In Sweden, even the sea life is flat pack.

The Regalecus glesne, known as the King of Herrings or Giant Oarfish, was found dead in the small fishing village of Bovallstrand on Sweden’s west coast, about 140 miles from the Norwegian border.

In less sensational terms, this is an oarfish, which normally makes its home in the Eastern Atlantic/Mediterranean. While rare for Sweden, I gather, this isn’t a very large specimen, as they seem to grow to 50 feet. So, for the King of Herrings, this one’s a bit of a pike(r). Here’s an entry from SeaSky, for the wikipedia-averse:

The most noticeable feature of the oarfish is its extremely long, ribbon-like body. These fish can reach a length of over 50 feet (15 meters) and weigh as much as 600 pounds (272 kilograms). Its scaleless body is covered with a silver to silvery blue skin and is topped with an ornate, red dorsal fin that resembles a decorative headdress. This dorsal fin runs the entire length of the fish, with a tiny spine projecting above each of over 400 individual fin rays. The pelvic fins of this fish are elongated and similarly colored. The oarfish has a small mouth with no visible teeth. Their diet consists mainly of plankton, small crustaceans, and small squid that they strain from the water using specially formed gill rakes in their mouth. In turn, the oarfish may be a food source for larger ocean carnivores such as sharks.

Oh, and SeaSky, green and yellow text on black? Really?

So, to sum up. Not really a herring. Not really that big (as far as these things go). And, while it is a plankton eater, I would not be terribly happy to see one swim past. (I’d get bored after the first 30 feet, for one thing.)

(via Museum of the Weird, one of my favorite places in Austin.)

It was a thing of beauty, a rare titan of the sea, so of course we had to kill it.

Not the biggest shark ever, certainly, but another reason to stay out of the water.
Full story.

It is a great start to a list in need of expansion (great blog, too). I’ve read most of these, but the list suggests a few I hadn’t heard of or gotten around to.

My favorite book is on the list, De Kruif’s Microbe Hunters, which is still very readable.

Both Popper and Kuhn are there, although neither are very fun reading. (I favor Kuhn, but I’ve always felt that he Kuhn missed the mark in some ways. Paradigm shifts happen rarely — and entire fields will only ever get one or two — but most progress in science is through relentless incrementalism. It seems to me the whole observation is in some ways reflective of a particular moment in time, as the various disciplines matured. Also, it is a fairly Western-oriented look at science. Also, also, I hold a grudge against Kuhn for popularizing the term “paradigm shift,” damn him.)

As I said, the list needs to grow some. Off the top of my head, here are a few that I’d consider candidates:
The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas
Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman (or maybe Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman…tough call…)
Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences by John Allen Paulos
Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett (It marks a particular moment in time when scientists really began to talk frankly and openly about consciousness. His Darwin’s Dangerous Idea is great as well.)

I’m sure there are more, but I’ll post them as I think of them.

You see, when the carcass lands on the bottom of the sea, a whole host of unpleasant critters come out to eat it in a process that can take months — or even years if the whale lands in deep, deep water. Among those critters are members of the genus Osedax, bone-eating worms related to tubeworms or those guys you see hanging out by thermal vents…if you happen to go past a lot of thermal vents, that is.

Robert Vrijenhoek of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute first discovered these little red bone-munching guys while out in the ROV Tiburon, which is a vehicle with just an awesome name. Their press release provides a great read. (And, doesn’t he look like something out of central casting for ocean explorer?)

Sure, unless your diet has really slipped and you’ve reached blue whale proportions, you don’t have much to worry about from these critters (aside from the fact that you’d be dead and lacking cares, in general). But the fact that these guys are down there waiting…just waiting…gives me the creeps.

Even creepier is that all those little red wigglers you see in the picture above are all females. They’re not hermaphrodites. Oh no, that would be normal in comparison. All of these worms are actually giant masters over their microscopic male concubines. That’s right, mini sex slaves. Invertebrates with a dwarf fetish.

But, according to Vrijenhoek, “That was not the end of the weirdness. In looking at the worms under a microscope, we discovered that every one of them was a female. We didn’t find any males until I got another call from Greg Rouse. He said, ‘Bob, it’s worse than you think.’ I said, ‘What now, Greg?’ He said ‘There really are males, but they are microscopic. They are dwarfs!’”

Sure enough, living within the tube that enclosed each female were 30 to 100 microscopic male worms, each only about a millimeter long. Not only that, but the male worms were still in a larval stage of development. They were making sperm in one part of their bodies, while other parts of the bodies still contained the yolk droplets. As Vrijenhoek put it, “These males don’t feed. A male lives its entire life off the yolk that was provisioned by the egg from which it hatched. This is one of the few cases in the animal world where sexually reproducing individuals are barely more developed than eggs. It’s weird.”

As the Discovery News reports, monster jellyfish like this are becoming more common as fish populations dwindle.

They say climate change could also cause jellyfish populations to grow. The team believes that for the first time, water conditions could lead to what they call a “jellyfish stable state,” in which jellyfish rule the oceans.

The combination of overfishing and high levels of nutrients in the water has been linked to jellyfish blooms. Nitrogen and phosphorous in run-off cause red phytoplankton blooms, which create low-oxygen dead zones where jellyfish survive, but fish can’t, researchers said.

Just great. We’re doomed.

Hibernia Mine doesn’t appear to be an active spelunking site, but you never know what desperate cavers might do in New Jersey. The Star-Ledger report fails to mention that the Fish and Wildlife Service has asked for a voluntary moratorium in the northeast to prevent the further spread of the disease.

So, like the frogs and bees, we have another fungal infection at the root of an animal die-off. With the bats, however, it seems decidedly linked to human activity, but there still could be a climate connection. (After all, why are people suddenly carrying fungi?) This press release from Cardiff University suggests climate change is causing fungi to grow more rapidly and “fruit” more frequently.

So, if you are doing math at home, is it:

warmer/wetter climate = more fungi + disease + accelerated decay (fungi hasten wood rot) = more CO2 = climate change

Yikes.

I’ve been tagged, and I am supposed to write a note with the ABC’s of me. I’m not feeling all touchy-feely open at the moment, so I decided to write about someone I barely remember, Benjamin Sherman “Scatman” Crothers, who would be 99 this Saturday.

If I tagged you, it’s because I want you to know more about Scatman Crothers – but not in a creepy stalker kind of way. Mostly.

A- is for Axe, you didn’t see that coming.

B – is for Benjamin, you got your start by drumming

C – is for Capone, you sang for him in Chicago

D – is for Dead, which you sorta kinda are now.

E – is for Entertaining, although your parts were often crummy

F – is for Foxx, as in Redd, who never called YOU big dummy

G – is for your cover of Ghost Riders in the Sky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBYAis7akKw

H – is for Hong Kong Phooey, a number one super guy

I – is for Instruments, including your unique voice

J – is Jazz the Autobot, an odd acting choice

K – is for Kick the Can, you’re only as old as you feel

L – is for Long, we heard its like a conger eel

M – is for “A Man’s Gotta Eat,” a song I never heard

N – is for Narcolepsy, a random sleepy kind of word

O – is for “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,” your other film with Jack

P – is for Pate, as bald as a worn out thumb tack

Q – is for Qantas, the name of an Australian airline

R – is for Random, like the word in the above line

S – is for Scat, which you were known for, but not really the best

T – is for Time, I got none, so I’m gonna scat the next

U – is for ubi, doobie dippo dee

V – is for vappa donna doo-ah debba see

W – is for Women, like that Afro-babe above your bed

X – is for Xenograph, like adding a second head

Y – is for Years gone by, as sweet as cream de cacao

Z – is for Zapped! in which you starred with Scott Baio

Robot attacked Swedish factory worker – The Local.

The incident took place in June 2007 at a factory in Bålsta, north of Stockholm, when the industrial worker was trying to carry out maintenance on a defective machine generally used to lift heavy rocks. Thinking he had cut off the power supply, the man approached the robot with no sense of trepidation.

But the robot suddenly came to life and grabbed a tight hold of the victim’s head. The man succeeded in defending himself but not before suffering serious injuries.

“The man was very lucky. He broke four ribs and came close to losing his life,” said Leif Johansson.

Another neat Eurekalert! feed story, one that offers tips for catching flies:

Caltech scientists discover mechanism for wind detection in fruit flies

Tiny, lightweight fruit flies need to know when it’s windy out so they can steady themselves and avoid being knocked off their feet or blown off course. But how do they figure out that it’s time to hunker down? According to a team led by California Institute of Technology (Caltech) scientists reporting in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, the flies have evolved a specialized population of neurons in their antennae that let them know not only when the wind is blowing, but also the direction from which it is coming.

The behavior of fruit flies in the face of a stiff breeze is remarkable in and of itself, notes David J. Anderson, the Roger W. Sperry Professor of Biology at Caltech, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. “We discovered that you can stop a fly dead in its tracks by blowing a gentle stream of air over it,” he explains, adding that the flies’ immobility is so complete, you could pick one up with a pair of chopsticks as long as a steady stream of wind was passing over the insect. Once the wind stops blowing, however, the flies immediately start walking around again.

Here’s a link to the video.

Still breaking in my Sony Reader. Sure it isn’t as hip as the Kindle — and doesn’t have wireless — but it does what I want it to do very well. I’m on my third Rex Stout Nero Wolfe novel in the canon, chronologically, The Rubber Band.

Stout came out on of the gate roaring with the first novel Fer-de-lance. All of the Wolfian trappings were in place: the beer, the brownstone, his schedule, Fritz, Theordore, Saul, etc. Archie did the leg work while Wolfe sat back, grumbled and occasionally “relapsed.” All these touches carried the novel through what was otherwise are fairly lame, plodding plot. It was also the longest Wolfe novel.

It lacked the quick action and gotcha moments of later Its like watching a pilot for a familiar television show. Sure, Spock’s there on the Enterprise, but who the heck is Capt. Pike? Hrmm, that’s a bad analogy. All the parts are there, but it just feels slightly off.

The League of Frightened Men was better, but suffered from having too large a cast (the titular league, obviously). League was notable for getting the pattern down — Wolfe’s in-office interrogations are always as entertaining as Goodwin’s sleuthing — and for establishing the bond between Wolfe and Goodwin. They fight like an old married couple, yet they firmly know the bounds between employer and employee. Heck, Wolfe knowingly gets in a car with an unhinged woman to save Goodwin (while Goodwin bawls his eyes out thinking his lapse in judgement sent Wolfe to his doom).

The Rubber Band has everything, right down to the exasperatingly complicated case that only Wolfe can tease out. So far, in the series, its the first perfect Wolfe novel. And there are many more.