as an empath there are many bony fish species i can't make eye contact with because their emotions flood my brain at such high pressure it gives me nosebleeds but cartilaginous fish are no problem as 700 years ago i was a smalltooth sawfish
Amazing how we keep discovering new things. Back in my day barreleyes like Opisthoproctus soleatus looked like this
because they were only ever known from dead specimens dredged up from the deep.
Except when a barreleye (Macropinna microstoma) was actually filmed alive in 2008, turns out it actually has a transparent dome over its head that collapses at the surface.
The dome helps it gather even more light into those big upward-facing eyes! It’s like it’s wearing a deep sea helmet!!
And then you look at the old illustrations and realize the deflated membrane was there all along, you just didn’t realize it!
I know the blobfish is the gold standard for “fish that looks completely different at the surface” but this is one of the ones that I knew of as a kid and blew my mind when I saw the live footage.
Next time we’ll talk about gulper eels
A transient vernal pool provides easy feeding opportunities to dinosaurs big and small
(alt version)
This is Dendrocephalus proeliator, the rare fairy shrimp that I co-discovered in 2019. This is a mature male in a 1/4 teaspoon. They are found only in certain soils in central Florida and they refuse to hatch unless they have their special soil chemistry intact
A very curious Pyroraptor spots something interesting (a cycad seed) on the forest floor, and is just...tickled pink by it for some reason.
Whitetip reef shark (Triaenodon obesus)
Oh to be in a pile of sharks
So I looked up “amazing” under the gif search and this little guy came up
Wildlife in North Carolina. June 1964. Illustration by Duane Raver Jr.
