This Lovecraftian monstrosity may look like an amalgam of dying octopuses, but it’s actually a single creature called a Basket Star, a type of deep sea brittle star. They can reach up to 11 pounds in weight and 70 cm in length!
Aaaaa. <3 Thank you for bringing these to my attention again. It’s been a while and it is one of my favourite creatures. They can walk across the bottom of the ocean and they’re lovely.
Look at how pretty it is. If I had to draw one creature for the rest of my life and nothing else, this would probably be it. Branched limbs and swirls and primitive mouths.
We’re geeking out over the newest addition to our Tentacles exhibition: the striped pyjama squid!
These shy cephalopods have never been displayed in the United States before. To make it happen, our aquarists figured out how to rear these ready-for-bedtime-squid from eggs to hatchlings and finally to adults able to lay viable eggs.
Luckily the Tentacles team has a lot of
experienceraisingcephalopods. According to aquarist
Bret Grasse, they were able to unlock the mysteries of the pyjama squid
lifecycle with “the right combination of genders and some positive vibes. We
also provided a comfortable habitat and good egg-laying medium for them to
deposit eggs on.”
Look closely at the pyjama squid’s stripes and you’ll see that they’re
actually made up of tiny dots. These are chromatophores,
color organs made of nerves and muscles and tiny sacs of pigment that change
an animal’s coloring when they expand or contract. Our aquarists have seen
pyjama squid flashing their stripes when threatened or when they’re trying to
repel fellow pyjama squid from going after a tasty shrimp during feeding time.
“They try to look menacing by making dark stripes on their mantle, but this only
makes them look cuter in my opinion,” notes Bret.
Native to waters around Australia, pyjama squid can grow to about two
inches long. They like to burrow in the sand with only their eyes peeking out to
spot potential predators and prey. Nestled in the substrate with their jammie
stripes, they enjoy an all-day bedtime and emerge at night to hunt.
You can spot the striped pyjama squid in our Tentacles exhibition! Look
for these banded cuties across the way from the nautilus exhibit.
Say hello to Crispin, this week’s #ThrowbackThursday! As you can see Crispin is still the same fun loving lemur he was at just a few months old. He can often be found rough housing with his brother Keegan.
These fish can reach up to 50 cm long… but that doesn’t include their monster-mouth!
They swim around coral reefs, anywhere from east Africa to Hawaii, peering into rocky crevices and coral branches as they search for crustaceans and small fish to prey on.
When they find something, they shoot their mouth out until it’s a tube up to half as long as their body. With this they can ambush prey or vacuum them out of nooks and crannies.
