@drcraigmc.bsky.social
Deep-sea biologist. Two obsessions: the biodiversity of Earth's largest habitat, and why body size varies across all of life. Science communicator, ocean's weirdest animals daily.
@drcraigmc.bsky.social
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialMost animals change proportions as they grow. A coiled shell doesn't have to. Add one turn and the whole shell is just 2.2x bigger, same shape. Watch this one grow forever without changing at all. 🧪🐌 #HowToBuildAGiant #MarineLife
@mbarinews.bsky.socialReposted by @drcraigmc.bsky.socialThat moment when you spot a deep-sea cutie 😍 Deep-sea hatchetfishes in the family Sternoptychidae cleverly camouflage themselves in the dark depths of the ocean with light-producing organs along their bellies. This counterillumination allows them to hide from predators that may be lurking below.
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialTurns out a tusk shell is basically a snail that never got around to coiling. In Raup's model it's a tube flaring so fast it finishes only a third of a turn, set far from the axis (Right). Pull translation instead and you get a corkscrew (Left). 🧪🐚 #SciArt
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialGreat question, but translation alone just gives you a corkscrew. To get a tusk you crank a different dial: make the tube widen so fast it never finishes a single coil, and keep it far from the axis so it only gently bends.
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialSnail architecture runs on a surprisingly short list of decisions. Here's one of them: how far to slide down your own axis while you grow. Barely at all gets you a flat coil. A lot gets you a tower. 🧪🐌 #SciArt #marinelife
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialThere are only about 20 species of whip-lash squid. Each keeps two very long tentacles tucked in sheaths on its biggest pair of arms, then unrolls them to hover head-down and fish the seafloor like flypaper. The name comes from those whip-like tentacles. 🦑 🧪 #marinelife
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialIn 1962 David Raup used an IBM 7090 and a plotter to turn four numbers into snails. Turn one dial, translation, and a flat ramshorn coil becomes a planospiral snail becomes a tower shell. 🧪🐌 #MolluscMonday #SciArt
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialI saw the movie Poltergeist when I was way to young. I was scared of our living room TV for months.
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialFeel free to use away. The more I play with it, I am thinking of potentially some short publication with the script so people can use it for whatever. Thoughts? But I kind of also want to do a paper where I re-explore Raups overall morphospace but adding body size in it.
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialWell there is another hour of my life. Orange are the forbidden ones!
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialA Louisiana regent says UL Lafayette, Louisiana Tech, and ULM should drop to FCS football. Yes, please. UL's athletics deficit is $20 million. Meanwhile our budget crisis is threatening classes, research, and staff. Twenty million is a lot to those who care about education. 🧪 #academia
@drcraigmc.bsky.social@drcraigmc.bsky.socialMore geekery tonight. Trying to make sure my code worked as intended and generating Raup's Figure 2 from his 1962 paper "Computer as Aid in Describing Form in Gastropod Shells" #marinelife #SciArt #paleobiology #MolluscMonday #paleontology
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialFinally got around to making Raup's mollusk shell model work in R. Also spent too much time trying to give a retro look. #marinelife #molluscmonday
@bcwcpodcast.bsky.socialReposted by @drcraigmc.bsky.social
@xkcd.comReposted by @drcraigmc.bsky.socialTyrannosaurus
![Comic. [Person with long hair pointing to diagram with Tyrannosaurus Rex standing next to a person.] PERSON: We now believe the primary prey of Tyrannosaurus Rex was these humans who kept standing next to it for scale.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreih526pxolmi4pgqdcdu435uhkrrldhpwq6rrsnk4hfs6dskbe5r7e@jpeg)
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialExpectation versus reality
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialFor no particular reason at all, Ed Sheeran is on my mind. Anyway: the gulper eel is almost all mouth, unhinging its jaw to swallow prey larger than itself before deflating to a thin whip. A whole animal built around the shape of you. 🐟 🧪 #marinelife
@drcraigmc.bsky.socialSome glass sponges may be the oldest animals on Earth. Individuals of Monorhaphis chuni are estimated at over 11,000 years old, and they build a single skeletal spike up to 3m long, the largest natural glass structure any animal makes. 🧪 #SpongeThursday #HowToBuildAGiant #marinelife
