The Remipede...

Hi. Welcome to Weirdbeautiful.

Today, I just want to post a couple of links to articles on "the remipede". I think I've said before that, as a zoologist, I never know whether to be ashamed of my ignorance each time I learn of a new speices, or astounded at the world and the evolutionary process that genereated all these creatures. Weird animal of the day is the "Remipede": a cave-dwelling relative of the crab, lobster and woodlouse. In the case of this bizarre creature, it was at least fairly recently discovered- in fact the "Speleonectes" species discussed in this article has only been known to mankind for around a year, as the article explains-

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090824115813.htm

Coincidentally, this odd little beings also feature in this month's National Geographic magazine, in the feature on diving in the Bahamas' "Blue Holes", where they are described as "living fossil[s] nearly unchanged for 300 million years". Interestingly, these weird troglodytic predators have venomous fangs, which they use to kill their prey (mostly other crustaceans, such as shrimps).

More information on the remipede can be found here-
http://whyfiles.org/2010/remipede/
and
here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remipedia

Image of the day-Mandarinfish, Mr. Luc Viatour and some weird and beautiful links-

This beautiful creature is a Mandarinfish, Synchiropus splendidus. This image is by Luc Viatour and he owns the copyright (Mr. Viatour's website is http://www.lucnix.be and is full of fantastic images on a range of themes- I strongly recommend it). This image is reproduced here in accordance with its Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 licence -for details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Synchiropus_splendidus_2_Luc_Viatour.jpg

Today, I also want to post a series of links to an article by MSN, MSN UK in fact,whose travel section has today posted a gallery of 50 of the world's most "beautiful things". It shouldn't come as any great surprise that many of the images are photos of wonders of the natural world- the following are links to my favourites-

The weirdest is probably this picture of algae in the Caños Cristales river in Colombia-
http://travel.uk.msn.com/inspiration/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=152177367&page=20

There is also a wonderful view of the Grand Canyon-
http://travel.uk.msn.com/inspiration/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=152177367&page=38

and a great shot of the Wadi Rum desert, in South Western Jordan-
http://travel.uk.msn.com/inspiration/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=152177367&page=24

Beautiful animals get a mention, too, with this great picture of the resplendent quetzal: surely the most beautiful bird on Earth -
http://travel.uk.msn.com/inspiration/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=152177367&page=6

and, last but not least, the msn list also includes the world's "most beautiful fish"- the "mandarinfish" or "mandarin dragonet". The MSN list's photograph is not as awe-inspiring as Mr. Luc Viatour's image above, but is still more than worth the detour
http://travel.uk.msn.com/inspiration/photos.aspx?cp-documentid=152177367&page=32