You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘flamboyant’ tag.
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, but, oof, the Monday after Thanksgiving is always a rough day. The holiday season has just started—but hasn’t gotten fun yet (my tree is badly assembled with no lights or ornaments—the cats have been climbing through it like gibbons in a hatrack and have knocked it over once already). Additionally, the quotidian dictates of work combine with the gray bleakness of November to create a feeling of malaise which makes blogging difficult. Also, it is 11:30 PM already. What the jazz?
To combat these problems and get something down on paper (and to kick off the holiday season?) here is a visual post—a gallery of incredible vibrant cuttlefish from the world’s warm seas. Hopefully there color will bring some pizzazz to your day. Finding them online actually helped me get back in the groove.
The flamboyant cuttlefish—the purple and yellow master of poison–rightfully has pride of place at the very top of the post, however there are some cuttlefish which I haven’t written about here too. As soon as I have a bit more time I will come back and write about them. As we get into December we will have more exciting and thoughtful posts which aren’t a placeholder like this one.
Also, I am still working on the thrilling project which I teased earlier (although, like everything, it is taking longer than I planned). For now, enjoy this little rainbow of sorbet tentacles and w-shaped eyes. It’s going to be a merry holiday season and there are wonders ahead of us. First we have to get a bit further into the workweek though….
Pfeffer’s Flamboyant Cuttlefish, Metasepia pfeffer (photo by Paz Santos)
In the waters of the Indo-Pacific swims an animal so profoundly fancy that it is difficult to find enough adjectives to summarize it—filigree, frilly, extravagant, surreal, frond-coated, Liberacci-esque? Perhaps the name says it best: Pfeffer’s flamboyant cuttlefish (Metasepia pfeffer) is an adorable 2- 4 inch cuttlefish which lives in the tropical waters around Australia, New Guinea, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Like leafy sea dragons, scorpionfish, and mighty wobbegongs, the little cuttlefish is a consummate master of disguise. Unlike those other camouflaged sea creatures, Pfeffer’s flamboyant cuttlefish is capable of changing color and shape. It is also capable of many different means of locomotion: it can walk along the sea floor on its tentacles, hover in the water using the fringe-like fin around its mantle, or it can zip through the sea via jet propulsion.
Pfeffer’s flamboyant cuttlefish hunts shrimp and tiny fish in the shallow sand and mud coasts of its habitat. It utilizes complicated camouflage to hunt, but when roused it becomes a scintillating hot-mess of flashing red, white, magenta, yellow, and black in order to warn predators about its real self-defense. It turns out the list of endearing adjectives above is missing a few critical words: deadly, lethal, and poisonous. The flesh of these little cuttlefish contains a toxin as fatal to other animals as that of its famous neighbor, the blue-ringed octopus, a tiny but potent poisonous cephalopod of the Indo-Pacific responsible for many swimmer fatalities.
Pfeffer’s flamboyant cuttlefish is therefore as deadly as it is adorable, a combination which ought to make it a mainstay of action movies. Speaking of movies you should click the following link to watch an amazing Youtube movie of Pfeffer’s Flamboyant Cuttlefish. The happy little mollusk ambles along the ocean floor to jaunty music before zapping a shrimp with its horrifyingly alien feeding tentacles. You should watch this all of the way: it is not a film to be missed.
Thus having successfully combined flamboyance, film, and horror, I am off to Tinseltown! I will try to blog from LA but I promise nothing. Baby, let’s do lunch!
The Spanish Dancer, Hexabranchus sanguineus (photo by David Doubilet, National Geographic)
Nudibranchs are among my favorite animals to look at. These tropical marine mollusks feature extraordinary colors and fantastical shapes which would make the most flamboyant nineteen eighties rock star weep with envy. One of the largest and most powerful nudibranchs is also one of the most beautiful. Hexabranchus sanguineus lives thoughout the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific Ocean and can be found from the Red Sea to Hawaii. The creature’s common English name is the Spanish Dancer because, when it swims free, it undulates its bright red paradodia in the manner of a flamenco dancer.
A Spanish Flamenco Dancer
Hexabranchus sanguineus
Although the Spanish Dancer is surprisingly quick and agile when it uses this means of locomotion, it has an auxiliary method for getting around and can also be found crawling in a much more traditional slug-like manner. The creature grows to be 40 centimeters or larger and has several distinctive color patterns ranging from bright red to bright yellow to pale pink (or sometimes various combinations of these colors).
The Spanish dancer can afford to be extravagantly colorful because it contains toxic chemicals inside its body (again one is drawn to comparisons with 1980’s musical entertainers). Predators therefore avoid the creature as it proceeds about the reef feeding on various sponges and bryozoans. Spanish Dancers are hermaphrodites. Although each Spanish dancer possesses the reproductive organs of both genders, it is very rare for an individual to fertilize itself. When they do mate, the parent carefully deposits a large pink rosette of eggs which is almost as distinctive and lovely as the adult.
The Egg Rose of a Spanish Dancer (photo by Peter Korn)
The Spanish dancer is sometimes inhabited by one or more Emperor Shrimps. These little arthropods do not help their mollusk host, but neither do they harm it (a commensal relationship). Chameleon-like the little shrimp can adapt to the extraordinary coloring of their vivid hosts.
An Emperor shrimp living on a Spanish Dancer (photo by Goos van der Heide)
ferrebeekeeper 