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biomedicalephemera:

Glaucus atlanticus - The Blue Glaucus

Top: Comparison for size - the Blue Glaucus does not exceed 5-7 cm long, but that’s huge compared to its nearest relative, Glaucilla marginata, which generally doesn’t exceed 18 mm.
Bottom left: Method of locomotion - Blue Glaucus float on the top of the ocean thanks to a gas sac in their abdomen, with their “head” facing upwards, and their cerata (those feathery appendages) dangling down.
Bottom right: Blue Glaucus from above. Note the numerous finger-like collections of cerata - in a full-grown adult, each of these can contain a concentrated dose of nematocyst venom.

Have you met my favorite nudibranch yet? I’m sure you have, and it’s totally cliche to love it, but whatever! I am a nudibranch hipster; I loved the blue sea swallow before the internet even caught wind of its awesomeness. JUST SAYIN’.

These seafaring drifters will float along with the current for days or weeks without feeding, using very little energy, until they sense a suitable prey within range - as these guys don’t move terribly well in the open ocean, “within range” is never much more than a few feet away. Favorite meals of the blue glaucus include the sailor by-the-wind (Velella velella) and the Portuguese man-o-war (Physalia physalis), the latter of which is particularly venomous. However, the blue glaucus is not only immune to the nematocyst venom, but possesses the ability to actually determine which stingers are the most venomous, and concentrate the venom of many meals into each “fingertip”, along with the stinging mechanism.

While they are unlikely to put anyone’s life in danger because of its tiny size, the blue glaucus can be found with venom two-to-twelve times stronger than that of each nematocyst on a Portuguese man-o-war, and is extremely painful when agitated. Though stings to humans are relatively rare, they apparently feel much like a bad hornet sting, with radiating burning pain, and both localized and generalized symptoms.

Images:
Taxonomy of Glaucus atlanticus. Natural History Museum of Britain.
Voyage dans l’Amerique meridionale. Alcide d’Orbigny, 1837.

auro-oculos:

glaucus atlanticus

Blue Dragon

As we wake up and our day begins, what are some of the first few things you think of?  Coffee? The three S’s (Shit, Shower and Shave)?  Maybe you might be late and have to hurry to throw your clothes on and run out the door.  Now at the bus stop, you realize your shirt is on backwards from the rush, so you straighten it out, put your headphones on and hop on the bus.   By this time, music is already playing through your headphones and you’re in your own world.     What are you doing?  Zoning out?  Ignoring the smelly guy next to you?  Getting ready to talk with that special someone?   What are you looking at?  Does it look like this?

Within the last month (September, 2012) and into October, there have only been 3 days free from our steel friends leaving their white-mist-jizz-shit in patterns that make no sense.  Some days we are lucky and might see something in the haze (like the horse in the haze post), others, not so much.

I started asking around.  It seems that people find THIS (Image blow) to be normal, day to day sky activities, that: “Help grow plants”, “Help close the hole in the Ozone layer”, “Are just jets breaking the speed of sound”, or even “Those are just clouds that planes pass through”.  

An aspect of life that I still cannot fully understand is the desire to set up walls and become firm in one’s beliefs to the point where no other information could even be a possibility, thus reacting with means of fear, anger or confusion towards the conversation and the other members that might be involved.    I digress, however when looking to the sky, how can we not ask, “Why?” or even “What is that?” and accept “I don’t know” as the best answer?

We had many good times.  Now is the time for you to leave my mouth, and never return.  Goodbye friend, goodbye.

Morning of Artistic Champions.  

#art 

Chemhaze!