I’m a nerd for bizarre creatures that haunt our world, but none hold my heart quite so strongly as the deep, dark, alien life forms of the sea.
The ones so strange they are kind of unbelievable. How do I share the same earth with such strange beings? True some are very beautiful, but I can’t help but be shocked and awed by the colossal squid the size of a bus that pulls men from ships and eats them. For real.
I don’t have an imagination so rich that I could make these creatures up. Some of them seem so impossible and you have to wonder how a house cat or a sparrow can exist on the same planet as the Benthocodon that more closely resembles a Disney designed space ship than a living creature.
These creatures live in the same world as you. Will you ever sleep soundly again?
These beautiful creatures are sea slugs, Glaucus atlanticus, to be exact, and are among my very favorite of the creatures in the sea. They are so fairy-like, like something that grants wishes when caught by a mortal or transforms into a wizened old sea spirit when summoned from the deep. Aren’t they magical? Pics from: http://www.seaslugforum.net/showall/glauatla Fun fact: The Glaucus atlanticus lives their entire lives upside down using their foot to cling to film floating on the ocean surface. When they are caught washed up on a beach they look really quite tragic as if their girlfriend may have just broken up with them.
Colossal Squid freak me out. I can’t wrap my brain around the fact that these creatures are real, that they live so deep and so far down that we’ve only gotten a good look at a handful and almost all of those washed up dead on a beach. They can get as long as a school bus and scientists believe they can weigh as much as 1600 pounds. Does that blow your mind? These creatures are my favorite real life monsters though I’d really rather not meet one in real life since there is a good chance I’d pee myself and run screaming for home. If they turned out to be the minions of Cthulhu, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Hydromedusa- Photograph by Ingo Arndt/Minden Pictures. Isn’t it the sweetest little creature ever? I am particularly taken with the hydromedusa (even if I can see its insides, which is sort of embarrassing really when you think about it. Imagine if everyone could see YOUR insides.)
Benthocodon
See!?! How is this thing even real?? It’s like something that escaped from Disneyworld.
The Astrophyton, also called the Giant Basket Star, is another of my favorites because honestly it looks like a work of art and not a creature of the sea. This amazing little monster lives its day curled into a ball that looks sort of like a primitive basket of vines and branches, and then at night it uncurls its many little arms high into the sky to capture food. (It uses its little arms to hold the food from escaping. Neat.)
Ctenophora, also known as the Comb Jelly (which isn’t a real jellyfish at all, FYI) is another favorite of mine because it totally looks like a scene prop from TRON Legacy. The Comb Jellies appear to have running LED light shows across their transparent bodies. They don’t, actually, but they do have thousands of tiny little hairs called cilia that help propel it through the water (like racing stripes!) that reflect light in such a way that it appears to be lit from the inside. Lots of sea creatures do this and many more create their own light to draw in prey. In such dark, dark depths, creatures still need light to “signal” each other. So like any good monster, they make their own. (Ask the angler fish how he does it. He’d love to show you.)
Here is a very short 29 second video by a guy at an aquarium who doesn’t seem to know how to use his video camera very well, but despite those limitations he took some very good shots of the Comb Jelly.
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A to Z Blog Challenge – Jump to another blog in the challenge!
- Halloween Overkill - The “A is for Axe” post is really, really awesome. Writers, head over and take it in because while this post is about the film version of the book American Psycho, the writer of Halloween Overkill analyzed the axe and “tools of the trade” of the villain of the movie, Patrick Bateman. Patrick remains one of my favorite villains of all time, but I never thought about the details of his crimes, which is sort of ridiculous of me because author Bret Easton Ellis did nothing by accident when it comes to Patrick. Halloween Overkill also talks about some of the music and dialogue. Well done!
- Hold on to Your Bloomers - I love the title of this blog, but mainly she reminds me of my BFF Lydia Dawson, the costume designer I gush about on here all the time. Lydia, if you are reading, you should totally check this blog out. The author is writing a historical romance set in the Elizabethan time period and has a great B is for Bloomers post about, well, bloomers! (And the lack there of.)
- Allison Writes – Ok, I’m totally digging Allison Write’s blog. I love her mast head, but please jump right back to the letter A post, you don’t want to miss it! It is such a great story. I became an immediate follower.
