King Shelter

Crowdsurfer for The Frights at Beach Goth, Santa Ana, CA

Let’s get carcinized.

With the crab facts advent calendar, you can scratch off the iridescence to reveal one crab fact every day! We dug deep into the facts vault to bring you some deep cuts. We know you'll love 'em.

Get a calendar here 👇🏻

Art by @franzanth

These calendars support Skype a scientist! We're a small science education nonprofit. We connect scientists with classrooms, scout troops, libraries and more! We offer our programming totally for free. We also run the squid facts hotline! Calendars support our work 🧬

Parnassius apollo

Sorority Noise

Ok y’all brace yourselves cuz I just learned about a new animal

Yes, that is an animal. Yes, scientists refer to it as the purple sock worm. No, that’s not it’s real name, silly, it’s real name is Xenoturbella!

When these deep-sea socks were first discovered, no one knew what the fuck they were looking at (and, really, can you blame them?). They have no eyes, brains, or digestive tracts. They are literally just a bag of wet slop. DNA analysis initially seemed to indicate that they were related to mollusks, until the scientists realized that DNA sample was from the clams they had recently eaten (yes, they can eat with no organs. We don’t know how.)

Scientists then analyzed the data again and tentatively placed them in the group that includes acorn worms, saying that their ancestors probably had eyes, brains, and organs, but simplified as a response to their deep sea ecosystems.

Later DNA testing has since shown that they are their own thing! Xenoturbella, along with another simple and problematic to place creature called acoelomorphs, belong to their own phylum called Xenacelomorpha! This places them as the sister group to all bilateral animals. So, they just never evolved brains, eyes, or organs. They are a glimpse at a very primitive form of animal that never bothered to change, because apparently what they do works. Rock on, purple sock worm.

Loligo pealeii

go mentally deranged yeh. go brainless yeh. go wacky. go positively bonkers yeh. go mad bruv. lose ya marbles yeh. go foolish

Deep Sea Beauties

okay this a great post but they deserve more credit for their dumb lil brains!!!

They have short and long term memory, the ability to learn and solve complex problems! They even can switch tactics during said problem and work it out another way! Given multiple cognitive tasks they before pretty damn well!!!

They barely have a brain and can do all that!!! They deserve more credit for their hard work !!!!

Nautiluses. THIS goddamn animal.

The fundamentals of this design are HALF A BILLION YEARS OLD. Look at its weird eyes. It evolved back when eyes were still new. Those are literal pinhole cameras. Because nature invented photography the same way we did, apparently.

It doesn't have tentacles. Those are cirri, which lots of sea animals use to do all sorts of things. Fetal nautiluses have one giant slug foot that splits into these. They have noodle antennae made out of foot.

You can bring them up out of the ocean and they can survive the equivalent change of like 80 standard atmospheres. That shouldn't be possible. These things evolved a goddamn spacesuit...500 million years ago.

They also swim via jet propulsion. Their shells make them buoyant, which they can regulate, and they shoot water from a pump. So their 500 million year old spacesuit also has a goddamn rocket pack.

There have been 5 mass extinction events (we are causing a six one now). This thing has survived all of them. And it never got better eyes.

Or A BRAIN. That's right. This thing predates BRAINS. It has two separated lobes behind its top and bottom halves of beak that apparently work well enough that it can track smells with okay accuracy in total darkness, in 3 dimensions.

Here is one eating a dead fish.

Goddamn.

just listed some more prints of these "2heads" (I edition) "6 wings" (II edition) and "6 legs" (I edition) linocuts to my online store SHOP HERE

Happy birthday, Soupy! 🎉🎉 📸: @mmindlinart