Uh-oh! This shark has been slimed! The hagfish is also called the snot eel for a good reason. If attacked, it instantly oozes slime from its pores that teach a predator to never try that again. Watch this scene in action at National Geographic. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!

A truck full of fish overturned and dumped its load into Northern Ireland farmer Gordon Flinn’s field on Thursday. The tonnes of mackerel were piled two feet deep in places. The driver of the truck was taken to the hospital, but was not seriously injured and was able to return to the scene. The truck was removed and the road opened later that night, but the Flinns may have to put up with a fishy smell for some time. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Louise Flinn)

Men, want to go swimming in Papua New Guinea? Pray you don't encounter this lil' fella, lovingly named the "ball cutter" fish by the locals for the obvious reason:

This is the ferocious 'Ball Cutter' fish which has killed two men by biting off their testicles. A British angler has told how he snared a predator known to feast on the testicles of men.

Jeremy Wade, 53, spent weeks fishing in remote Papua New Guinea after locals told him how a mysterious beast was castrating young men in the area's waters. He finally caught the perpetrator: the Pacu fish, known locally as The Ball Cutter. Jeremy wrestled the 40lb monster on the floor of his boat and opened its snapping jaws with his bare hands to discover a set of human-like teeth. The Ball Cutter boasts an impressive set of gnashers, which tear off the testicles of unwitting anglers and swimmers, leaving them to bleed to death.

Link

Ted Sabarese had a great idea for a photoshoot: people paired with fish that look like them. There are four more at the link. Now when you tell someone that he has a face like a fish, you’ll have to be more specific.

Link -via Kottke | Photographer’s Website

Images: (L) Gentileza Diario Uno/Infobae (R) Simpsons Wiki

A group of fishermen in Cordoba caught a mutant fish off a lake near a nuclear power plant that looked like it came straight out of The Simpsons. Folks, meet the real life equivalent of Blinky, the three-eyed fish:

"We were fishing and we got the surprise of getting this rare specimen. As it was dark at that time we did not notice, but then you looked at him with a flashlight and saw that he had a third eye," said Julian Zmutt, one of the fishermen.

Link [Google Translate] - via Geekosystem

German aquaculturist TCHelmut put a glass observation tower in his koi pond. The fish get a good view of their surroundings and people get a good view of the fish! There are more videos at his YouTube channel, including the installation of the tower and how it looks at night. -via The Daily What

One giant leap for evolution.

Alice Gibb from Northern Arizona University and colleagues discovered 6 unrelated species of fish that have evolved the strange ability to jump:

Researchers discovered that at least six different types of fish are able to launch themselves into the air from a solid surface.

The team said this was an evolutionary snapshot of the transition from living in water to inhabiting land. [...]

It suggests that, rather than a rare adaptation that evolved in a select few species, the ability to leap on land is common among bony fishes. So many more of their ancient aquatic relatives might have invaded the land than had previously been thought.

Link

Fish tanks are usually judged solely by the variety of fish inside, but these unbelievably cool fish tanks would be amazing even without their underwater tenants. I particularly love the one on the top left that looks more like a mini-forest than a fish tank.

Link

That's one smart fish! An orange-dotted turkfish was captured for the first time on video digging a clam out of the sand, then repeatedly throwing it against a rock to crush it.

"The animal excavates sand to get the shell out, then swims for a long time to find an appropriate area where it can crack the shell," videographer Giacomo Bernardi, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement. "It requires a lot of forward thinking, because there are a number of steps involved. For a fish, it's a pretty big deal." [...]

The clam-cracking tuskfish isn't the first fish to be observed using tools. The tuskfish is a kind of reef fish known as wrasse, and these species have been seen using rocks as anvils to crush shellfish. But this is the first time the behavior has been caught on video.

LiveScience has the story and video clip [self-starting, with audio and pre-roll ads]

(Video Link)

The feather starfish may be pretty just sitting there, but when it starts swimming, that’s when it’s true beauty shines. In fact, it’s downright hypnotic.

Via I Am Bored

The cavefish, Phreatichthys andruzzii, has evolved for nearly two million years in the isolated darkness of caves beneath the Somalian desert.

Professor Nick Foulkes, of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, said that this particular species was chosen “because it was such an extreme example, having been isolated from a day-night cycle for so long”.

In the course of its evolution it has lost its eyes, colouration and scales, having no need for them in the pitch-black of an underground cave system.

Regular feeding shows, however, that the fish will adjust its circadian rhythm for food.

Link -via BBC

“Conching” is a method by which Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins are trapping small fish in conch shells, bringing the shells to the surface, and then shaking them with their rostrums to clear out the water and dump the fish into their mouths. More remarkably, the trend appears to be spreading throughout an entire population of dolphins, and fast.

The first isolated instances of conching were recorded in 2007 and 2009 among a small group of Shark Bay’s dolphins. But other dolphins seem to be observing that behavior and learning the method for themselves–in the last four months alone, researchers have documented the behavior six or seven times–marking a very rapid horizontal spread of behavior.

Link via Popular Science

We’ve all heard about snakes eating food bigger than them, but this is just ridiculous. The black swallower eats fish that are 3 times larger than it by grabbing it by the tail and swallowing as the fish coils up inside the swallower’s stomach. The Proceedings of the Ever So Strange have more about this bizarre fish that has never been seen alive.

Link

Most people have trouble not stuffing their face and gaining a few extra pounds on chocolate. But have you ever heard of a fish with the same problem? Apparently the fish outgrew its tank, getting fed a daily diet of Kit Kat bars.

Aquarium staff were baffled when the 8.8lb giant gourami called Gary rejected normal food after being donated to them.

Then the previous owners of the exotic Asian freshwater fish admitted feeding it only with the chocolate-covered wafers.

Experts at the Sea Life London Aquarium had to put crushed Kit Kat pieces inside grapes and banana slices to tempt the 15.7in-long fish on to a normal diet.

Gary’s handler Rebecca Carter said: “I’ve never heard of a fish being fed chocolate, let alone brought up entirely on the stuff.”

Link

For the first time a wild fish, the Blackspot Tuskfish has been photographed by a diver using a tool. Scientists predict that before long we will be cowering before those damn dirty Cod.  Probably not, but check out the photo gallery of this tool using fish at the link.

Fortunately, Mr Gardner managed to photograph this happening as there has never before been any evidence to prove tool use in fish. Behavioural ecologist Culum Brown, of Macquarie University in Sydney, told Science Now: ‘The pictures provide fantastic proof of these intelligent fish at work using tools to access prey that they would otherwise miss out on.

Link

It doesn’t look that way.

This image shows the biomass of popularly-eaten fish in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1900 and in 2000. Popularly eaten fish include: bluefin tuna, cod, haddock, hake, halibut, herring, mackerel, pollock, salmon, sea trout, striped bass, sturgeon, turbot. Many of which are now vulnerable or endangered.

The Guardian tells how this information was gathered. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

Craftster member blupony808 made this awesome plush angler fish out of fabric, garden hose, a night light, paint, and imagination. Yes, it lights up, too! This project won the monthly challenge at Craftster. See more pictures of how she built it. Link -via Rue The Day

A curious little fish encounters a baited hook in his explorations. Animation by Character Matters Animation Studios. -via the Presurfer

Fish in the Hudson River (US) have developed an immunity to polychlorinated biphenyls, a type of toxic chemicals developed in 1929. They’ve done so at an amazing speed:

“This is very, very ra­­­­­­­­­­­­pid evolutionary change,” said Isaac Wirgin, an environmental toxicologist at New York University’s School of Medicine, and the study’s lead investigator. “Normally you think of evolution occurring in thousands to millions of years. You’re talking about all this occurring in 20 to 50 generations maybe.”

The fish in question is called the tomcod, and scientists have determined the specific gene which has changed:

It turns out the fish sport a handy modification to a gene encoding a protein known to regulate the toxic effects of PCBs and related chemicals, called the aryl hydrocarbon receptor2, or AHR2.

The fish are missing six base pairs of DNA of the AHR2 gene, and the two amino acids each triplet would code for. PCBs bind poorly to the mutated receptors, apparently blunting the chemicals’ effects.

The adaptation occurs almost universally in Hudson River tomcod, but crops up only infrequently in two other tomcod populations—in Connecticut’s Niantic River and the Shinnecock Bay at Long Island’s south shore.

Link via reddit | Photo: Mark Mattson, Normandeau Associates

Laurent Ballesta’s job is not easy, but it’s one to die for. The photographer recently spent four weeks diving a total of 95 hours to get pictures of an ancient fish. Ultimately, Ballesta and his team spent a total of 81 minutes swimming beside a “school” (four, that is) of coelacanths. The fish was thought to be extinct until it was rediscovered in 1938, and it still resembles its prehistoric ancestors. See a gallery of the photos at National Geographic. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!

(Image credit: Laurent Ballesta)

Knifefish have a long doral fin that flutters back and forth to move the fish. Here‘s a video showing one in motion. Scientists at Northwestern University thought that it could serve as a useful basis for an underwater robot, and so studied its movement:

Planning for the robot — called GhostBot — began when graduate student Oscar Curet, a co-author of the paper, observed a knifefish suddenly moving vertically in a tank in MacIver’s lab.

“We had only tracked it horizontally before,” said MacIver, a recent recipient of the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. “We thought, ‘How could it be doing this?’”

Further observations revealed that while the fish only uses one traveling wave along the fin during horizontal motion (forward or backward depending on the direction on the wave), while moving vertically it uses two waves. One of these moves from head to tail, and the other moves tail to head. The two waves collide and stop at the center of the fin.

The researchers then created a computer simulation of the fish and designed a robot to duplicate its movements:

The group took the robot to Harvard University to test it in a flow tunnel in the lab of George V. Lauder, professor of ichthyology and co-author of the paper. The team measured the flow around the robotic fish by placing reflective particles in the water, then shining a laser sheet into the water. That allowed them to track the flow of the water by watching the particles, and the test showed the water flowing around the biomimetic robot just as computer simulations predicted it would.

“It worked perfectly the first time,” MacIver said. “We high-fived. We had the robot in the real world being pushed by real forces.”

Link via Fast Company

Around 11 that night, thousands of red-winged blackbirds began falling out of the sky over this small city about 35 miles northeast of Little Rock. They landed on roofs, roads, front lawns and backyards, turning the ground nearly black and terrifying anyone who happened to be outside. [...]

The cause is still being determined, but preliminary lab results from the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission revealed “acute physical trauma” in samples of the dead birds. There were no indications of disease, though tests were still being done for the presence of toxic chemicals.

Link (Photo:Stephen B. Thornton/The Arkansas Democrat Gazette)

Adding to the mystery, over 100,000 fish washed up dead on the banks of the Arkansas River, near Ozark – about 125 miles from Beebe:

Travis Harmon of the Department of Environmental Quality said: ‘Barges reported passing up river and churning up dead fish from the bottom of the river.

‘A single species is killed, and we don’t know the cause. If it was toxic, other species would be affected.’

Link

So, is this a premonition of sort for 2011? What do you think killed all those birds and fish? What’s going on, Arkansas?

A Tweet from Rob Corddry (formerly of The Daily Show, now with Adult Swim) is turned into a comic by David Barneda at Twaggies. Experiences with my youngest child lead me to believe this is true wisdom. Link

They’re good parents—at least initially. A mom may lay 600 eggs at once, dad promptly fertilizes them, and both parents guard the brood once it hatches. (Later, they might eat some of their young. But let’s not focus on the negative.)

Despite their scary looks, they’re actually cowards. Okay, that’s a bit unfair, but studies have shown that rather than congregating to hunt cooperatively, as was always believed, they join forces because they’re afraid of being eaten. They’re especially likely to band together—in schools as large as 1,000 fish— at times of year when predators such as caimans and dolphins are regularly present. Apparently, they’ve gotten the message (evolutionarily speaking) that there’s safety in numbers even if you yourself have really sharp teeth.

That’s just a sample of the things you might not know about piranhas. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!

I don’t know about you, but I’m utterly fascinated with weird and scary creatures that troll the deep ocean. Dark Roasted Blend has a fantastic post (as usual) filled with images of such creatures.

This one above is the Dragon Fish:

Light is so rare down there that its uniqueness is an allure, for mating, as well as a lure, for eating. Grammatostomias flagellibarba, ‘dragon fish’ to you and I, uses bioluminescence – biological light – mainly for the latter: EATING. Any deep, deep, deep swimmer that notices and becomes interested in a certain tiny flickering light will end up becoming caught by the dragon fish’s monstrously huge and needle-sharp toothed mouth. The light being a glowing lure at the end of a long, thin filament connected to the underside of the fish’s jaw.

Link

1. Sawshark

(Image credit: Flickr user Gore Fiendus/Jerry Frausto)

There are seven known species of sawsharks (Pristiophoriformes) that have long snouts with teeth, but they are not related to sawfish (although sawsharks are fish). They swim along the floor of the ocean and use their snouts exactly as you would imagine: they smack their prey sideways to disable them. Sawsharks eat squid, crustaceans, and small fish. They look much more dangerous than they are.

2. Basking Shark

The basking shark (Cetorhinus maximus) is the second-largest of all living shark species, with only the whale shark growing larger. They normally grow to 20-26 feet long, with the biggest confirmed specimen measuring over 40 feet long! They have mouths up to three feet wide, which they hold open while swimming. That’s because they are filter feeders that scoop up plankton, crustaceans, and small fish as they swim.

3. Hammerheads

(Image credit: Flickr user David Biesack)

There are eight or nine different species of hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna), named for their unusual shape. The reason behind the peculiar shape of the shark’s head was debated for many years. Scientists speculated that the distance between the shark’s eye gave it some kind of advantage. Recent research confirms this. Hammerhead sharks can see a range of 360 degrees vertically. They can easy see behind them with a slight turn of the head, and most importantly, their two eyes have a huge overlap of field compared to other sharks, indicating they have excellent binocular vision. Hammerhead sharks are able to judge distances well by sight alone. They also differ from other sharks in that they tend to swim in schools and they can develop a tan when exposed to sunlight.

4. Megamouth Shark

Is there a more descriptive name for any animal than a megamouth shark? The megamouth (Megachasma pelagios) was first discovered in 1976. It is a filter feeder with very small teeth, but swims with its huge mouth open to scoop up jellyfish and plankton. The megamouth shark is a rare creature and is rarely seen. There have been only 41 confirmed sightings, including one last year in which a megamouth was caught and eaten by fishermen in the Philippines. See a video of a live megamouth at YouTube.

5. Thresher Shark

The thresher shark (Alopiidae) is most notable because of its long upper caudal (tail) fin which may account for half the shark’s total length. The thresher shark eats small fish, and will sometimes tap the water with its tail to herd schools of fish into tight spots, making them easier to eat. They can also use their tails to stun their prey with a good smack. Thresher sharks are usually 10-15 feet long, and can grow up to 20 feet long -but remember, about half of that length is tail fin.

6. Frilled Shark

(YouTube link)

The frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus) comes very close to our image of a sea serpent from ancient lore. These sharks are not particularly large at about six feet long with a slender body, but they are very flexible and can move in a rather un-sharklike way. When the shark flares its neck frill, it can look quite menacing. However, they are rarely seen by humans as they prefer to hunt in deep ocean depths.

7. Cookie Cutter Shark

The cookie cutter shark (Isistius brasiliensis) got that strange name from its habit of biting chunks of flesh from its prey by wrenching its body around in a circular motion after sinking its teeth into a fish too big to eat whole. Ouch! The cookie cutter shark reaches only around twenty inches in length, but has been known to bite into whales, submarines, and people. It has a small bioluminescent patch that fools other creatures into thinking it is a much smaller fish than it really is while the rest of the cookie cutter fish waits in the dark.

8. Goblin Shark

The goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni) is a deep water species that is rarely seen by humans. It is believed to be an ancient species even by shark standards. It has an unusually long snout, which you’d think would make it hard for this shark to eat, except that the goblin shark has one strange feature to compensate. It has jaws that can protrude out of its face, like the alien in the movie Alien.

(YouTube link)

If you think that may give you nightmares, just keep telling yourself that goblin sharks live way too deep to be a threat to humans.

9. Whorl Shark

Shark fossils show that weird sharks are not just a modern development. Although we know little about it, the whorl shark (Helicoprion) is a truly strange fish that lived 280-225 million years ago. The whorl shark’s distinction is a spiral of teeth it left behind. Modern sharks continue to grow teeth throughout their lives and shed old teeth. Ancient sharks grew new teeth, but kept the old teeth as well. In some species, old teeth migrated to the face to make room for teeth in the jaw. In the whorl shark, old teeth were just rotated around. But where in the shark were these teeth? Full fossils have not yet been found, so some scientists believe the spiral teeth were in the front of lower jaw as shown here. Others believe the spirals were in the shark’s throat like an internal circular saw, as you can see in this recreation.

10. Megalodon

(Image credit: Flickr user Steve Flamingo)

As far as we know, megalodon (Carcharocles megalodon) was the biggest shark that ever existed. It grew up to 60 feet long and consumed over a ton of food every day. The word megalodon means “big tooth”, appropriate as the megalodon had a bite more powerful than a T. rex, which it used to eat whales. Megalodon lived 25 to one million years ago, although it survives today in film and in our nightmares.

These weird sharks are listed in no particular order. Which do you think is the weirdest?

Fourteen-year-old Kora Wira was fishing in Florida with her parents when a barracuda jumped out of the water and bit her arm! The 42-inch fish landed in the boat and was killed by Wira’s father. Between docking the boat and driving to the hospital, there was one more chore to be done.

Wira and her dad stopped for a quick picture before jumping in the car and heading to the hospital. Wira said she wasn’t in pain at the moment, but she was still creeped out by the fish. Her arm needed 51 stitches, and doctors told her they had never treated a barracuda bite. Her stitches are out now, and she said her arm is healing.

The complete story is a slide show of photographs that include Wira’s wounds, which may be disturbing. Link -via Buzzfeed

Richards, from Camberley, Surrey, was fishing for carp close to his parents’ holiday home when he noticed a flash of orange under the water.

He positioned his rod and bread bait close to the spot and seconds later began reeling in the mystery fish. He said: "I’d heard rumours there might be some big carp there and thought I’d see for myself. I was there for two days running and caught some big common carp.

"Then suddenly I saw this big orange fish cruising along the top of the lake. At first I thought it must be a really fat koi carp, but when I saw it properly I realised it was a common goldfish – just like one you might keep as a pet.

"It looked like it was healthy and in good condition. The lake is sheltered with plenty of food, so it’s doing pretty well. Earlier in the day I’d joked that if I caught a big fish I’d call it Billy, so of course the goldfish got the name."

Billy the goldfish clocked in at 5 lb (2 kg) and 16-inch (40 cm) long. Oh, and Nick did the right thing by tossing it back to live (and not to mention grow) another day: Link – Thanks Katlynn!

Maurizio Porfiri, a professor at NYU Polytechnic University, is designing robotic fish that he hopes will be able to infiltrate schools of fish and lead them away from dangers, such as water turbines. He thinks that certain movements by fish establish them as school leaders and that he can mechanically duplicate these behaviors:

Since fish of different sizes and species school together, Porfiri correctly hypothesized that they would not only accept a robotic peer that was larger than themselves but also welcome it as a group leader.

To engage live shoal mates, Porfiri wanted to give the robot other fish qualities. Foremost, it would have to swim silently, and its locomotion would have to closely match that of live fish. To achieve these goals, he employed ionic polymers that swell and shrink in response to electrical stimulation from a battery, propelling the robot.

Link via Popular Science | Photo: NYU-Polytechnic | Previously on Neatorama: RoboSalmon Spies on Fish

A fish with hands? You betcha! There are 14 species of handfish, nine of which have just been named and described for the first time. Handfish were named such because they use their fins to walk around on the floor of the ocean, instead of swimming. Handfish are rare and difficult to study, and scientists believe they may even be toxic to predators. The pink handfish shown here bears a startling resemblance to The Creature from the Black Lagoon. National Geographic has rare photographs of four different kinds of handfish. Link -via Boing Boing

(Image credit: Karen Gowlett-Holmes)

Okay, I made up the last bit. But these fish have been altered to grow far more muscular than normal trout:

The bodybuilder stature of the trout comes from turning off myostatin, a protein that normally slows muscle growth. Researchers had known of a natural myostatin mutation that allowed for 20 to 25 percent more muscle growth in Belgian blue cattle, but did not know if the same would apply to the different mechanism of muscle growth in fish.

Terry Bradley, a fisheries and aquaculture expert at the University of Rhode Island, worked with a group of grad students for 500 hours to inject 20,000 rainbow trout eggs with different DNA snippets designed to block myostatin.

About 300 eggs ended up carrying the gene for more muscle growth, and eventually produced fish that mostly have the six-pack ab appearance — even though the fish don’t have standard abdominal muscles. A big dorsal hump adds the appearance of muscular shoulders.

Photos at the link.

Link via io9

The fish fossils, described in the latest issue of Science, also prove that filter feeding emerged long before the first whales. For this method of eating, the diner suspends itself in the water, mouth agape. Water escapes through gill slits, leaving behind the filtered food.

It can help to have a big mouth, which many of these enormous fishes must have had.

Co-author Kenshu Shimada, a research associate in paleontology at the Sternberg Museum of Natural History, told Discovery News that one of the fish he and his colleagues identified, Bonnerichthys, grew to around 20 feet in length and swam through a seaway covering what is today the state of Kansas.

I can’t get the image of the fish going "nom nom nom" outta my head. Darn the Interwebs! Link (Photo: Robert Nicholls / Paleocreations)

Back in 2006, we blogged about Mr. Blobby, the ugliest fish ever. Who knew that many years later the same fish caught the attention of mass media. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass writes why we should all be fearful of Mr. Blobby:

As you can see from the accompanying photograph, the cunning blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus) is the most terrifying fish in the world. And if you’re not afraid of it yet, you should be, because there’s always something lurking out there that can get you.

Its hideously deformed body is quite boneless, a gelatinous orb hovering in the deep, covered in slime and mucus. But there’s something even worse.

Its face.

Most fish don’t really have faces. You’ve heard people refer to "fish eyes" or "fish lips," or they say, "Oh, shut up, you old fish face." But the blobfish actually has a face. Not a fish face, but a human face, complete with lips and a big, bulbous nose. A blobfish looks like some fat, drunken judge and may be highly intelligent. And therefore quite dangerous.

It frowns. It leers. Sometimes, it even drools.

"That’s gross!" said an editor around here who didn’t believe me. But once she saw the photos, she began gnawing the knuckles on her right hand in sheer, abject terror.

Link

In order to keep from shriveling like your fingers in the bathtub, fish must constantly exchange ions, such as sodium and potassium, with the water. Larval fish can exchange ions through their skin, and early fish likely used rudimentary gill structures known as branchial baskets. But when the salinity of the water changes rapidly–as happened when fish invaded freshwater habitats–fish would have needed a much more efficient way of exchanging ions with their environment. That means large, complex gills.

Link via reddit | Photo: US Department of the Interior

The nature blog Treehugger has a slideshow of ten unusual fish that are so scary looking that they’ll give you nightmares. Pictured above is the fangtooth fish, a deep sea fish about 17 cm long. It has the largest teeth of any sea creature relative to body size.

Link via Digg | More Information about the Fangtooth | BBC Video about the Fangtooth | Image: Jeff Cart

The fishy aroma attracted a passing grizzly bear who, clearly frustrated at not being able to see the lovely “noms” it could smell, took the plane apart in an effort to find it. Aircraft fabric is no match for bear claws. The bear also chomped both tyres for good measure, then departed the scene.

Alaskans are a hardy bunch, however – as tough as the aircraft they fly. The pilot radioed for two new tyres, three cases of duct tape and a couple of rolls of cellophane to be flown in so he could repair his craft and get home.

Duct tape: is there anything it can’t do? The story includes a picture of the plane after repair. Link -via Fark

In a tributary near Havana, about 200 miles from Chicago, ecologist Greg Sass is testing a barrier that injects beeping sounds into an effervescent wall, which captures and magnifies the noise. The chirping bothers only the carp because it hears higher frequencies than native species do; a series of tiny bones connecting the carp’s swim bladder to its auditory system amplifies sound. In hatchery trials, the acoustic “fence” stopped 95 percent of the invasive fish.

Link

Harry Potter and the Scheming Students

Screwy Scoreboards

Caltech is M.I.T.’s biggest rival in pranks, despite being located at opposite ends of the country. They often take potshots at one another and are especially prone to pranks at football games. Although the Great Rose Bowl prank is pretty well known, another football stunt occurred when Caltech wasn’t even playing. During the 1964 Washington vs. Illinois Rose Bowl game, the audience of 100,000 was rather bored by a somewhat lackluster game. That is, until they looked up and realized that someone had changed the electronic scoreboard to make it appear as if Caltech was putting the hurt on M.I.T. It happened again in 1984 – although the teams were UCLA and Illinois (again), it appeared as if Caltech was stomping M.I.T., 31-9.

“We Suck”

In Cod We Trust

Rooftop Ride

Rice Gets More Comfortable

Fictional Facebook Fox

Bob Harcourt, Associate Professor Macquarie University: "The blue groper is a large fish, but the really sexy thing about Blue Groper is they start off as females. We’ve got lots of blue groper that are small green groper and as an old male dies then the largest most dominant females turns blue and becomes male.

And so one of the really cool things about these fish, is the sex ratio doesn’t really vary, but it is a function of how well protected they are. If you take a lot of males out, then the females have to spend a lot of their time turning into males, which means they can’t breed and they can’t lay eggs."

Now, the blue groper may be in danger. Their population has crashed and scientists are trying to figure out why. National Geographic has the video clip: Link – Thanks Marilyn!

Netherlands residents now have a place to watch their fish when they go on vacation. It’s the world’s only fish-resort. My question is how can they stop the fish from fighting each other?

Link

“And the funniest thing is that the watch was on time and still ticking,” Carish said.

Carish, who often hangs out at the private Port Allen Club with many other members, said in all of his 30 years on Kaua‘i he has never encountered anything this bizarre.

Link -via Fark

The coast of California, in particular, is home to one of the most spectacular kelp forests. Within the confines of this massive forest there lies an abundance of fishes, invertebrates and algae, marine birds and marine mammals.

Link

(image credit: Timothy G. Laman)

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.

Businessman Andrew Cheatle lost his cell phone during a visit to the local beach.  Believing it was gone forever after his cell phone apparently swept out to sea, he received a big surprise a week later. 

Andrew, 45, said: “I was messing about with my dog and my phone must have fallen out and been swept out in the swell.

“I kept calling it but I gave up hope after a couple of days.”

He was shopping for a new phone with girlfriend Rita Smith, 33, when her mobile went off.

She told him: “Your old mobile number is calling my phone.”

Andrew continued: “She said some guy was going on about my phone and a cod so she handed it over to me and he told me where he had found it.

“I thought he was winding me up but he assured me he had caught a cod that morning and was gutting it for his fish stall and that my Nokia was inside it — a bit worse for wear.

“I didn’t believe him but went to meet him and found it was my phone — a bit smelly and battered — but incredibly it still worked after I let it dry out.”

Link – via tech

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

Ian Welch of Aldershot, Hampshire (U.K.), caught the biggest freshwater fish by rod in Thailand, a record 55 stone (770 pound) freshwater ray! 

It took 90 minutes to land, 13 men to heave it out of the water… and weighed 55 stone when they finally got it to the scales.

So it’s little wonder that when Ian Welch first hooked the record stingray, it almost pulled him into the river.

Mr Welch, who weighs 111/2 stone, said: ‘It dragged me across the boat and would have pulled me in, had my colleague not grabbed my trousers.’

The angler, from Aldershot, Hampshire, was fishing in Thailand when he landed the ray, which is the biggest freshwater fish to be caught with a rod.

The biologist was helping with a stingray tagging programme on the Maeklong River, when he hooked the fish.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

Remember the post about Micropinna microstoma, the fish with a transparent head? In that post, Neatorama reader sniggitysnags told us about the existence of the video clip by Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute researchers:

MBARI researchers Bruce Robison and Kim Reisenbichler used video taken by unmanned, undersea robots called remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to study barreleye fish in the deep waters just offshore of Central California. At depths of 600 to 800 meters (2,000 to 2,600 feet) below the surface, the ROV cameras typically showed these fish hanging motionless in the water, their eyes glowing a vivid green in the ROV’s bright lights. The ROV video also revealed a previously undescribed feature of these fish–its eyes are surrounded by a transparent, fluid-filled shield that covers the top of the fish’s head.

This animal is so awesome that we just have to put it on Neatorama’s front page again: Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks sniggitysnags!

More info at the MBARI website.

Two net-caught individuals contained fragments of jellyfish, which must have been their last meal. Such a potentially painful dinner requires incredible stealth, so it’s now thought that barreleyes carefully maneuvers its body near such stinging organisms, keeping its “eyes on the prize,” as the researchers said, throughout the entire hunt. Its tiny mouth then picks at the victim while a transparent shield protects the fish’s eyes.

Link – via reddit

(image credit: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.

One small step for birds, one scary pre-Planet-of-the-Apes warning sign for human beings. Watch the bird snag some bread being tossed to its less-intelligent cousins and then use it to attract some fish to snack on.

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Urbanist.

So how did we get here anyway? Call it evolution, call it luck, but really the best and brightest creatures above and below the waves found powerful allies. In some cases these are completely unexpected – predator and prey, friend and foe – but the ones that stuck it out and stayed friends through the toughest of times managed to make it to today’s oceans and seas.

Evolution alone is an amazing thing – but species that evolve together can be all the more spectacular, protecting, feeding and cleaning one another in incredible ways. Sharks pair with fish, fish with shrimp and shrimp with sea cucumbers and much much more. From boxing crabs that wield poisonous anemones as weapons to shrimp that scour the mouths of electric eels, here are seven of the most radical symbiotic relationships from the shallowest to the deepest waters of our world.

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Urbanist.

Personally, I find this to be further discrimination against ugly animals. If they con you into thinking fish are like adorable little kitties, will it really get you to stop eating more fish? As for me, go ahead and dish me up some delightful meowing sushi, I’m hungry.

Link

Apparently it’s called a frogfish, and while it looks sort of cute from afar, this thing is ugly… and fascinating. DarkRoastedBlend has a whole gallery of different types of frogfish, from the fluffy to the warty.

Link via DarkRoastedBlend