What. The. Hell?

Someone has said it's a cnidarian called a "Deepstaria enigmatica," which taxonomic designation filled me with skepticism.

But apparently, they're a real thing.

Seriously Nature, is it really necessary to be this weird?

I've mentioned before how I feel about radial symmetry, right?




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Science continues indescribably cool: Planet-size Fireball Hits Jupiter and Cnidarian Notes

So, y'all may have read that this week I had a go at a little Mediterranean hunter/gathering. My sea urchin experiment turned out pretty well, and while I was cooking the risotto, I had a good look at the mysterious insides of those beautiful little shells.

With shellfish, one is accustomed to things like oysters and clams. You open it up, and there's the little fleshy thing. The animal that occupies its little house.

But with urchins, I searched in vain for anything that resembled a body.

First you cut off most of the spines around the mouth opening on the bottom. Then you cut them in half along the "equator". A burst of water falls out, and inside there is really only this sort of brown membrane stuff. You swish all that away under the tap, and what's left, these five orange-coloured bits, is what you eat.


But, I reasoned, the thing eats, as we see above. So if it has, indeed, very active and complex mouth parts built into its shell, where's all the internal stuff that goes along with a digestive system? There just isn't anything in there.

A great mystery, and further proof that there is something funny about the radially symmetrical.

(Well, ok. A small mystery, but interesting.)

And...


Was Jupiter put in this solar system to run blockage for the earth?

A huge fireball was spotted on Jupiter in yet another collision from space caught on camera and video by amateur astronomers. This new impact on Jupiter comes less than a year after a spectacular crash on July 19, 2009, when what scientist now think was an asteroid about 1,600 feet wide slammed into the planet.

That collision created a massive bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean.The new Jupiter crash occurred on June 3 and was spotted by skywatcher Anthony Wesley in Australia and fellow amateur astronomer Christopher Go in the Philippines. Wesley's photos show the Jupiter fireball blazing in the atmosphere of the gas giant planet. So far, no visible scar in the clouds has been reported from the event.

"a massive bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean"

Holy crap! Are you serious?!

Here's some footage:

(Sorry about the sizing problem. There was no smaller version.)

"Since 1941 many astronomers have thought of Jupiter as a protective big brother for planet Earth -a celestial shield, deflecting asteroids and comets away from the inner Solar System. This long-standing belief ...has been challenged by the first in a series of studies evaluating the impact risk to the Earth posed by different groups of object."

I guess astronomers watch disaster movies too.

Also...


This just in on the cephalopod/cnidarian front: the world's only "immortal" animal.

Turritopsis nutricula, a small saltwater animal or hydrozoan related to jellyfish and corals.

Like most jellyfish, Turritopsis nutricula undergoes two distinct stages in its life cycle: The polypoid or immature stage, when it’s just a small stalk with feeding tentacles; and the medusa or mature stage when the only 1mm-long polyps asexually produce jellyfish.

Waddya mean "immortal"?

Well get this:

The adult "medusa, or jellyfish, form can revert to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature. It is the only known case of a metazoan capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary stage".

So, imagine you start getting to the stage in life where you're a bit tired most of the time, you've begun to resign yourself to the pot belly. The 30 year-old you work with is "too young" to consider dating...

so you just think hard enough, click those sensible heels together three times, and Voi-La! 18 again!

And this time, you know enough not to screw it up.


H/Ts to Binks and Stratford (you ass!)



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Now, I realise that this thing, technically is bilaterally symmetrical. And I see that, technically it has four, not eight legs, that are not actually growing directly out of its head...

but it's icky and slimy and one wonders just what the heck it is for in the greater scheme of things.


The first thing I thought of was, "What has that BAD MAN done to that bunny?!"

Radial Symmetry: bad

Bilateral Symmetry: good.

An 'immortal' jellyfish is swarming through the world's oceans, according to scientists.

"Immortal"?!

Some cnidarians are more equal than others I guess.

tx. E.S.

Defend Triploblastic Rights!

From Wiki:

A germ layer is a collection of cells, formed during animal embryogenesis. Germ layers are only really pronounced in the vertebrates. However, all animals more complex than sponges (eumetazoans and agnotozoans) produce two or three primary tissue layers (sometimes called primary germ layers).

Animals with radial symmetry, like cnidarians, produce two called ectoderm and endoderm, making them diploblastic. Animals with bilateral symmetry produce a third layer in-between called mesoderm, making them triploblastic.

DOWN WITH DIPLOBLASTIC LIFE FORMS!

The forces of bilateral symmetry are holding their own for now, but FOR HOW MUCH LONGER?!

How much longer before we start having radial-symmetry diversity training curricula in schools? How much longer before we start seeing hug-a-squiddy campaigns from left-leaning politicians?

How much longer before we have radially symmetrical MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT!

Open your eyes people!

They let children play on this thing!!

From the most evil website on the net


In case there are more than five people visiting this blog who may not have been following over the last five years or so, I offer an old post from The Devout Life to explain my growing concern over the cephalopod threat.

The trouble with the ocean is that things that live in it don't have to worry about gravity all that much. It just encourages the worst sort of morphological excesses.

I'm calling for a moratorium on all non-bilaterally symmetrical lifeform development and a thorough review of all planned research.

Join me in the anti-tentacle movement, before it is too late.

"I saw them come for the sperm whales, but I was not a sperm whale, so I did nothing. Then I saw them come for the walruses and other land/sea mammals, but I was exclusively a land-dweller so I didn't do anything..."

Kraken

Further to my efforts to become a poetry non-philistine, I offer,


The Kraken

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

Alfred Lord Tennyson





I am pleased to see that he had the correct attitude towards the radially symmetrical in our midst.

And make no mistake, they are HERE.

I should have known

As if his weird obsession with teaching Catholics that their Faith is in vain were not enough,

Paul Zachary "PZ" Myers (born March 9, 1957) is an American biology professor at the University of Minnesota Morris (UMM) and the author of the science blog Pharyngula. He is currently an associate professor of biology at UMM,[1] works with zebrafish in the field of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo), and also cultivates an interest in cephalopods.

He's a Radial Symmetrist!

Aaaagh!

I should have realised it when I saw the little icon of an octopus on his blog.

How more proof DO WE NEED?!


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(For those who think I've lost my marbles, this is an in-joke for people who have read me more than three years.)