Cuttlefish are odd creatures, so news stories about them tend to be interesting.
However, a story about them that’s going a bit viral is downright amusing!
As you can see from the image in this video from the Guardian, some scientists wanted to find out whether or not cuttlefish have stereoscopic vision (like humans do), so they strapped some 3D glasses to their faces and showed them some movies.
I found this story refreshing because it was nice to see something about how cuttlefish see things rather than about how other creatures can, or cannot, see them.
Generally stories about cuttlefish and their cephalopod cousins, octopuses and squids, tend to focus on their talent for camouflage. Here’s a link to a video that covers some scientific investigations into their peculiar abilities.
Of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without a peek at what cuttlefish look like in the wild. Here’s a one minute 360° video that I found on YouTube that does the trick.
This is the time of year when you see the words “Best of” quite a lot.
No matter what you care about, someone somewhere is going to publish something about the “best of 2019” or even the “best of the decade” for that thing.
For example, I pay a lot of attention to science, so this article caught my eye.
I assumed that it was going to be an excuse to revisit the *many* stories about slime mold inspired by an exhibit of ‘le blob’ at the Parc Zoologique de Paris earlier this year.
Here’s a video about that, err, dare I say, publicity stunt? Slime molds are certainly interesting creatures, in their own way, but not necessarily to watch in real time.
As it turns out, the article Best Blobs of 2019 didn’t even include anything about ‘le blob,’ but it did include a story about a jellyfish as big as a human that was spotted in Cornwall (UK). Here’s a video from Guardian News about that sighting.
Neat! I wanted to watch a 360° video of that, but I had no luck finding one.
On the other hand, I did find a 360° video from AirPano that was shot off the coast of Cuba. Heck, if you’re going to go swimming with giant jellyfish at this time of year, then water around Cuba is a whole lot more inviting than waters off England anyway. Wouldn’t you agree?
The news is full of stories about how a giant squid was filmed in U.S. waters for the first time. Here’s a link to an article by ABC7 that includes a great clip about it.
The accomplishment was applaudable, but I was a bit disappointed about the clip.
Where were the eyes?
The text in the video said that the giant squid can have eyeballs that measure up to ten inches in diameter — that’s almost a foot! Yet the eyes weren’t actually captured in the video.
Luckily there’s another place where you can see a giant squid’s eyes.
While this was the first time a giant squid was filmed in U.S. waters, it wasn’t the first time that one’s been filmed. That happened back in 2012 when researchers from Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science filmed one in the Ogasawara archipelago, and that time they did get a fleeting shot of the giant squid’s humongous eyes. Here’s a link to a clip that covers that sighting as well as some background like how giant squids have the largest eyes in the animal kingdom and how sightings of them probably led to the legends about kraken.
When you’re looking eye to eye with a squid or octopus, it’s easy to imagine that they would see you in the same way that you would see them, but that’s not so. Until a couple of years ago, researchers believed that since cephalopods only have a single type of photoreceptor, they would be colorblind. Then in 2016 some researchers suggested that the truth may be more intriguing than that — their eyes may work like a prism. Here’s a video about that and a link to the the research that it was based upon.
Of course, cephalopods aren’t the only creatures in the sea with great eyes. Plenty of marine mammals have wonderful eyes, too. Here’s a lovely video filmed and edited by Sally Bartel for Save The Whales that brings you eye to eye with whales, dolphins and an affectionate manatee who will even come up and give you a smootch!
They were all beautiful, but I must confess to being partial to whale’s eyes. In fact, one of my favorite 360° videos of all time is TheBlu because at one point a blue whale comes up and looks you right in the eye for a bit.
TheBlu is awesome, but it is just an animation. There’s another non-360° video that was posted by Cheesemans’ Ecology Safaris that’s even more impressive — it takes you eyeball to eyeball with a real humpback whale!
Again, since those huge creatures are also mammals, it’s easy to assume that their eyes would see you in much the same way as you would see them. While that’s more true than it is with the cephalopods, it’s still not really the case. Here is a story that will give you sense of how whales might really see you.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this 360° video from the American Museum of Natural History. It’s a bit slow in the middle but features some nice eye to eye shots near the beginning and end.
To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous words in The Lord of the Rings, “It’s a dangerous business, clicking on a link. You glance at a story, and if you don’t watch out, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
This week I innocently clicked on a link to this story from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Indeed, the articles provided an interesting explanation for those odd polynya phenomena in Antarctica, but it was actually this intriguing image that really grabbed my attention.
Image: Ocean measurements were also collected by seals swimming under the sea ice with temporary satellite tags, showing normal water conditions in the years that did not have large polynyas.
Credit: Dan Costa/University of California, Santa Cruz
Yep, that’s a seal with an antenna on it’s head!
It turns out that the study used data combined from satellite images of sea ice cover, some robotic drifters as well as elephant seals outfitted with sensors.
What’s more, using seals wasn’t a one-off operation. It was part of a program that’s been operating for over a decade according to the Coriolis Operational Oceanography site:
Since 2004, several hundred seals have been equipped with conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) sensors in the Southern Ocean for both biological and physical oceanographic studies. A calibrated collection of seal-derived hydrographic data is now available from Coriolis, currently consisting of more than 300,000 temperature/salinity profiles. — Coriolis
The Coriolis site also has information about a program called Marine Mammals Exploring the Oceans Pole to Pole that provides access to an international database of validated ocean observations collected by marine mammals such as seals, sea lions, and even turtles.
On my journey to learn how scientists have been strapping sensors to seals to find out about what’s going on under the ice in Antarctica, it was impossible to miss stories about other methods they are using.
Yes, you really can go to the MOO site and listen in on some seals and ice for yourself.
After all of this stuff about seals, why stop with listening? Aren’t you itching to see some more?
Here’s a link to a short 360° video that takes you under an iceberg to visit with a crabeater seal along with some gentoo penguins before returning to the surface to share some other views and perspectives about Antarctica.
That video had a nice view of a seal under ice, but now here’s an even better 360° video that get’s you up close and personal with an elephant seal on a beach.
So there you have it. The moral of this story is be careful about what you click on, or you might find yourself on an unexpected virtual journey to learn about seals with sensors, and then end up spending an hour or more exploring the frigid waters under Antarctica.
In case you’ve got a few more minutes and the interest, here are links to two more very nice YouTube videos about the amazingly diverse and beautiful life deep under the Antarctic ice.
Finally, now that I’ve got you down here with me on this unexpected adventure in Antarctica, the trip wouldn’t be complete without some more penguins, right?
Here’s a 360° close-up view of a colony of some Adélies, chinstraps and gentoos — some of them are having a rough time, but nonetheless, they’re all still fun to watch (esp. the chicks).
There’s an actual place called Jellyfish Lake on Eil Malk island in Palau where you can swim with hundreds of thousands of the mesmerizing creatures without fear of being stung. Here’s a video with some calming underwater footage.
Of course, you may not have time to jump on a plane to Palau right now. Even if you did, perhaps going for a swim in a sea of jellyfish still doesn’t sound all that relaxing to you?
In that case, perhaps a nice, safe one minute 360° virtual dive with a single jellyfish near the Gardens of the Queen off of the coast of Cuba might do the trick.
Well, it turns out that the National Aquarium also has a live cam of their jellies, and it’s down right hypnotic. Who needs a lava lamp when you can get such awesome, calming nature delivered right to your screen, live!?!
Here’s another great clip from TED-Ed about how jellyfish aren’t just therapeutic to stare at — they also have all sorts of other intriguing properties. Some of them glow, and that helps them contribute to medical research. Others are even “sort of” immortal!
A popular tourist activity in Boston is whale watching (Trip Advisor). That is because it’s only a short 25 mile trip out to Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (Wikipedia). Stellwagen Bank hosts several different species of large whales, including humpbacks, finbacks, minkes, pilot whales and right whales. If you’ve never seen a whale in person, then it is hard to imagine how surreal it is to be in the presence of such an immense creature.
If you do happen to be in Boston and want to find out more about whales, then check out the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism’s Massachusetts Whale Trail.
Okay, so watching whales from the surface is fascinating, but an even more impressive experience is to see them in their full glory underwater. Hardly anyone has the gear, experience, or sheer guts to go out and do that for themselves, though. Luckily, there are some underwater photographers that do, and a few even share the view. Here’s a 360° video of a humpback whale and its calf swimming near Reunion Island.
That’s a memorizing view, but it leaves you wanting more, doesn’t it? I must confess that I’m usually one to prefer the real thing over simulation, but I can’t help but prefer Wevr’s 360° video the Blu Whale Encounter that brings you eye to eye with an 80 foot blue whale. Gulp!
While experts agree that whale watching isn’t very healthy for the whales, it’s a multi-billion dollar industry, so few of them believe that the practice is likely to stop. Instead, they back a movement to encourage more responsible practices for dealing with whales in the wild. For example, here’s a PSA that covers some basics of how to co-exist with whales responsibly.
