The Goblin Shark is a fascinating – not to mention slightly freaky-looking – creature, and this is a great video of one doing it’s thing, including some good footage of it’s signature protrusible jaw.

When it’s not being used – unsuccessfully – to fend off annoying divers, that jaw shoots out to grab small, fast moving prey that has been detected by the battery of bio-electrical sense organs in the elongated snout. It’s much more energy efficient than trying to move an entire 11’ shark at the same speed, and probably also helps to bring the jaws, which would otherwise be obstructed by the snout, into a useful biting position.

Hat-tip to Cephalopodcast for the video. (There’s also some interesting stuff about Megalodon (possibly the largest predator the Earth has ever seen) at that link, in case you missed it in the news recently.)

A while ago I wrote about Carl Zimmer’s use of the colloquial name daddy-longlegs when referring to harvestmen, and how it hurt the international accessibility of his writing. Honestly, it wasn’t a big deal at the time (although it did bring in a celebrity commenter!) and it looks utterly insignificant compared to this. I’m going to assume that Dr Andrew Ross is as competent as his position of collection manager of fossil invertebrates and plants at the Natural History Museum in London would suggest — which is very — and that he simply wasn’t careful enough about his use of words in interview. During the course of the article, he refers to this harvestman specimen both as a spider and in a roundabout way as an insect as well. Not only are both incorrect, but they’re also mutually exclusive. It’s a real shame that given the opportunity to get the word out and educate the public a little, a senior employee of the Natural History Museum managed, instead, to misinform the public through something as simple as poor word choice.

Luckily there was a safety net this time; the BBC’s journalist, Rebecca Morelle, clearly knows her stuff, and she pre-empts his comments with the correct definition; that harvestmen are arachnids that are closely related to, without actually being, spiders. I just can’t help feeling that it shouldn’t fall to a journalist to correct the expert she quotes.

Photo from The Metro.

I don’t know: no sooner do I start to think I might be doing OK at this taxonomy thing, than someone comes along and knocks me right back down to peg one (to mix my metaphors.)

On Monday, I was able to spot the error in Kevin Z’s WTF without even thinking about it¹ (Echinoderms are not a subset of Insecta; they’re a phylum all their own, and while I can never keep up with whether Insecta is a class or a sub-phylum this week, I do know for sure that it doesn’t contain an entire other phylum. Oh, and it’s not even like Insecta is a subset of Echinodermata; it’s part of Arthropoda)

So there I was, feeling pretty good about myself, when Carl Zimmer comes along and (amidst an entirely fascinating article) hits me with something I never expected: one quarter of all mammal species are accounted for by bats!

That’s staggering. I had no idea they were so successful or so diverse. I’d always thought of them as being slightly odd outliers on the graph of mammal survival strategies; I mean, stretching your arms out hugely and flapping around using sonar to catch insects is just so far from what you expect mammals to do that it didn’t even occur to me that a significant proportion of them might be doing it anyway.

Obviously a quarter of all species is not even remotely the same thing as a quarter of all individuals, but still — how did I not know this? I guess I just haven’t been paying attention.

1. Well, obviously not entirely without thinking about it. [↩]

I found this somewhere on the internet recently, but I forget where. Thankfully the little guy looks more embarrassed than hurt at the end of it.

Those tireless defenders of seriously odd lifeforms everywhere, the Bleiman Brothers, have the the most awesome photo ever over on Zooilogix. It’s a photo of a Hermit Crab. In a glass shell. Seriously, you have to check it out!

The BBC is reporting on some new research that show the characteristic chirp of the Anna’s Hummingbird is most likely made by vibrations of the tail feathers during high speed descents. It’s interesting stuff, and I’ve got to say, I’m both worried and intrigued by the statement (emphasis added):

“We use high-speed video of diving birds, experimental manipulation on wild birds and laboratory experiments on individual feathers to show that the dive sound is made by tail feathers,” they explained.

By now you’ll have all noticed the stories about a newly discovered breed of giant sea scorpion, which terrorised aquatic environments 300 million years ago. The BBC and CNN have both reported on it. Sloppily.

Quite aside from Kevin Z’s valid criticisms of the CNN coverage, the thing both sites have utterly failed to mention is that this isn’t that remarkable. I mean, it’s good, interesting science, and the team involved have done a great job, but two-and-a-half metre sea scorpions are not a new discovery. In fact it’s only because this recent work has lowered the estimated size of a previous find by 40cm that this new discovery is considered the largest yet found. I know it makes for better news if you can make out this is some sort of amazing discovery of hitherto unknown giant bugs, but that doesn’t justify neglecting to mention the background to the work.

This is an interesting case. The family of a woman who died after being bitten while handling a rattlesnake during a religious service have sued the hospital she was taken to for failing to correctly treat her. They claim

After being taken into the hospital at 8:09 p.m., Long said she was having trouble breathing, and asked for oxygen. Hospital employees gave her a portable, oscillating fan as they allegedly “snickered and made derogatory comments” to employees – and Long’s family – about the religious beliefs and circumstances under which she was bitten.

Her blood pressure dropped; her heart rate went up; her neck, face and tongue swelled; and she went into shock. However, a doctor failed to properly treat her and did not put in a tube to help her breathe, according to the lawsuit.

At 8:28 p.m., hospital personnel contacted the air ambulance service. When the helicopter arrived 12 minutes later, the crew asked the doctor to put in a tube to help Long breathe, but the doctor said her airway was not the problem and told the flight crew to get her to Lexington quickly, the suit says.

Long’s heart stopped on the way. She was pronounced dead at 10:50 p.m. at the University of Kentucky Medical Center.

Serious allegations. While, personally, I think anyone who deliberately antagonised a lethally venomous animal for recreation pretty much deserves anything they get, it is not the the place of the hospital to take that stance, and they have a responsibility to offer treatment, regardless of how the injury was sustained. I’m no toxicologist, but I do know that most rattlesnake venom attacks the heart and/or blood directly, so the cause of death was likely not her breathing difficulty, just like the Doctor said, although that doesn’t justify the attitude of the hospital staff, if this report is to be believed.

The article doesn’t make it clear, but I’d be willing to bet that while the deceased’s family are suing the hospital for failing to correctly treat her, they won’t be overly down on God for letting the snake bite her in the first place.

It’s still a couple of months before this years cephalopodmas, but already my hopes are raised that this may be the year the Great Cthulhu stirs from his ancient slumber to consume us all. See; he sends forth his minions from the depths to strike fear into the very hearts of men.

One thing I’m not clear on though; is it still an octopus? ;)