Octopuses and Coconuts.

Now, for the life of me, I would never dreamed of linking a coconut shell and an Octopus in the same sentence. Maybe I am a poor creative writer or sci-fi writer.

But as is always the case with Nature, here is a bizarre story of Veined Octopuses, which not only use the coconut shells to hide in (see picture above), but actually "walk" around with them. National Geographic has this all covered in an interesting article complete with video. Here.

Saturn's Double Light Show

HubbleSite has this wonderful photograph as well this excellent video that showed Saturn with its rings nearly edge-on, resulting in the ability to view a symmetrical light show on both poles. According to the site, the geometry of the solar system allows a simultaneous view of both poles only twice during one revolution of Saturn around the Sun.

Watch the video to appreciate the symmetrical light show. And enjoy.

"Fear the blobfish"

So I came across this hilarious piece of writing in the LA Times. Click the link and read. No, I mean it. Read it fully. Done? Good.

You know it is about the blobfish and you have to admit, it is somewhat unnerving to look at. It is like revolting scene in a movie that you cannot take your eyes off of. It is like the fender bender on the freeway that everyone has to have a look at, craning their necks in weird angles and causing traffic to slow down to a crawl.

So, what is my point with this post? Just this. We seem to have forgotten what it is to have a good laugh at something. We take everything we read, and wring it through our own spectral biases and then react either in sheer delight or scathing scorn. Somehow everything has gone in the direction of "you are with us or against us" that seems to be pervading everything and everyone these days.

I really am hoping that the pendulum would veer toward the center at some point, and soon.

The Sun or The Mist

My brother the nature fan(atic !!!) snapped this wonderland scene enroute to Tirunelveli on one wonderful winter morning. Talk of being there at the right time at the right place with the right equipment.

Random Randomness

Things that I can never stop pondering about - well, there are always too many things. But the one thing that always fascinates me is the true measure of randomness. In short, how random is random?

For all practical purposes, we use calculated randomness - a random generator that has an initial seed. And that is the bias that prevents it from being truly random. It is like approaching infinity. Once you feel you are there, there is always something more. And more. And more. So, how do we actually achieve randomness?

Well, I suppose one way is to not strive for randomness at all. (Gulp! That is not a solution is it?). Well, maybe if we shrunk our perspective to something smaller, then events happening in that purview just might appear to be random. Note the keyword. Appear. Maybe that is all there is to it. True randomness doesn't really matter as much as the appearance of it. So typically human isn't it - the reality does not matter as much as the appearance of reality.

One final word I suppose - lack of bias or randomness maybe is crucial for a lot of our current applications and things, but in the grand cosmic scale of things, maybe everything is truly random and yet really programmed. Yes. Programmed, and random. Together. And yet disparate. Now I am totally confused. Heck. Who cares. Its 07/07/07 07:07:07 PM. Now, I have exactly one year, one month, one day, one hour, one minute and one second to come up with another such random tripe disguised as a blog-post. Boy, the summer heat is really causing my brains to go awry :)

Summer of movies

Wifey and I both love to watch good movies. We both get bugged with typical run-of-the-mill movies (read: most desi movies). So while Netflix and public libraries contribute to satisfying the thirst to watch good movies, there is still the occasional indulgence towards typical summer blockbusters. So far, we're two into the summer movie season. Pirates of the Carribean - At World's End, and Ocean's 13.

Loved Pirates. Loved being able to loudly guffaw in the theaters. (Side note: Only Ocean's 11, Ice Age, and Pirates of the Carribean - Curse of the Black Pearl have provided for totally, utterly, and completely satisfying movie-going experiences. These three movies were a perfect synergy of disparate sources of joy - all coming together at the right place at the right time.). Granted that both movies sorta-kinda-desparately tried to live up to the glib-tongued smart-a** feel of their original versions, they were still good in their own merit. Weirdly enough, we've missed the third installment of two other successful movie franchises of the recent decade - Spiderman, and Shrek. And even more weird, we don't even care we have missed it. I guess you can only flog a dead horse ever so much.

Oh well...I am working up the reasons to convince her to go with me to see Ratatouille from Disney-Pixar, and maybe she won't need nudging to see HP-OotP.

Netflix is providing the nature-fix through the Planet Earth series from BBC/Discovery. Thankfully, they are shipping the Sir David Attenborough narrated version. No offense to Sigourney Weaver (she did a very excellent job in another amazing documentary - Why Dogs Smile and Chimpanzees Cry), but in Planet Earth, her narrative is, to say the least, awful. Well, maybe the reality is that I am biased towards Sir David Attenborough's clear, concise and involved narrative. Maybe it is watching series after series of Sir Attenborough's works including Life of Birds, Life of Mammals, Blue Planet - Seas of Life etc. Maybe it is also the knowledge that he is actually a field guy (an expert even) in wild-life reporting. Whatever it maybe, watching Planet Earth seems that much more complete with his narrative.

You can experience the difference for yourself here in the US - watch Planet Earth Wednesday nights on Animal Planet, and then get your hands on the Attenborough-narrated DVDs selling through retailers or available to rent at your neighborhood or internet video store.

Next up on the 2-do-list - classics and yesteryear black & white features...afterall, "our" movie is one such b&w classic - the evergreen (or should it be ever-black-and-white???) "The Shop Around The Corner".

Walking.....Shark??

See related post here.

Ok. So we've seen an octopus that puts up an act. In any of (known till now) three disguises - a lion fish, a flat fish, and a sea-snake the octopus surely puts on a show - evasion? Safety from predators? (Thanks to Tom Tregenza at University of Exeter in Cornwall) Maybe...whatever...ultimately, its just a treat to see an animal mimicking behaviour.

Now we are getting to see another fantastic example of unusual behaviour in another sea-living animal. This time, the walking shark. It apparently walks. See image above (Copyright Conservation International, via AP). Nick-named the epaulette shark, its been observed in the area called Birds Head Seascape off the Indonesian Papua provincial coast in Asia - the so-called Asian Coral Triangle.

Whatever will they find next?

LiveScience.com - Nature's Wrath: The Most Dangerous U.S. Cities

LiveScience.com - Nature's Wrath: The Most Dangerous U.S. Cities

Now what can we learn from animals?

Two specimen examples of things that we can indeed learn from animals... Frog giving a rat a piggy-back ride to help survive the monsoons in Lucknow, India. And a dog helping feed tiger cubs in Hefei, China.

An Inconvenient Truth

Here we go again...another attempt at trying to educate the masses on the effects of climate change, and how we are bringing purported disaster on ourselves.

You want to have an opinion of this movie? Watch it yourself, and THEN evaluate the FACTS for what they are, PRIOR to jumping to a conclusion on whether or not this is a propaganda movie, irrespective of your political dispensation.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | How babies do maths at 7 months

How babies do maths at 7 months?

Apparently, babies are not afraid of Math like we adults are, what with our predisposition to dislike even basic arithmetic and a disposition to use electronic calculators to do these rudimentary tasks.

Still it is amazing that babies can grasp an elementary sense of numbers even before gaining the ability to vocalize or verbalize or get ambulatory. To quote...

By the age of seven months infants have an abstract sense of numbers and are able to match the number of voices they hear with the number of faces they see.

No wonder they seem to realize/know when one or both of their parents leave the room and they begin to wail...I wonder if this is further proof of babies being relatively more intelligent than all grown-ups!

Africa in America

Experienced part of Africa' Safari and Serengeti...atleast a percent of it...here in the backwoods of Arizona...at Camp Verde. Out of Africa Park. The Serengeti simulation is nice...I wonder if the fencing could be more discreet, but thats nitpicking, especially when an actual trip to Tanzania/Kenya is not on the anvil... Still can't forget the Ostrich picking on my camera and the Giraffe slobbering all over my hand and face! Or better yet..getting charged by a white tiger...albeit from behind a fence.

Sunrise or Sunset...

A Beautiful Sunrise? or A Brilliant Sunset? Sunrise over the Indian Ocean off the coast of Pondicherry? Sunset over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego? Who cares? As the Bard of Avon states - As you like it.

Global Warming

Interesting reads.

- Science Mag - NASA

- Real Climate - (more)

- (even more)

Am not sure what to make of the noise in Washington, dismissing the existence of global warming, but it sure smells more like rotten eggs, much like the rotten eggs that are stinking up Kansas with its intelligent-design as Science crap. Thank God I am not a teacher.

The Grand Canyon.....enough said

Even the limited zoom capabilities of Kodak's C60 Advantix does not do injustice to capturing the breadth and depth of the beauty of THE CANYON...
hopefully one day I fulfill my dream of hiking down the Canyon and pitching camp overnight, 1 mile deep into the bowels of the earth....






Peace and tranquility...and oh yes, it does not hurt to be single-mindedly devoted to the task at hand for well over a million years...in this case the R. Colorado...at it...carving out the gorgeously colored rock strata that forms the Grand Canyon...

Its a snake..no no..its a fish...no no it's a..its an..

...Octopus..a Mimic Octopus.

Now, for all fans of the underwater animals it is a well known fact that Octopus are intelligent sea-faring creatures with remarkable ability to adapt to their surroundings, at literally a blink of the eye.

These intelligent invertebrates with the special skin pigmenting cells (chromatophores), can blink their cells into different colors to adjust to their surroundings. They also exhibit remarkable problem solving ability, especially through the process of trial and error. This author has seen a controlled laboratory experiment where an octopus just brought in from the sea was put into a tank with a corked bottle containing food. For a while the octopus tried doing everything to get into the bottle, and then remarkably enough uncorked the bottle to get at the food!

For all the remarkable nature of their intelligence, this Mimic Octopus is just a tad too much. I mean come on, being able to play a game of charades? Aint that amazing?

This Mimic Octopus, not discovered until 1998 or 2001 (pick your take, I have read about their discovery during either of the two years, were found off the delta areas of the Indonesian islands and South East Asia. And amazingly enough, in lieu of its rather recent discovery, in the Latin name world of "proper" speciology, the Mimic Octopus does not have a name.
Apparently the reason for this rather late discovery of a rather remarkable ocean species is put down to the fact that they inhibit what is considered a rather bland piece of ocean topography, something that is not as colorful or with the variety and splendor of a coral reef.

While mimickry is often part of natural adaptation of many species for sheer survival purposes, this is the first time that the scientific world has had a chance ot observe a species mimicking more than one species - in the case of the Mimic Octopus it has been observed to mimic atleast three and maybe more species.

Sole Fish or Flatfish(mimicked by aligning its arms in a flat oval and swimming close to the sea floor), Sea Snake (by sticking 6 tentacles together with body and undulating the remaining two to mimic the balck and white striped sea snake) and Lion Fish (by holding tentacles out in a "burst of sunlight" like spines of the poisonous lion fish) were the routine victims of this tricky charading octopus. See here, here and here for visuals of this amazing creature.

One thing is for certain - if this creature is able to imitate a bunch of species, it did pick it up as an evolutionary upgrade in terms of its ability to protect itself from the environment. And it is just as highly likely that the three species of sea creatures that the Mimic Octopus has been observed to imitate, are part of a larger range of creatures that the Mimic can imitate.

Personally I have been impressed over the years by the various social and survival skills seen in various animals - both land and sea-borne. But aside of the family tendencies of a herd of elephants, this is the only other animal that has impressed me so. So much so, I have my MSN sign-on name is Mimic Octopus in honor of this tricky creature, which seemingly has the ability to take a disguise at the drop of a hat, and in response to the situation at hand.