Weird MRI Photos, 3-Eyed Beetles, Deep Sea Creatures And Other Cool...

Had no idea what to blog about today, so instead of blogging about only one topic as I usually do I have decided to share a few animal-related oddities I encountered on the web the past few days. Today's menu includes three eyed beetles, weird MRI & electron microscropy photos, deep sea creatures and more!

Are you ready? Let's begin:

1# Weird MRI Face! Can You Guess What Animal Is It From?

(credit)

Can you guess what creature made this funny MRI face?

Well, before I actually do the reveal let me give you a quick breakthrough of the background story. The photo was taken by Ben Inglis, who operates the MRI facility at the University of California, Berkeley Brain Imaging Center. He regularly posts MRI scans from his work, like the brains of dead dolphins and whales, trained dogs, and other cool shit.

This weird face was posted on November 5, on his twitter along with the message:

"Name the species!"

Can you?

Probably no, so here's the answer: It's a sea lion!

2. Creature From Hell Or Maybe Something Else?

Credit: Steve Gschmeissner

This amazing photo was published on reddit about 10 days ago and gathered over 30.000 likes, which I believe is (more or less) the number of active users on steemit XD

It may look like a creature from hell or something but it actually is a mosquito's foot under 800X magnification with the help of a scanning electron microscope. The image was taken by Steve Gschmeissner and was first published in the 2016 Royal Photography Society International Images for Science contest.

" Coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of the mosquito tarsus. Shown here is the mosquito leg tarsus, that includes a claw, pulvillar pad with tenent setae (adhesive hairs), and surrounding scales. Note the unusual bundles of layered scales at the end of this mosquito leg tarsus. Scales cover various parts of the body of most mosquitoes, they are especially dense on the mosquito leg. They are thought to provide protection and water-supporting force. Magnification: x 800 at 10cm wide "

3 # Amazing Vampire Squid Footage By EV Nautilus

As I have mentioned in my "25 Of The Weirdest Deep-Sea Animals Filmed by E/V Nautilus" post, the Nautilus Expedition is one of my favorite projects as the guys behind it are constantly uploading amazing videos of all the amazing things they encounter in the deep blue. Today they didn't disappoint me:

In case you had your speakers turned of or something, the creature shown in the video is a vampire squid. The scientific name of the animal is Vampyroteuthis infernalis which literally translates "to vampire squid from hell". The name was inspired by its dark color, cloak-like webbing, and red eyes. No, it doesn't drink blood but it does eat feces!

They are small animals, reaching a maximum length of about 30 cm and live in depths ranging from 600 to 900 meters. Staying alive in these depths is not easy so they have come up with some nice tricks to survive:

Of all deep-sea cephalopods, their mass-specific metabolic rate is the lowest. Their blue blood's hemocyanin binds and transports oxygen more efficiently than in other cephalopods, aided by gills with an especially large surface area. The animals have weak musculature, but maintain agility and buoyancy with little effort because of sophisticated statocysts (balancing organs akin to a human's inner ear) and ammonium-rich gelatinous tissues closely matching the density of the surrounding seawater.

I highly suggest you to visit wikipedia's entry on the animal, there are so many interesting things about this creature!

4# 3-Eyed Beetles

3-Eyed Beetle (credit)

In one of the most interesting animal experiments I have read in a while, researchers have created a beetle with an extra functional eye!

To do that, they deactivated a gene called orthodenticle, which is partially responsible for the formation of the head during development:

"This study experimentally disrupts the function of a single, major gene. And, in response to this disruption, the remainder of head development reorganizes itself to produce a highly complex trait in a new place: a compound eye in the middle of the head." said Armin P. Moczek , one of the authors of the study.

What is even more interesting is that the eye appears to be 100 % functional as numerous tests confirmed that it is made of same cells, has proper nerve connections and elicits the same behavioral responses as the other eyes did!

Sidenote: Wondering if there are any natural 3-eyed creatures out there? Yes there are! Check out "Parietal eye"!

5 # How To Call Your Cows

Can't teach your cow the "come" command? That's because you are doing it totally wrong:

6 # This platypus-hatching video

The creature hatching out of the egg is a platypus, which is actually a mammal! A mammal? Coming out of an egg? Confused? Laying eggs is just only one of the many weird things about this duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal! This post will solve all your questions!

The End

So, that's it with all the strange animal stuff for today! See ya in my next post :D

More Strange Animal Stuff

If you enjoyed reading this post I am sure you will love some of my previous work:

Weird MRI Photos, 3-Eyed Beetles, Deep Sea Creatures And Other Cool Animal Stuff