Showing 33 posts tagged marine biology
What can we learn from a tiny seahorse that might help us make stronger robotics or armor in the future? UCSD Materials Science Ph.D. student Michael Porter explains what his team has learned about the flexible structure of a seahorse’s prehensile tail.
There are more fish swimming, including these sea dragons and other syngnathidae, in the archives.
via Gizmodo.
What if you didn’t send food down to your stomach to digest it, but you sent your stomach up to your food instead? This is exactly what the sunflower seastar does. With 16 to 24 arms and 15,000 tube feet to help grab, open and eat clams, snails, abalone, sea cucumbers, and sea urchins.
The sunflower star is the largest sea star in the world. It’s also one of the fastest animals on the ocean bottom, crawling one metre… a minute, which may not seem that fast to us but is speedy if you’re a clam just chillin’ on the sand.
You can read more about the sunflower seastar at aquablog.ca.
From KQED Quest, the challenges and new research being explored by marine biologists that breed, collect and care for jellyfish and siphonophores at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California.
Learn more about the diverse family tree of jelly-like creatures in this beautiful HD video from the Aquarium’s Research Institute, or watch more about marine biology.
A preview from The Deep Sea, ep11 of the BBC’s Nature’s Microworlds:
Steve Backshall takes us to a place few have ever visited - the deep sea. 99 per cent of the space on Earth inhabited by life is under the ocean and almost 90 per cent of this is deeper than a kilometre, a place of perpetual darkness and crushing pressure. Far from being lifeless, the vast inner space of our planet contains an extraordinary array of beautiful and bizarre creatures, from 40m-long jellyfish to grotesque angler fish and vampire squid. Our journey from the sunlit surface waters to the deepest reaches of the abyss reveals how life persists in such a hostile world.
‘Tis the season for scary creatures with toothy grins. From the team at MBARI, deep-sea fish with some serious teeth!
Listed in the order they appear: Aristostomias scintillans (Shiny loosejaw), Anoplogaster cornuta (Fangtooth), Tactostoma macropus (Longfin dragonfish), Chaenophryne, Chauliodus macouni (Viperfish), Tactostoma macropus (Longfin dragonfish), Chauliodus macouni (Viperfish), Tactostoma macropus (Longfin dragonfish).
