today in Microscopic Squid news

Piglet Squid 

I’ve been sitting on this for days (and boy, is my butt tired)(and smelly) because I thought it was totally fake.

Piglet Squid? Underwater geofeatures that look like naked women? I swear to god, I thought the Piglet Squid was some kinda Disney character, brought to life through the intervention of someone with Photoshop and too damn much time on his/her hands. What can I say, I never watched Saving Nemo…or was it Finding Private Ryan? Whatever, I never saw either of them. I ain’t seen Casablanca yet!

Imagine, if you will (or can) my mortification when I discover that the Piglet Squid is, in fact, a perfectly normal, if teensy, cephalopod that lives in the sea off Nigeria. Oh! The shame! I shall be laying off the calamari and buying live seafood in Chinatown for free-setting purposes in penance. Do tilapia do well in Burrard Inlet?

In any case, these are totally real photographs and (highly cool) video from the BP Kongsberg Underwater Image Competition. Do not miss the video section; bizarrerie of this magnitude does not come along every day, at least not without the use of expensive and debilitiating pharmaceuticals.

Giant Squid caught on film in Japan

This is an incredible piece of video. It has long been a mystery as to what the Giant Squid actually eats. Here we can see for ourselves.
Don’t faint, children! 

Baked Lobster Caught!

Psychadelic Lobster, Carlin CarlinusHalf-baked, anyway. I suggest a scientific name Carlin Cheechinigus, but that’s subject to (dis-) approval.

This hallucinogenic beauty was caught off the coast of Maine, so the possibility exists that he was just on his way back from a wild party on the Gaspe, which would explain why he still looks half-baked.

Although it no doubt has an ironclad alibi. It’s underage, too, as are some of its most vociferous fans. Here is the report from the Bangor newspaper:

“Dude, it’s half orange and half, like, regular color for a lobster,” exclaimed Alyssa Bonin, 12, of Webster, Mass.

Sharp eyes there, Alyssa. Maybe a little bloodshot from the sounds of things, but still, sharp.

Mills intends to keep the two-toned lobster over the winter and have him on display for educational purposes, though he has no plans to name him.

“Lobsters are interesting but not personable,” he said.

We at the raincoaster blog beg, of course, to differ. Even our on the one hand shall not know what our on the other hand is doing

The rare 1-pound crustacean, caught earlier this week in Steuben, is a genetic mutation with a two-toned shell.

One side is the usual mottled dark green. The other side is the orange-red shade of a lobster that’s already spent some time in the hot pot.

The odds of this kind of mutation occurring are very rare – something like one in 50 million to 100 million, according to oceanarium staff. The chance of finding a blue lobster is far more common, at one in a million.

“Isn’t he pretty?” Bette Spurling of Southwest Harbor cooed Thursday as she stroked the lobster’s shell to calm him down.

Now that is the proper way to treat an addled celebrity. Not at all the way Jon Stewart did with the poor, hapless and handsome Butterscotch Stallion here (heartlessly stolen from Defamer):

 

Summer’s Hottest Movie

Can’t wait. Can you?

Penguin vs Predator

From Worth 1000

Octopus vs Shark

After all this time you aught to know how to handicap this. Actually quite gruesome, in fact.