The first time Alexander Ziegler saw the octopus he would go on to call
Grimpoteuthis imperator, it was tangled in a steel net on the deck of a research vessel in the North Pacific Ocean, having just been hauled up from a depth of more than 4,000 meters.
The first time he
really saw the octopus, it was on his computer screen, where the arches of its blood vessels and the folds of its gills illuminated in exquisite digital detail were poised to shake up the tradition-bound field of taxonomy.
Five summers ago, Ziegler, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Bonn in Germany, was the lone biologist tagging along on an expedition collecting rocks from the depths of the Pacific to gain insights into plate tectonics. Ziegler had been invited to deal with the life forms the geologists inevitably scraped up with the rocks they sought.
14 baby sea stars are tiny bundles of hope for their critically endangered species
at 4:12 pm
After months of trial and error to find what it takes to keep a voracious, pizza-sized predator alive, biologists have succeeded at raising 14 baby sunflower stars: little bundles of hope in a dark time for their species.
Researchers at the University of Washingtonâs Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island have been trying to raise the spectacular, 20-armed species of sea star indoors for the past year and a half.
âI m actually standing in a lab right now, having a look at some of our baby sunflower stars, which are about the size of a quarter,â said Jason Hodin, a biologist with the university.
14 baby sea stars are tiny bundles of hope for their critically endangered species
at 4:12 pm
After months of trial and error to find what it takes to keep a voracious, pizza-sized predator alive, biologists have succeeded at raising 14 baby sunflower stars: little bundles of hope in a dark time for their species.
Researchers at the University of Washingtonâs Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island have been trying to raise the spectacular, 20-armed species of sea star indoors for the past year and a half.
âI m actually standing in a lab right now, having a look at some of our baby sunflower stars, which are about the size of a quarter,â said Jason Hodin, a biologist with the university.