Happy Ctenophore Day! 🐙🦑🧪

super cool study found human artifacts in Bearded vulture nests, incl. "weaponry like a crossbow bolt and wooden lance, decorated sheep leather, and parts of a slingshot....a shoe made from twigs and grass is ~675-years-old." link to paper: doi.org/10.1002/ecy..... www.popsci.com/environment/... 🧪🌍🦉

Sea urchin metamorphosis is maybe one of the most radical event in developmental biology. In just about an hour, these little pluteus larvae completely reorganize their entire body plan. Very happy that this video got awarded an honorable mention by #NikonSmallWorld 😃

Great News! The Ricardians are one step closer to recreating Richard III’s unique brand of halitosis! 🏺 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

When I correct someone and they say “I bet you’re fun at parties,” I explain what a terrible bet that would be.

#OTD 19 September 1991, walkers in the high Ötztal alps on the Italian border, found a body melting out of the ice. It turned out to be the remains of a c.5200 year old man preserved with all his kit. Of course, it was essential to replicate him in Playmobil. 1🧵 #PlaymobilÖtzi #PlaymobilInfestation

L + Ratio + I don't have that intuition + I have the opposite intuition + I have an error theory for your intuition

I wanted to get a video of this ghost crab but every time I got close to their hole they scuttled back in, so I tried getting clever with it. I made a little sandcastle and shoved my phone into it, hit record, and walked away. Crab was VERY suspicious of this addition to their environment.

Reconstructing long-range axons from dense brain images is tough. This study introduces a novel method that separates axon identification from global statistical rules, showing big improvements over existing tools for mapping neuronal projections. buff.ly/o7QmH4B

In the same way some people are thrill seekers, I'm a relief-from-fear seeker, always craving the next hit of relief from fear.

When your flagellum has had enough of your shit

The long & limbed King Rag, or Alitta virens. Isn't he beautiful? But they have two large pincer teeth that can deliver a severe bite. #InsertAnInvert2024 📸 Both Alexander Semenov

is it at all doable to vibe-code a SAMap comparison of salamander and mouse pallia on a rainy Sunday? I guess I’ll have to see

who up measuring they parasubiculum > With a length of ∼5.2 mm and a width of only ∼0.3 mm (approximately one dendritic tree diameter), the parasubiculum is both one of the longest and narrowest cortical structures.

A spotted comb jelly at the Monterey Bay Aquarium #MarineLife #LeucotheaPulchra #Ctenophores #Colloblasts #DeepSea #California #MBARI #WestCoast

Sometimes I think it is necessary to remind everyone about the diversity of echinoderm ANUSES! this fossil crinoid with its well armed ANAL CHIMNEY for example!! #echinoday echinoblog.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-...

is it possible that vertebrate neural crest unites two ancestral lateral-neural-border sources: a) a posterior (epibranchial/otic) cranial placode-like module that generated interoceptive sensory neurons (→ DRG, sympathetic/enteric) b) a pigment-cell module (→ skeletogenic)

so used to mouse neuroscience papers now that I get annoyed when authors don’t put “IN HUMANS” in the titles of their clinical papers

Stunning image of a mammal (the eastern quoll) that glows✨ under UV light💡 📷: Ben Alldridge, reported in the @nature.com briefing #nature #neature #marsupial

I love Dermasterias. Not only do they smell like garlic, but you can also find commensal polychaetes in amongst the tube feet in like 25% of them

Watching animals eat is like my biology crack. I don’t need it, I don’t have to do it, I don’t even always like it, but there’s just something about critters noshing on one another that leaves me gobsmacked. And nothing does it like the comb jelly Beroe [Thread 🧵] 📽️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xkN...

this figure is supposed to show affinity of the samples to Ust over Zlaty, but then shouldn’t the sign be negative, no positive…? If I’m confused, Claude with extended thinking is too…

I made this NemaMeme to explain parasitic nematode life cycles. #Invertebrate #Parasitology 🧪

Wild illustration from F. M. van Helmont's 'Alphabeti vere naturali Hebraici' (1657), attempting to demonstrate that Hebrew letters are derived from their places of articulation in the mouth. This is 'alef' א

scientists have found that comb jellies can merge their nervous systems so that all their bodily activities are synchronised ... except for their anuses, which remain autonomous. personal identity is stored in the arsehole. www.cell.com/current-biol...

i have repeatedly going to bluesky.com instead of bsky.app and now i have a weird urge to buy a fancy planner even though i usually hate that sort of thing

List of Invertebrate Zoology # #molluscmonday or #molluskmonday #tunicatetuesday #trilobitetuesday #wormwednesday #spongethursday #octocoralfriday #polylchaeteday on July 1 aka #internationalpolycaeteday #seaslugday on October 29th #echinoday for anything echino related and for cephalopods? ha ha

Knot phylogeny!!!

"For instance, the ability to feed like a vampire by piercing the surface of a cell and sucking out its contents as food, known as ‘myzocytosis’, is found in several different kinds of predators, such as...vampyrellid cercozoans" www.cell.com/current-biol...

sometimes i want to eschew something just because i like the word so much

just as I got disillusioned with substack it seems like people actually started using its twitter-clone feature? How many damn sites do I need to look at man, I’m too old for this shit

Ok should we not collect all of theses and publish a last OCR exam of the humanity or something.

me vs. academics

I thought the sponge biomarker date from the Cryogenian had been debunked, but I saw it used in a recent paper. Are there still believers?

I hold in my drafts folder a list of 35 known pseuds and their accomplices

if I were to use this site as a safe space to be immature I would probably say something like “goddammit I hate Samo Burja he’s such a pseud” but fortunately I’m above such things

sorry for being immature/gossip-y but this just confirms my long-running belief that he does not respect Tyler and is kind of bitter about his popularity

i haven't had a chance to really try it out yet but one has to assume Elicit is good, given the pedigree elicit.com

This is a lovely paper that I handled at @plosbiology.org, showing that our nifty synovial joints were already there in the common ancestor of jawed fish. Thanks to @ucsdcooperlab.bsky.social as AE, and to first author @neelimasharma.bsky.social for this stunning pic of a little skate pelvis!

I asked Claude if I could replicate an MCMCtree dating analysis on my old laptop and he basically laughed at me 😞

why believe that Charnia and other rangeomorphs are *crown* metazoans as opposed to *stem* metazoans?

“charlie brown had hoes” is like the “flint’s water is polluted!” thing now. we do have evidence that charlie brown had hoes. peanuts.fandom.com/wiki/April_1...

We're looking up to hardened criminals now? We're praising their outfits? Disgusting.

I remain stuck on how weird it is that Elon promotes a stable of sycophant accounts. I’m sure most prominent people are plenty egotistical but they don’t literally do this

A reassessment of the “hard-steps” model for the evolution of intelligent life | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

"assume nick patterson is right" does seems like the best approach but it makes me a little nervous how finely the big indo-european paper sliced the salami with PVGroup, BPGroup, Remontnoye, SShi, SSlo, SSmed…

Say it with Megafauna on February 14th! Cave art drawing of a mammoth, perhaps showing the position of the heart. From El Pindal Cave, Asturias, Spain. Around 15,000 years old. Photo: Berenguer (1994) 🦣❤️🏺