Gross Overload

The sculpture portfolio of Kate MacDowell

Via Rhymi, who got it from Street Anatomy, which is AMAZING!

The Osedax is a worm that grows like a plant out of the bones of dead whales. They have no mouth, no digestive track, they just slowly dissolve the nutritious bone and absorb it through their skin. The biggest challenge in an Osedax’s life, is getting its offspring to the next whale body. As whale populations decline, the difficulty for Osedax increases.

From pharyngula, who got it from notrocketscience, who has more octopus + coconut videos if you’d like to see them.

Update: since this was also blogged by CuteOverload.com, clearly it wasn’t yucky enough. We will try to do better in the future.

This is a giant isopod. The name isopod means “same-foot”, which is because unlike their cousins, crabs and lobsters, their feet all look basically the same. Isopods are most familiar to humans in the form of pill bugs (aka. woodlice, woodbugs, sow bugs, etc). About half of the almost 10,000 varieties of isopods live in the ocean, while the other half live on land. The chubby cherub pictured here is a Bathynomus giganteus. Apparently they taste like crab.

Termites don’t eat wood. Or rather, termites eat wood, but they don’t digest it. Termite bellies are like farms, packed full of wood-digesting single-celled organisms. Inside those single-celled organisms are bacteria which produce the chemicals that allow the single-celled organisms to digest wood. That’s three layers of symbiosis. On top of that, many termite mounds have actual ‘farm’ areas where they grow fungus that they eat for extra nutrition.

Beautifully arranged spider sushi. The presentation really focuses on the spider here. No hiding the fact that what you are about to eat is 100% arachnid.

There are many places that intentionally include insects as part of their diet. If you don’t believe me google “Entomophagy“. Emphasis on intentionally because we regularly eat insects unintentionally. So regularly, in fact, that the U.S. FDA has published guidelines for how much insects or insect parts are acceptable in various foods. That’s right, if you ate today, you probably ate bug parts! Om nom nom nom!

I’m in yr body, eating yr blood!

PZ Myers’ Pharyngula blog is always an excellent source of weirdities. Especially good is his Friday Cephalopod series, a weekly dose of tentacled beasts. This little squid, a Loligo peali, is in the process of spewing a micro-dose of ink into the water. A helpful way to distract any hungry Moray Eels long enough to make a getaway.

The only thing better than a spider crab, is SWARMS OF SPIDER CRABS!!!