?"
"and you are?"
"so you claim, so you claim".

I checked it out a little and free shirts appeared to be an increasingly likely outcome, as opposed to "loads of money mysteriously disappeared from your account".

So I done it and I got 'em.

Cool!