listen

a moment! 

Scientific photography by Arthur Anker

1.- Crab megalopa (Carpilius sp ?)

2.- Stilapex montrouzieri (Moorea, French Polynesia)

3.- Euthamneus cf rostratus (Moorea, French Polynesia)

4.- Stauromedusa (French Polynesia)

5.- Pilumnus vespertilio (Madagascar)

6.- Notospermus tricuspidatus (Moorea, French Polynesia)

7.- Diopatra sp

8.- Galeommatid bivalve, possibly Scintilla sp

9.- A thalassematid echiuran (Madang, Papua New Guinea)

10.- Male ovigerous sea spider (Pycnogonida)

2. S N A I L

3. An amphipod, a common order of marine crustaceans

4. This looks kinda like an anemone, but it’s actually a jellyfish that lives upside down, attached to the sea floor by a stalk! All jellyfish start out their lives in this kind of anemone-like polyp phase, but this and related “stalked jellyfish” just never grow out of it!

5. I literally couldn’t tell what the fuck kind of animal this was but apparently it’s the Common Hairy Crab! The hairs trap dirt and stuff for it to use as camouflage!

6. Ribbon worm - no idea what the glowing is, but these things have crazy proboscises almost as long as their bodies that they can launch out of their mouths

7. A kind of bristle worm that lives in hard tubes they build for themselves on the seafloor

8. Y’all what the FUCK is up with this clam I cannot find any information about it. Why is it Like That

9. Spoon worm! Dunno much about them but that’s a real cute name

6. This ribbon worm just has a white line as a pattern on its head, not sure there’s a particular reason for it, BUT the zigzags correspond to its chemosensory cephalic slits, which I did not know ribbon worms had!

8. Okay, this I did know about–some clams brood their embryos in these sacs, then a passing fish eats it, and the embryos grow parasitically inside the fish until they reach maturity! The sacs get REALLY weird-looking, even looking identical to prey fish! You can read more here: https://bogleech.com/bio-clampirism.html

HOWEVER, what’s REALLY cool is that the family this particular clam belongs to has a genus in it called Waldo, which crawls around on sea urchins!!! How wild is that??!!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldo_(bivalve)

Article here (yes, they named it after Where’s Waldo):

Beech Forest in Switzerland, 1863, Ivan Shishkin

and don't get me wrong, care about the animals! i care about the animals! they're MY native animals, they're part of my culture and home and they're living breathing creatures.

but there's so so so many things in place already to help animals, shelters and charities and sanctuaries, and by all means help them more, but the government does not care about aboriginal australians. shit, scomo doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone who isn't a white cishet able bodied christian.

aboriginal australians are losing our homes, you say people aren't endangered but WE ARE. we make up a tiny percentage of our country, and a vast majority of us live in poverty and unsafe areas. not only are we losing our homes, we're losing our identity, our lives, our families. this land means more to us than it ever will to people crying over the koalas. the koalas mean more to us than they ever will to you.

remember who lived alongside those animals for thousands of years.

there's a million things i could say about why we need help more than the animals, but in the end white people will care more about what's small and fluffy than people of colour, especially people whose land they're living on, right?