Well done, everyone. Thanks for finding the slugs I couldn’t! And a special thanks to Susannah at Wanderin’ Weeta for coordinating the event this year. I will practice over the course of the next year in hopes of great results next time around.
In case you don’t follow the websites with conventionally cute animals, it was Snail Week at Daily Squee! I’m diggin’ the invert love! Check out this ADORABLE baby snail.
Other great things:
1. A fantastic post over at the Spandrel Shop about the sea slugs that feed on algae and then incorporate the plastids into their bodies to become photosynthetic themselves. So cool.
2. Enormous octopus cake made the internet rounds this week. I saw it first on Make.
3. Another fascinating post, this time at Not Exactly Rocket Science, about parasitic worms that take over snail bodies and “drive” them around. Turns out there’s actually a class structure in these worms.
5. Mollusk sex advice column over at Deep Sea News. Just too delightful.
6. Another snail video from Daily Squee.
7. Also, some of the craziest weather in NYC this week. Tornado! I don’t know if this photo from grapesofrad is ‘shopped or not, but it’s great nonetheless.
Jon Stewart brought Isabella Rossellini’s work in short films about animal reproduction to my attention this week. She clearly loves how mollusks mate. These are honestly some of the strangest things I’ve ever seen captured on film, and I’m a fan of Werner Herzog (a German language Western film with an all little people cast? Anyone?). Check out the Green Porno website for all of the films. Mollusk films include snail, cuttlefish, limpet, and squid. Also, do not let your mollusk bias prevent you from watching the other films, because they are all equally inexplicable and delightful.
In the Journal of Molluscan Studies, there’s an article about the penis of a species of squid, Onykia ingens. It’s, um, long. Like, as long as the entire animal. Why so long? Shallow water cephalopods have short penises but use an arm to hand the sperm over to the females, but the deep sea squids prefer to inject the sperm directly. No one had figured out exactly how this occured until a recently caught squid obliged researchers by unfurling himself. Read more about it on BBC news.
Here’s a drawing of our friend O. ingens. Check out the article for the money shot…
Amateur mollusk enthusiast blogging about cool mollusk news, mollusk-related arts, culture, and craft, and the experience of seeking out mollusks in the wild and captivity.
The Shell and Mantle 