Velvetfish is one of my favorite fish, but very hard to find. Aptly named turdfish, these weird fish must get anyone actually having the pleasure of seeing them trying to figure out how such an untalented animal, barely able to move, uglier than most, and not very quick at that, Read more…
As an avid hitchhiker earlier in my life, meeting loads of cool people and getting to a lot of places for free, the term hitchhiker describing an ecological interaction has immediate appeal. In contrast, the movie the hitchhiker with Rutger Hauer certainly has left no one seeing it untouched! So, Read more…
In general, the numbers of individuals of different species are limited. To a degree, this is very obvious, as no species can ever grow to unlimited numbers, which if not kept in check by something, all species could. The actual regulatory mechanism is often thought to be either by competition Read more…
Communication in order to share information between conspecifics is very common in nature. Just think about male birds singing very loudly early in the morning with the dual purpose of telling conspecific males that this spot is taken as well as getting information through to the females what a hunk Read more…
With the exception of a few ecosystems fuelled by the actions of bacteria on chemical compounds, all other ecosystems are fundamentally powered by the energy from the sun through photosynthesis in plants. Most of you have probably quite early in your school career been taught the concept of food chains Read more…
More or less everything in nature, with the rare exception of an adult orca or a fully grown female great white shark will be prey for something else. One consequence of this is that fear will be a prevailing emotional status in nature, as bold and brave animals will be Read more…
One of the most numerous and beautiful fish in Lembeh is the Banggai cardinalfish. Just a few years ago, this small black and white fish with delicate patterns was quite rare in the strait, but now it can be seen almost all through Lembeh. Yesterday I saw quite a number Read more…
Yesterday`s blog on Batesian mimicry got me started thinking (thus the big tank of air, brain activity requires oxygen!). Batesian mimicry was about “parasitizing” on the true signal of something sending out an honest warning. This is a very special type of mimicry. Camouflage, where animals try to look like Read more…
A couple of weeks ago the title for being the ugliest animal in the world was awarded by the British science festival. Top contenders were the proboscis monkey, lice, the nowadays famous blobfish and a frog from lake Titicaca with the catching name the scrotum frog (it is, I promise! Read more…
Cephalopods belong to the large group of animals known as molluscs. Generally molluscs do not move well, and when they do, it is by either gliding over a slime track or by using their external shells. But not the cephalopods. Cephalopods move very quickly and with very precise movements when Read more…