zooillogical

[zooillogical]

The olm is an exclusively subterranean and underwater species, and as such it's difficult to make field observations. Individuals in captivity have been observed to live up to 68 years, and in the wild they may have a life expectancy of over 100 years. ©

[zooillogical]

This fossil of a frog-legged beetle from Colorado is so perfectly preserved that you can still see the pattern on its wing cases! It was named Pulchritudo attenboroughi to honor David Attenborough.

Here's a digital reconstruction of how it would look with wings closed:

Source: Krell & Vitalli

[zooillogical]

Another great campaign to support is Ahmed and his twin brother Abdulraman @ahmedalnabeeh11. Their mother Tahani, who is 62, has chronic health problems that have been worsening in the harsh conditions and heat the family has been enduring since their house was destroyed. Ahmed is asking for help to evacuate himself, Abdulraman, their younger brother Karam, and Tahani. You might have seen some of Ahmed's posts on here, but the campaign is still less than 2/3rds funded, and their situation is growing more desperate.

This campaign is #218 on @/el-shab-hussein and @/nabulsi's spreadsheet.

€17,940 / €30,000

[zooillogical]

Komodo dragons have iron-tipped teeth, new study shows

Komodo dragons, the world’s largest species of lizard, have iron-tipped teeth that help them to rip their prey apart, according to new research. The metal is concentrated in the cutting edge and tips of their curved, serrated teeth, staining them orange, scientists wrote in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Komodo dragons are native to Indonesia and weigh around 80 kilograms (176 pounds) on average. They eat almost any kind of meat and are known as deadly predators...

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/24/science/komodo-dragons-iron-teeth-scli-intl/index.html

[zooillogical]

“X bodily fluid is just filtered blood!” buddy I hate to break it to you but ALL of the fluids in your body are filtered blood. Your circulatory system is how water gets around your body. It all comes out of the blood (or lymph, which is just filtered blood).

[zooillogical]

Shark News!! Fossil of an ancient shark that swam in the age of dinosaurs solves centuries-long mystery

🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈

[zooillogical]

sometimes I think about how red is the first color in the visible light spectrum to be absorbed in ocean water

and how many deep-sea creatures evolved to be red as a stealth adaptation, making them near invisible when there’s little to no light present

and it makes me think. If there’s never any visible light present in these animals’ lifetimes, if no ROV shines a little flashlight in depths that would otherwise not have light, would these animals ever get the opportunity to actually be red? that might be a stupid question.

imagine being a little deep sea creature and having no idea you’re red until something comes along and shines a light on you except you still wouldn’t be able to tell because you’re probably colorblind. anyway. I don’t know where I was going with this post

[zooillogical]

how terrifying metamorphosis must be for the caterpillar has no concept of what it is doing, or what a butterfly is, or what will happen to it as it spins itself the cocoon. we r more alike than different

[zooillogical]

people dont fear herons as much as they should

[zooillogical]

yak scared of pumpkin not clickbait

[zooillogical]

This special boy was discovered 5 miles under the ocean and he looks like he's having the time of his life

[zooillogical]

animals in art: snakes

[zooillogical]

One day a little while ago the juncos were so busy with eating and there were so many of them, but they were also accompanied by some American tree sparrows, these guys. Apparently they're often seen at feeders together. Known for it, even.

Anyway, both were so abundant and busy so I got a bunch of photos, hence why there's nine in this post. And still more! Which one is your favourite? 👀

🏷️ • 🖼️ • ☕ • 🛒 • please reblog if you enjoyed this post!

[zooillogical]

Lions in Namibia’s northwest, renowned for eking out a living amid the Namib Desert’s harsh gravel plains and endless dunes, have a history of feeding on marine species, such as Cape fur seals, beached whales, and cormorants. Remarkably, they are the only lions known to target marine prey. But in the 1980s, the desert lions abandoned the coast after local farmers wiped out most of the population.

When lions returned in 2002, it was a sign that the population was recovering. But the animals were no longer hunting marine prey, and lion ecologist Philip Stander, who founded DLCT, worried that the population had lost the knowledge.

In the last eight years, though, three orphaned lionesses, known to the researchers as Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, have led a coastal hunting revival on the beaches around Torra Bay.

[…] The lionesses started targeting coastal prey in 2015, when a drought decimated the park’s mountain zebras, springboks, oryxes, and ostriches. To replace these dietary staples, the young lionesses turned to marine birds, mainly cormorants, flamingos, and red-billed teals.

Then, in 2018, DLCT scientists spotted the lionesses hunting fur seals—some of the first lions to do so in four decades. In a subsequent diet study that spanned 18 months, Stander observed that marine foods, particularly cormorants, seals, and flamingos, accounted for 86 percent of the lionesses’ diet.

A radio collared lioness with a bloody mouth feasting on the remains of her kill along the seashore. Photo by Naude Dreyer

[zooillogical]

Serval (Leptailurus serval), MELANISTIC, family Felidae, Amboseli National Park, Kenya

Photograph by nicolas.urlacher.photographer

[zooillogical]

Hi,

I saw your post about barrel bugs and I wanted to ask if you know more interesting marine parasites?

(Personally I think that dendrogasters are quite cool)

Dendrogasters are pretty cool! I don't know much about them but they look really... odd.

ID: a picture of Dendrogaster showing its unsual body plan, with its branching structures that end in spherical growths. It is light yellow to orange in colour. It is set against a black background and part of a ruler can be seen.

There's a whole host (haha) of interesting marine parasites, and I won't go through all of them now but here's a few that you might like.

Rhizocephala are a parasitic group of barnacles that live on crabs. They have no internal organs except gonads, a few muscles and the remnants of a nervous system. In fact, their only distinguishable bodyy structure is the female reproductive organs, which sit outside of its host's body. Here's a really cool drawing of the filaments which it sends out into its host's body to absorb nutrients directly from their blood:

ID: a black and white drawing of a crab infected with the parasite Rhizocephala. It shows the underside of the crab with the externa (female gonads) visible and a network of filaments that the parasite has grown throughout the host body.

I'm sure you've heard of tongue lice, so I won't labour the point too much, but spark notes is that they attach to the gill arches or tongue of a fish, then cut off the circulation to the tongue so that it withers off. It then replaces the fish's tongue.

ID: an image of a tongue eating louse inside a fish's mouth. The louse is pale, almost white in colour and has two black eyes. The fish is like :O

Finally, this isn't a marine parasite but you'll see why I include it in a second, but the tongue worms (not to be confused with the tongue eating louse). They are actually terrestrial and mostly infect the respiratory tracts of vertebrates (sometimes, though very rarely, us). What I find interesting is that they have no circulatory, excretory or respiratory organs and rely soley on the host to do all these things. Isn't that cool?

ID: a drawing of a tongue worm (Pentastomida). It has a segmented body that ends in a point. At the other end there are 4 stubby limb-like structures.

If you're still reading , you might be wondering why I picked these ones and why the tongue worm is awkwardly shoved in there? Because @chowaniec I have tricked you; this is not a post about marine parasites, it's a post about the diversity of crustaceans. THAT'S RIGHT, ALL OF THESE ANIMALS, WITH THEIR WEIRD LIFE CYCLES AND UNCRUSTACEANY BODIES ARE COUSINS OF CRABS AND SHRIMP AND LOBSTERS. AND THAT INCLUDES YOUR ORIGINAL SUBMISSION OF DENDROGASTER, WHICH IS WHAT GAVE ME THIS IDEA IN THE FIRST PLACE.

All of these lil guys just have highly specialised bodies that have lost many of the features we associate with crustaceans so that they can be better parasites. It's really only though careful analysis of their lifecycles and genetics that we can even determine them to be crustaceans at all.

I wanted to showcase the immense diversity of crustaceans and the weird and wonderful flexiblity of evolution. I also wanted to show you why morphological criteria for classification fall short, even beyond the "coconuts are mammals" meme.

Thanks for the submission, and thanks for being patient with me! I know this one took a little while longer to receive but I hope it was worth it.

[zooillogical]

Snail shell PNGs.