Science is wonderful because it expands our knowledge and understanding of the world. But sometimes that’s also terrifying – there are a lot of strange, creepy-looking creatures and phenomenon out there, and some of us may sleep better knowing less about them. But since it’s Halloween, let’s celebrate by taking a closer look with a new Strange Science Guessing Game!
It’s been a while since we’ve run one of these, so here’s a refresher: Each page will present a bizarre science image without context. Try to guess what it is! Once you think you’ve got it, click ahead to the next page and read about the horrifying reality. If you manage to get them all, you’re truly an expert on obscure science knowledge.
So without further ado, here’s our first image:
While this might look like some unknowable horror from a Lovecraft story, it’s actually a tiny creature that you’d be hard pressed to notice at all. This is a Daphina, a genus of planktonic creatures from the Cladocera order, otherwise known as a water flea. Instead of fussing with your dog’s hair, water fleas hang out in everything from freshwater lakes to acidic ponds with their transparent exoskeletons.
While acid water apparently isn’t a big deal to Daphina, researchers have noticed that intoxicants are a little different. You see, in most animals, addictive substances like alcohol and nicotine have immediate effects on the nervous system. But in water fleas you can literally see those effects through the exoskeleton, specifically in their altered heart rates. In other words, there’s an actual experimental process where they water fleas are exposed to alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and even adrenaline to see what happens.
Scientists are wonderful, aren’t they? They find a marvelous creature with a translucent exterior, and wonder “Can I get it drunk?”
The good news is water fleas are a rare test animal which can be safely returned to open waters after observation with no ill effects. The bad news is several water flea species are currently considered threatened. I’m sure has nothing to do with scientists returning these completely wasted creatures into the wild before calling it a day.
Meet the goblin shark! And wow, if you thought it looked creepy on the last page, check it out in motion.
So what’s happening here? Apparently the goblin shark is unique because its mandibular joints have two sets of elastic ligaments. When those ligaments are tensed, everything’s normal. But if it relaxes those ligaments – like when a delicious fish swims by – their entire jaw explodes out of their face to grab whatever’s in front of it. Imagine if your mouth left your face everytime you decided to eat a meal. Actually don’t. That’s disturbing.
As you might have guessed, that’s incredibly unusual behavior in the animal kingdom, to the point that goblin sharks were declared part of their own genus and family. Science has decided there’s nothing quite like them, noting that their closest relatives died out millions of years ago. Science now considers them “living fossils” due to this rare status, and that’s unlikely to change. Unlike most animals covered in this column, goblin sharks aren’t endangered by human activity. And almost everything is endangered by human activity. So kudos to you, goblin shark. Whatever you’re doing is working out for you.
Just, you know. Please eat your food away from the rest of us. Thanks.
How did the blue sea slug get onto our Halloween guessing game? It’s adorable! I mean look at it, it’s three-and-a-half centimeters long! What could possibly be scary about it?
What’s that? It can eat poisonous jellyfish, and save the venom to sting humans later? Okay, I guess that works.
Sea slugs have a pretty easygoing life for the most part. They travel the ocean by floating upside down, using a gas-filled sac on their stomachs to keep near the surface and be carried by winds and waves. That makes sea slugs one of the few creatures where floating belly-up is a good thing – in fact, their bellies are blue so predators mistake them for water and ignore them entirely. They tend to live in warm climates off the Southern Pacific and West Atlantic coasts, where they’ll occasionally wash up on the beach by accident.
Of course, if you find a sea slug on the beach and pick it up, you might discover its vicious side. Not only can sea slugs eat a Portugese man o’ war, they swallow their poisonous nematocysts and store them inside their own tissues. If you’re not careful, touching one can expose you to the same poison as the jellyfish, which is incredibly painful and in rare cases leads to death. So before you pick up one of these adorable critters, ask yourself: Is it worth it?
…… Maybe.
I’m sure there are all kinds of interesting facts about giant isopods, like how their compound eyes have 4000 facets, or how they’re necessary scavengers of the ocean. But I don’t care about that. I just learned that when Discovery Channel was filming Shark Week, they watched an isopod kill a dogfish shark by eating its damn face off. (Skip ahead 35 minutes to see what I’m talking about.) Seriously isopods, sharks are supposed to be the scary ones. What are you doing? Did you want a week to yourself? A month? Whatever, it’s yours. You earned it.
Anyway. Giant isopods are evidence of a phenomoenon called deep-sea gigantism, which refers to how some deep-sea invertebrates and animals are far larger than related species from shallow waters. This is how we get creatures like giant squid, but it also applies to isopods like shrimp or wordlice. Except terrifyingly so – regular old isopods are about 2 inches long, giant isopods can grow to 6 inches long. Then you have supergiants which in some cases reach 30 inches.
To be fair, even if giant isopods were more common above water, we wouldn’t need to worry about them. They aren’t big on hunting, and tend to only kill slow-moving creatures. (That dogfish shark was in a trap for example.) But that doesn’t make it any less creepy when I hear they can be found eating dead whales. I mean, come on. Do you really believe they “just found that whale lying there”? Forget Jaws, isopods are what should get people out of the ocean.
This is Barry.
A few years back, Newquay’s Blue Reef Aquarium had a problem – something in its coral reef display was injuring fish and cutting portions of the reef in half. Much like a horror movie, something was living inside that only its victims could see. The staff staked out the display but saw no trace of the creature. They set traps, only to find them broken the next day. Eventually the staff decided to dismantle the entire display and go straight to the source.
What they found was a four foot long polychaete worm common in tropical environments. And they can be dangerous too, covered in thousands of bristles filled with venom that causes permanent numbness in humans. Do you understand how rare that is? Most venomous creatures barely carry enough to make us irritated for a few. But Barry, as the aquarium delightfully called him, was a deadly exception.
The aquarium’s curator suspects Barry came on a delivery of living rock from another aquarium as a child, and came of age in his new environment. He was eventually lured out with fish scraps, which took some time – he even bit through a 20 pound fishing line in the process. But after some false starts, Barry was finally relocated to his own tank where everyone can keep a better eye on him. At least, until the day he chooses to free himself once again.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the Pigbutt worm, otherwise known as Flying Buttocks. Can you guess why it might be called that? Here’s a hint – its Latin species name is Chaetopterus pugaporcinus, which roughly translates to “resembling a pig’s rear”. It’s like scientists took one look at this thing and regressed to ten-year olds with no sense of subtlty.
Not that I blame them. I mean, look at the thing.
The Piggbutt worm is about the size of a hazelnut, and lives below the oxygen minimum zone, roughly 3000 to 4000 feet deep. Unfortunately, at depths like that it’s hard to run extended studies on what they’re like. To this day, we still don’t know if these are baby pigbutts or adult flying buttocks. It doesn’t help that you can’t find sexual organs on them, so we have no idea how they reproduce. And if they had sexual organs, where would they be? These things are all butt.
Although that butt could technically be a mouth. Pigbutts are often seen with clouds of mucus floating around the opening, which scientists suspect captures plankton they can eat. Otherwise, they do nothing but float around all day long, presumably humming Sir Mix-A-Lot to themselves.
So remember: Anytime you think science has everything figured out, there are floating butts in the ocean that we still need to learn about.
