Today is International Vulture Awareness Day.
I’m trying to figure out how to celebrate it. My wife is away all day, but when she comes home for dinner, maybe I should serve up some roadkill? Someone has to have a better suggestion.
I think it’s a portrait of my mood right now.
They might have properties of a material that would interest an engineer, but I’m still not putting on a shirt made of fire ants.
Houston is paying it today. Whose city will pay for it next?
The Republican administration is going to make everything worse for everybody. Trump rolled back regulations intended to support better standards for infrastructure projects — he apparently thinks the way to encourage investment in infrastructure is to allow it to be half-assed infrastructure.
An executive order issued by Trump earlier this month revoked an Obama-era directive that had established flood-risk standards for federally funded infrastructure projects built in areas prone to flooding or subject to the effects of sea-level rise – like many of those now sinking in Texas.
Houston already has some of the laxest building regulations for structures in potential flood zones and the president wants to spread that policy across the US.
“It makes no sense,” Steve Ellis, vice-president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said. “Taxpayers deserve to have the assurance that if they provide assistance to a community to build or rebuild, it’s done in a way that isn’t going to cost taxpayers money in the future.”
Setting better flood-risk standards wouldn’t have helped Houston — Texas has been busy doing things half-assedly for generations, for short term gain — but they would help build for the future. If we have one.
A fly that thinks it’s a beetle. Doesn’t it know that goes against God’s plan?
First, a little background:
When squid mate, a male transfers its sperm to a female enclosed in complex structures called spermatophores. These are accumulated in the spermatophoric sac, a storage organ inside the mantle cavity, before ejaculation through the penis. Squid that spawn in shelf waters and epipelagic waters of the open ocean usually have short penes hidden completely inside the mantle. Males pick the ejaculated spermatophores from inside their mantle with a specially modified arm called the hectocotylus, to transfer them to the female. Females spawning in shallow water have special places for spermatophore attachment on the body, both externally (skin ring around the mouth, and back of the head) and internally (oviducal gland openings near gills) (Nesis, 1995). As female squid lack a vagina, the use of a highly articulated arm (hectocotylus) for transfer and placement of spermatophores is more precise than by means of the comparatively poorly articulated penis.
So male squid have penises deep in their mantle. Many species have short penises, and they also have a specialized arm, the hectocotylus, that they use to reach in to their own mantle to scoop up ejaculate and then place it in the appropriate place in a female.
Other species lack the hectocotylus, but instead have a long penis, as some investicators discovered. They are also capable of erections, which was a surprise.
A mature moribund male of the greater hooked squid Onykia ingens (Smith, 1881) (38.5 cm mantle length, 1180 g body mass) was caught on the Patagonian slope south of the Falkland Islands (July 2006, 53°20′S, 59°31′W, 1050 m depth). When the mantle of the squid was opened for maturity assessment during processing of the catch onboard, the penis of the squid, which previously had extended only slightly beyond the mantle margin, suddenly started to erect. It became rigid and quickly elongated to 67 cm total length, almost the same length as the whole body of the animal (mantle, head and arms; Fig. 1). Immediately after elongation, several spermatophores were ejaculated from the penis tip.
So not only do they have penises capable of erection, they can get erections when dead and partially dissected, which means I can now show you a zombie squid dick pic.
Mature males of deep-water squid Onykia ingens with cut-open mantles showing non-erect (A) and fully erect (B) penes.
(blame Tommy Leung)
Arkhipkin AI, Laptikhovsky VV (2010) Observation of penis elongation in Onykia ingens: implications for spermatophore transfer in deep-water squid, Journal of Molluscan Studies 76(3):299–300.
If you’ve ever wondered what squid ink is made of, here’s your answer:
Generally, cephalopod ink includes melanin, enzymes related to melanin production, catecholamines, peptidoglycans, free amino acids and metals.
But mostly melanin. And mucus.
Mano Singham is unenthused about the eclipse. Same here. It’s neat, would be an interesting phenomenon to observe, but I’m not going to travel out of my way to witness a few minutes of darkness. I also wouldn’t be seeing it as a scientist, but as a tourist, nothing more.
Fortunately, xkcd seems to share our views.
So if you’re going to make an effort to see the eclipse, have fun! Take pictures!
If you’re not going to see the eclipse, have fun! Enjoy a nice August day!
The sequel is going to go a bit dark: this is a deep ocean sponge. It’s dark and ominous, and it’s also carnivorous, with sticky spines for capturing and killing passing animals.
I think that thing has been waiting for me in a lot of my nightmares.
