Wildlife photographer and scientist Danté Fenolio has a new book full of creatures that have evolved to thrive deep inside of caves, at the bottoms of oceans and underground. It’s called Life in the Dark and it comes out today. These are just a handful of the hundreds of the images in the book.
Some of the species in this book have never been photographed. Some (like the larval octopus at the top of this post) have never been described by science.
Günther’s Boatfish is a dragonfish with luminous spots called photophores along the length of its body.
The Golden Harlequin Toad is now extinct in nature thanks to the plague of amphibian chitrid fungus.
This bioluminescent mushroom is an undescribed species.
Waterfall Climbing Loach use their strong fins to crawl out of water and eat bacteria growing on rocks. This specimen was found in a cave in Thailand.
This cave house centipede was found in a Chinese cave.
The Square Pink Anthias lives in deep canyons near reefs called “drop-offs.” Weirdly, its bright colors aren’t visible at these depths - but its patterns are.
The candiru is a South American catfish that enter the dark gill chambers of other fish and eat their gills. They will haunt my nightmares forever.
Here’s a photo of Fenolio holding a giant Japanese Spider Crab (credit W. W. Lamar).
Cats can protect their owners - there are stories out there about it. I had a cat named Mia would would launch on visitors sometimes, we had to lock her up when people came over.
If someone broke in she’d likely would have scratched them up. She was very territorial.
I see a lot of people who are incredulous over cats acting protective over their people and I don’t get what’s so hard to believe? I mean, a cat can protect its kittens or its territory or its food, is it really too hard to believe that they could project that feeling towards their favorite humans too? It’s not less “real” when a cat does it than when a dog does.
I had some glass soda bottles (Uludag frutti) laying around, and I got inspired! Planning to stick these on there and make it look awesome. Credit for the skull goes entirely to ‘Tinpockets’. I just stuck a bone in its mouth.
When an octopus decides it won’t be eaten by an eel, it becomes epic !
Harrison Stubbs, a photographer from NatureFootage, captured this wonderful scene. The octopus is literally riding the eel as in a rodeo, then exits in a blow of ink. Amazing !
