January 31, 2012

Have you ever seen a living creature that looks like this? This animal, captured and studied by scientists on an oceanlab in the Mid Atlantic Ocean, is a member of a recently discovered family of acorn worms (Torquaratoridae). 

Deep Sea Acorn Worms are delicate animals that have no eyes and no tail. They crawl along the ocean floor, leaving a spiral-shaped trail behind, burrowing into the sediment to find food that has fallen from the surface. Creatures like these used to be thought of as evolutionary "leftovers," because they failed to evolve and develop tails and become competent swimmers, like fish. It turns out, though, that they have evolved in just the right way to live in the distant depths of the ocean. We are discovering that acorn worms are some of the most common animals that live in the deep sea, alongside sea cucumbers, sea stars, shellfish and other fish. They have even been seen making a kind of swimming movement, lifting themselves off the ocean floor so that they can drift into areas where food is more plentiful.

Photo: David Shale

January 11, 2012

Welcome to Writing Wednesday! Every Wednesday you can publish your own creative writing on the Seymour Science blog.

Writing Wednesday has two simple rules: 

1. Give us the best you’ve got in 5 minutes. That’s right - five minutes of creative writing. Think of it as a word extravaganza to warm up your brain for the rest of the day!
2. Tell us your first name, the name of your school, and how old you are.

This is one of the new species they found. It is called a VAMPIRE SQUID, and it lives in Monterey Bay, off the coast of Northern California. Click the "Comments" button below and take five minutes to write about what you see in this photograph. Use descriptive words and strong verbs to describe the animal and the dark waters where it lives. You could use a comparison to help your reader imagine this creature….or appeal to the reader’s emotions to set the scene (how does it make you feel when you look at a Vampire Squid?).

What you write is up to you. Have fun with it!

December 22, 2011

As school winds down and we head into the winter holiday, I want to share two great natural images for the Christmas season.

First, the Christmas Tree worm (Spirobranchus giganteus).These festive-looking creatures are found throughout the world’s tropical oceans. The "trees" are almost like crowns - each worm has two, and they are used for both eating and breathing. Look at them again - they are almost like a fish’s gills.

The second image comes from the Hubble Telescope, which captured this photograph of a Christmas ornament in space! It is actually a huge wave of energy from a supernova - the explosion of a star in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small galaxy about 160,000 light-years from Earth.

For those of you receiving iPads or Nook Color/Tablets this season, Seymour Simon has many quality eBooks available for purchase, some discounted as much as 50% for the holidays. If you are adding reading material to a tablet, please consider making Seymour Simon’s exceptional nonfiction for children part of your collection. Happy holidays to all!

November 21, 2011

What is that creature in this beautiful photograph? This animal is known as a "glass squid" (scientific name Leachia).  Sunlight filtering down through the ocean water passes right through the glass squid - it is practically invisible in the light. There are both squid and octopus like this, and they can "hide in plain sight" in sunny water.

However, they do not do so well down in the ocean deep, where there is no sunlight. Down in the deep, there are dangerous predator fish whose bodies produce a bright light that they shine directly on the transparent animals, which become visible in the predator’s "headlight."  The ability of these marine animals to produce their own light is called bioluminescence (BY-oh-loom-i-NESS-ens).

Somehow, their prey - the transparent squid and octopus -  need to have a way to camouflage themselves down in the deep. Researchers at Duke University decided to find out how they do it. They captured some of the squid and put them into a dish full of cold ocean water and shone bright lights on them. They were amazed to discover that the squid switched on their camouflage instantly, changing themselves from clear to a spotted, reddish brown. With that coloring, they can hide more easily in their dark, deep-sea environment. The researchers were amazed to see how quickly they make the change. 

If you are interested in seeing video of their experiment, click on the play button (at left) to see more.

November 7, 2011

I know that many of you are fascinated by volcanoes, and you will love today’s science news story. A city on the Atlantic cost of Spain has been completely evacuated, the port is closed to all ships and airplanes are banned from flying overhead, because of an underwater volcano that is threatening to erupt.

This is a submarine volcano ("sub" means under and "marine" means water).  You might be surprised to know that 75% of the magma (the hot, liquid rock found inside a volcano) that wells up from beneath the earth’s surface each year comes from submarine volcanoes, but think about it. Volcanoes are spread all over our planet, and about 70% of Earth is covered by water. So, it makes sense that most magma flows happen underwater.

The volcano first started to emerge on October 9 off El Hierro Island, and researchers from the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO, Ministry of Science and Innovation) used cutting-edge scanners to quickly map its formation. The image at the top shows the underwater valley as it appeared in 1998. The image on the bottom shows the new formation, with the volcano crater clearly visible and a "tongue" of lava flow running down into the valley. 

"It is spectacular to see how what was once an underwater valley is now a volcanic cone with its descending lava tongue," said Juan Acosta, head of the research team.

Photo: Canary Regional Goverment handout / EPA

Graphic: ScienceDaily.com

September 7, 2011

Today’s "Cool Photo of the Week" is of a Rockhopper penguin (Eudyptes chrysocome). They are called "rockhoppers" because they live on cold, rocky islands and get around by hopping from rock to rock. Click here to see a video of a whole flock of rockhopper penguins doing their thing!

These unusual looking penguins have dark red eyes, and their heads are decorated with a tuft of yellow feathers that look like eyebrows sticking out from the side of the head. They are carnivores (meat eaters), feeding on crustaceans, cephalopods and small fish. When trying to attract a mate, a Rockhopper will shake its head back and forth, tossing and showing off those beautiful yellow feathers.

Like all penguins, rockhoppers move awkwardly on land, but they are powerful swimmers. Check out this amazing video of rockhoppers surfing the waves.

Photo: AdventurewithJenna.com

You can read more about Penguins in Seymour Simon’s book, which is now available in paperback. 

July 23, 2011

                    Want to see the world’s largest type of shark up close and personal? The Georgia Aquarium down in Atlanta has placed an underwater camera in their huge tank to give us a live feed of everything that’s going on. What will you see? Click on the pic below to see the live video stream and see if you can spot the following creatures:

The Whale Shark

Despite its name, this animal is a shark and not a whale.  But, it is considered the largest fish in the world.  (Remember: whales are not fish, they are mammals) It is mostly grey and its skin is marked with a checkerboard of pale yellow spots and stripes.

The Manta Ray

            The graceful swim of the manta ray is a beautiful sight indeed. These creatures flap and glide their way through the water with their wing-like fins that can span up to 23 feet long. The Georgia Aquarium has its very own manta ray called Nandi – learn more about her and her journey from South Africa to Atlanta here.

 The Sand-Tiger Shark

This shark looks scary because it has a mouthful of sharp teeth that protrude in all directions. However, the fish is not aggressive at all. It is the only shark in the world that can remain absolutely still in water as it waits for its prey (it’s desired fish food for the day!) to approach.

Golden Trevally

These bright yellow fish travel as part of large schools (large groups of fish). They are known to swim closely to sharks and other large fish, probably for protection from their predators (other fish that are hunting them). See if you can spot them in the tank!

 There are lots more fish in the tank – check out this page for the full list of creatures and see which ones you can see swimming around.

Interested in learning more about sharks? Find out more cool stuff in Seymour Simon’s book SHARKS.

Images: Georgia Aquarium

July 20, 2011

If you’ve ever seen pictures of whales, chances are you’ve seen a sperm whale. These great creatures of the oceans have massive heads (that are typically one-third of the animal’s entire length!) and are known to have the largest brain of any animal on Earth. (That doesn’t mean, however, that they could beat you on a math test. Just because they have larger brains, it doesn’t mean that they are more intelligent than humans (but we’ll talk about that in another post)). 

Like most animals, sperm whales have found a way to communicate with each other. They do so through a series of "clicks" and in fact, these sounds are the loudest sounds produced by any animal. Whales can hear them even when they are miles apart. Recently a bunch of marine biologists (scientists that study animals and other organisms of the ocean) suggested that each sperm whale communicates in a very unique way. Since the communication is so unique, the scientists think that these clicks are a way of identifying each whale - much like the way your name identifies you!

The marine biologists analyzed the sounds and found that there are differences in the timing of these clicks. This is what they think sets one whale apart from the other. It makes sense that the whales should be able to figure out who’s "speaking" without actually seeing them - especially because there are times when the water in the ocean can get quite murky and hard to see through! As exciting as this discovery is, the scientists need to study many more sperm whales to confirm that these creatures each have a unique way of communicating.

Now that you’ve got sperm whales on the brain, I thought I’d leave you with my favorite whale cartoon: The Whale Who Sang at the Met. (It’s   a You-Tube video about a sperm whale who just loves to sing…) Enjoy!

Want to know more about whales in general? Check out Seymour Simon’s book here.

Image: NOAA 

May 20, 2011

When the space shuttle Endeavour blasted off this week, it was carrying an unusual cargo: baby Bobtail Squid (Euprymna scolopes). Squid are cephalopods, a group of relatively intelligent animals that also includes octopuses. These baby squid are the first celaphods to travel into space. 

NASA hopes the squid will help us understand how "good" bacteria behave in the microgravity of space. As Jamie Foster of the University of Florida in Gainesville, who is running the experiment, puts it: "Do good bacteria go bad?"

We already know that disease microbes ("bad" bacteria) grow faster and become more dangerous if they are sent into space. Salmonella bacteria were sent up on a space shuttle in 2006, and when they returned to Earth they were almost three times as likely to kill mice as normal.

So far, we have only studied harmful bacteria in space. This time, the astronauts are going to run experiments that will enable us to look at good bacteria.

The reason Foster chose these animals for his experiment is pretty interesting. Bobtail shrimp carry a whole colony of bacteria, called Vibrio fischeri in their bodies, stored in their "light organs." The squid use the bacteria to create light, which they shine out of their bodies and onto the ocean floor below. That way, they don’t have a shadow, which makes it harder for predators to see them. Isn’t that an interesting camouflage tactic?

The experiment is simple. Newly hatched squid that don’t yet have the bacteria in their light organs were placed in test tubes filled with seawater and sent up on the shuttle. Yesterday, an astronaut added the bacteria to their seawater. When they come back to earth, Dr. Foster and his research partners will study the squid and see if the bacteria grew normally, if they grew faster in a good way, or if there were problems.

People often think that the space program is only about exploration. Of course, that is an important part of why we travel to space. But an equally important aspect of space travel is the opportunity to do experiments that we cannot do here on Earth. Science that we learn in space has many spin-offs back on our home planet. We have learned all kinds of new technologies. We have learned things that have helped us to learn about diseases, to better understand the functioning of the human body (including what causes "malfunctions"), and to develop new vaccines. These little squid will take us one step further in our understanding of the nature of life, and the interaction between different species. 

Photo: GenomeNewsNetwork.org

May 10, 2011

Regular Seymour Science readers know that we do this every Tuesday…...and isn’t this trumpetfish photo a beauty?!

I am particularly interested in the trumpetfish (Aulostomus maculatus) these days because I am working on a new book about CORAL REEFS. Trumpetfish live in coral reefs, and they often swim vertically (straight up and down, as you see here) as a way of camouflaging themselves. They want to blend in with tall coral like sea rods and pipe sponges so that they can sneak up on unsuspecting prey. They catch their food by lying so still that they look like a stick, and then sucking up passing fish into their mouths.

These fish grow to be about 36 inches (just under one meter) long. If you spread both your arms out as wide as they can go, that is about the size of a full-grown trumpetfish.

Photo: Nick Hobgood 

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