Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Under the Sea


Ivan sent me an article about this creature in an e-mail entitled "meet the bone-eating snot-flower worm." When people send you things like this it means they are much too well acquainted with your bizarre interests. (Cf. This message my sister sent me recently: "I was watching Medium and the main character kept hearing pig squeals every time she saw a man bite into a sandwich that had bacon on it. And I thought of you. Don't you feel flattered?" Yes, yes I do.) Anyway, apparently this thing eats the bones of dead whales. Someone's got to.


The New York Times' Scientist at Work blog has been talking about nudibranchs lately. My aunt tells me the term "nudibranch" refers to naked gills. If I actually read the blog rather than just skimming through going "ooooh, aaaaah" at the pictures, I might have picked that up. Nudibranchs, also known by the less attractive term "sea slug," evidently come in endless fascinating variety, of which this is merely one example. Although you couldn't pay me to touch one, I think they're beeeoootiful. At some point when I go back and read the blog, I will tell you what they do. My guess is they eat stuff. Slowly.

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