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Oh that's a lovely story! George sounds like quite a guy to have a chat with  This is extra fun because sometimes I take a look at octopuses for my work and studies myself and for that reason just today someone gifted me this incredible mug  Which I now have named George and will carry around at university so my students will be somewhat confused why I'm petting my mug
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Apr 3, 2019 15:20
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Sweet mug! We have giant cuttlefish breeding grounds not far from here too - love those little guys, their eyes are so weird an hyper advanced, can see in circularly polarized light. In a good year we get somewhere between 1/2 to a million of them mating. Fortunately have little guilt in eating squid and we get ultra delicious southern calamari squid that are so easy to catch it's not funny and that only live for 18 months at best anyways. I'll try and figure out how to write up some of my snake stories too - they never got names but were cool little reptile buddies with very distinct personalities. Mostly handled eastern brown snakes but also milked a weird variety of imports that someone had smuggled in. We had a couple of Gaboon vipers for example... never really come to terms with the fact that people would smuggle venomous snakes to Australia - seems like carrying coals to Newcastle or selling ice to Inuit.  e: Was awesome work though - we produced a good portion of antivenoms used in oceania and a lot of Africa and Asia too. e2: Plus the venom extracts we made helped keep a lot of ex-racing horses alive for longer to produce anti-venoms 
Stoner Sloth fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Apr 3, 2019
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Apr 3, 2019 15:27
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i got a little teary over george; octopuses are my favorite animal at the aquarium and i am a big fan of cephalopods in general.
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Apr 3, 2019 15:44
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hamjobs posted:i got a little teary over george; octopuses are my favorite animal at the aquarium and i am a big fan of cephalopods in general. He was a sweet little fellow, will always remember him fondly. And totally agree - such a weirdly alien creature but yet at least as intelligent as birbs or dogs/cats/pigs... just in a strangely different way.
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Apr 3, 2019 15:50
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hamjobs posted:i got a little teary over george; octopuses are my favorite animal at the aquarium and i am a big fan of cephalopods in general.  If they had a longer lifespan they'd take over the world Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. https://i.imgur.com/QKTkerO.mp4 |
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Apr 3, 2019 15:51
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my favorite octopus at the monterey bay aquarium was Victoria, the Enteroctopus dofleini (giant pacific). she was super sweet, and smart, and would seriously jet water and throw up a tentacle every time she saw someone she recognized and liked. she also repeatedly disassembled some pretty expensive scopes, pumps and other equipment because she was bored, so they ended up setting up a gym for her and also sort of letting her have that entire ceph lab as her own private room. good big girl. 
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Apr 3, 2019 15:54
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also she would leave you sucker hickeys from leading you around by the arm; it was wild.
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Apr 3, 2019 15:54
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OMG - she sounds like quite the character! We mostly get common octopus as about the largest you'll see around here but would love to see a giant pacific, especially one as awesome as Victoria sounds  Also I love that they set up a gym for her
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Apr 3, 2019 15:58
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MBA is a great research aquarium; they actually really love the animals and the environment and it makes me happy all inside my body. also they have puffins and sardines and i love watching both of those exhibits. also their tidepool is LIIIIIIT.
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Apr 3, 2019 16:04
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sounds great - nothing better than being around animals cared for by people who actually care. Would love to see the puffins too, those lil buggers are cute af!
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Apr 3, 2019 16:12
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Stoner Sloth posted:In the end the experiment they were running had to start again, an extra 4 months of work to that point, and George was put down the bottom of the stack of tanks from then on. I also made sure to pay George a little extra attention every day and he seemed to appreciate it, he'd often sit up half out of the water, clinging to the side of the tank and stare at me as I cleaned his tank or get my attention by flashing his vibrant blue coloured rings as I went past.  Stoner Sloth posted:Though speaking of, I'd been told he was tank bred and therefore safe (tetrodotoxin is extracted from their environment/bacteria - same deal as with blowfish except blue ring octopus use it like venom rather than poison)... turns out he'd been caught by one of the kind people who taught me to dive and in fact could have bitten and killed me when I cleaned his tank many times over. 
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Apr 3, 2019 16:12
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Most scared I've ever been of an animal though was a tiger shark - got about 3m (10 ft?) from a 4.5 meter tiger shark up on the great barrier reef... managed to calm myself by realizing I could outswim a lot of the people with me even if I couldn't outswim the shark. Mostly was just awe at that chonky gal swimming past me like a well fed school bus. e: Also if it's not overly cliched... I honestly did once punch out a kangaroo. For good reason though! Stoner Sloth fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Apr 3, 2019
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Apr 3, 2019 16:30
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Stoner Sloth posted:Most scared I've ever been of an animal though was a tiger shark - got about 3m (10 ft?) from a 4.5 meter tiger shark up on the great barrier reef... managed to calm myself by realizing I could outswim a lot of the people with me even if I couldn't outswim the shark. Mostly was just awe at that chonky gal swimming past me like a well fed school bus. most reasons are good to punch out a roo; they're dangerous!!!! also holy gently caress be safe, most sharks are cool af but tiger sharks actually do scare me bc they do aggress more often on live food than say, gws 
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Apr 3, 2019 16:40
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Stoner Sloth posted:Sweet mug! We have giant cuttlefish breeding grounds not far from here too - love those little guys, their eyes are so weird an hyper advanced, can see in circularly polarized light. In a good year we get somewhere between 1/2 to a million of them mating. Fortunately have little guilt in eating squid and we get ultra delicious southern calamari squid that are so easy to catch it's not funny and that only live for 18 months at best anyways. those are some great stories. although I was a little  at your revelation that the blue-ringed octopus was fully envenomed, I don't think venoms get much more deadly. I saw one in a tank at the Sydney aquarium and he looked cute and harmless.agree re: the cuttlefish, I've loved seeing those guys in aquariums and it would be very cool to see some while diving or snorkeling.
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Apr 3, 2019 16:42
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hamjobs posted:most reasons are good to punch out a roo; they're dangerous!!!! TY these days I'm just too tired to dive much but yeah, certainly a scary moment but luckily for all of us that old gal was well fed and happy so she didn't mind us watching her cruise on by. Was a moment though when I considered my options there and figured I'd be better of stabbing one of my dive buddies than trying to use the knife on a shark that size lolHaha and yeah - pretty much with roos, drat thing was about to gut my brother and everyone thinks 'oh cute animal, it's just playing'
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Apr 3, 2019 16:45
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Manifisto posted:those are some great stories. although I was a little Thanks mate and yeah, made me feel a little queasy that I'd been a little lax with George a few times. Still he was such a gentle fellow (graduate project fish aside) that I figure I was still pretty safe. But yuss - cuttlefish are adorable and those hourglass eyes are amazing if you ever get the chance Port Lowly in South Australia is amazing to dive in the cuttlefish breeding season!e: and hell yeah about the venom - not quite as bad a some of the frog toxins but still, somewhere between 125 - 250 thousand times as lethal as strychnine. Still at least it's a virtually painless way to go
Stoner Sloth fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Apr 3, 2019
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Apr 3, 2019 16:48
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Mods please change my name to Danger Hug Fish thank you
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Apr 3, 2019 17:00
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abRPaXgJGQg Check out this octopus doing what's his good right
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Apr 3, 2019 17:21
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Snake stories if anyone is interested? When I first started working at <redacted> I didn't realize that I was walking into dead man's shoes... oddly enough it was a non-venomous snake that got me the job opportunity, the roughly 5m long "pet" python that the last guy owned had strangled him in his sleep. Now mostly I got the job from unofficial experience, catching red bellied black snakes and such as a kid. Here we were dealing with a whole different level of beasty - mostly eastern brown snakes but also saw scaled vipers, PNG black snakes and all sorts. I never ended up dealing with taipans though - part of what put me off was my immediate boss and most experienced snake handler I've personally met, a guy called... let's say John. John had been handling a coastal taipan that bit him. Fortunately this was in the early nineties and the protocol had advanced significantly, including the use of pressure bandages. Unfortunately it's hard to pressure bandage a bite to the stomach. John had to have multiple doses of adrenalin just to keep his heart going before he got to hospital (a thing we had to sign a form to allow if we were in the same position) but he'd semi-miraculously survived (partly cause we had a limited amount of anti-venom on standby in a fridge). However the wound he got from it was roughly fist sized hole in his belly. Also after his close call we had to wear thick leather aprons at all times when handling snakes.
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Apr 3, 2019 17:22
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I love your stories, you should get an av related to octopuses, snakes, tentacles or a storyteller telling a story while being a mixture of those things!!
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Apr 3, 2019 17:27
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Sloth with 8 octopus arms reading a book
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Apr 3, 2019 17:30
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That might be one of the most terrible horrors I've ever imagined, but I'd really like to see it
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Apr 3, 2019 17:35
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pixaal posted:Sloth with 8 octopus arms reading a book Needs to be smoking a pipe/joint/bong/vaporizer and possibly having a glass of whiskey or gin too 
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Apr 3, 2019 17:37
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Well he surely does have enough arms for this task!
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Apr 3, 2019 17:38
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Stoner Sloth posted:if you ever get the chance Port Lowly in South Australia is amazing to dive in the cuttlefish breeding season! I would love to! I once got as far as the Yorke Peninsula/Innes and the Flinders Ranges (the latter is totally amazing by the way) but I didn't have time to make it to the Eyre Peninsula, people said Port Lincoln was very cool, now I have a reason to see Lowly as well! |
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Apr 3, 2019 17:44
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True.. also am so lucky with gin here at the moment - a local one, Never Never I think, won the best gin in the world. That and lots of the local distilleries are amzing - been drinking Green Ant gin which uses a species of weaver ant to flavour it and is awesomely citrus-ey and peppery Also been getting finger limes (or caviar limes) which are this weird native off-shoot of citrus called micro-citrus and my gosh, they are amazing - like little fish roe made up of lime juice. So good with booze, gotta try to make a mojito with them soon.
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Apr 3, 2019 17:44
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Manifisto posted:I would love to! I once got as far as the Yorke Peninsula/Innes and the Flinders Ranges (the latter is totally amazing by the way) but I didn't have time to make it to the Eyre Peninsula, people said Port Lincoln was very cool, now I have a reason to see Lowly as well! Cool - Yorkies has some of my favourite fishing spots and Flinders Ranges is awesome, If ya up there again try and get to Arkaroola - it's one of the most unique geological parks in the world... just looks so otherworldly Also if any of y'all are down this way then let me know cause I know peeps up around most of the southern parts of Australia. Oh and there's also really good wreck dives all along the coast here - Star of Greece is really close to shore, old... hmmm... 60's I think?... fishing vessel that's so well preserved.e: Oh gosh... I forgot... if you get the chance ever then head to a place called Naracoorte, you won't regret it. When I went there a friend had just captured the first footage of Australian elapid snakes hunting bats in caves (think it was a tiger snake) but it's also just amazing for caving + got a unique fossil record of marsupial lions and 1 ton wombats Stoner Sloth fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Apr 3, 2019
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Apr 3, 2019 17:48
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Oh no, does that mean you are drinking ants?
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Apr 3, 2019 18:45
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Goons Are Great posted:Oh no, does that mean you are drinking ants? Shh, it'll be okay, just cover your antfrens's ears and eyeballs so they don't know this is happening in the world
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Apr 3, 2019 19:32
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Id like an ant crew gang tag to show and support that no ants were harmed in the making of gin or other terrible ways to die
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Apr 3, 2019 19:43
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I would make one but I don't know how gang tags work
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Apr 3, 2019 19:44
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I don't either but it's not going to stop me from trying
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Apr 3, 2019 19:45
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Wait, wait, hold up, I'm sorry but I'm still processing the octopus story. Your university had a BLUE RING octopus, like the kind from Australia that can kill in minutes and there's no antivenom, you just die? And you, in a course of study about animal toxins, were told a specimen was innate when it wasn't, go clean its enclosure? ... 1-Why didn't you sue the bejeezus out of them? 2-Do you ever wonder if anything else your teachers said about deadly animal poison was monstrously incorrect? Like were there a bunch of rattlesnakes in a cubby in the zoology department while entomology kept their Daddy Long Legs in hermetically sealed Hulk-jail??? 3- Did you tell anybody!? Which universities staff their bullet-ant exhibits with work-study kids in swimtrunks seems like a valuable alumni insight. |
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Apr 3, 2019 19:58
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There's ant-flavoured alcohol?? |
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Apr 3, 2019 20:00
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my brother ate an ant once said it tasted juicy and crunchy, which are not flavors. (he was probably 3 or 4 at the time). what do they taste like?
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Apr 3, 2019 20:04
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trip report: austin was p chill and good. I already reported on the bats, it was cool to see them fly out from under their bridge at dusk but it's supposedly way more cool when the populations go up in the summer. I went on a bit of a taco bender, well not really but I had more tacos over the span of a few days than I'd probably had in the past year. if I truly had a taco problem I would have attended the National Taco Championships which was held there this past weekend. weatherwise it was a good time to go, apparently it gets quite hot and humid in the summer, there was some warmth and some slightly cool/overcast days but no rain and no unbearable heat. as I think most people know because of sxsw, austin has good diverse music scene for its size and I was pretty happy with the show I saw, although I missed by one weekend the austin band I would have loved to see (ringo deathstarr). plenty of little parks and greenbelts and nature preserves for walking, nothing very mountainous but more interesting than just plain flat. thanks to barking gecko for suggesting mayfield park, my brother and I did check it out and it was v cool. foodwise austin seem to have a lot going for it, in addition to the aforementioned taco joints there are quite a few cool food trucks around and a number of restaurants that are upscale without being pretentious. oh and barbecue, sort of a religion there, we did not do the multi-hour wait for franklin barbecue which is supposedly the best of the best but we did wait in line for nearly an hour in another popular spot and yes the bbq was darn good. saw lots of other things too, a kite festival, a standup comedy show, a museum of the weird, a neat junk/antiques shop (thanks again barking gecko), a fancy speakeasy located in a parking garage. there's a pretty neat sculpture garden that was showcasing the work of james surls, who has a very distinctive abstract style, full of thorns and knives and eyes:  I appreciated the city's relatively cosmopolitan vibe, there are a lot of transplants in austin from all over (including one guy I met who had just moved to austin after 13 years in nyc) and I think that helps tame any parochial inclinations anyway that's probably more than any of you wanted to know, bottom line: austin, go there sometime, or don't
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Apr 3, 2019 20:05
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I like the sword creature but did you drink any ants??? |
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Apr 3, 2019 20:08
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Goons Are Great posted:Id like an ant crew gang tag to show and support that no ants were harmed in the making of gin or other terrible ways to die 
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Apr 3, 2019 20:09
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THE LETTERS HAVE LEGS 
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Apr 3, 2019 20:12
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pixaal posted:my brother ate an ant once said it tasted juicy and crunchy, which are not flavors. (he was probably 3 or 4 at the time). what do they taste like? For us their body tastes barely like anything at all, as our tongues are configurated to taste Mono- and polysaccharides as well as various types of juices, acids, various ionic compounds such as a few kinds of salts, things that indicate toxic and spoiled food like three or four alcohols and alkaloids and a bit more. Insects are for one very small for our mouth and also consist of barely anything of that. Just like cephalopods they do not possess a central nerve system, their skeleton is an external hull made of chitin (which is a sugar, and the main reason we taste anything there, even though just like cellulose we cannot digest it at all) and their muscles are simply too small to make a big difference, even though we can also taste a bit of those, as they are basically the closest thing to flesh and are made of massive amounts of proteins. So your brother was probably right! They taste hardly of anything, but their exoskeleton is very crunchy and the juice he described is insect blood, which is not blood at all but actually hemolymph, which does not have any blood cells in it, so also no taste. Maybe he tasted a light bitterness from the alkaloids stored in the juice and at best a tiny tiny amount of umami if it was a really big ant and he chewed well. Either way, I will now raise a small monument for the ant he killed by eating it. 
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Apr 3, 2019 20:17
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