"Who you calling a shrimp?": The deadly mantis punch

I stayed up 'til all hours making this animation/slideshow, or whatever it is - variable-speed gif? It's easy-peasy to find eye-aching photos of mantis shrimp, since for a while they were the darling of the internet. Animals can be "in" or  "out", and for a while it was the tardigrade, or water bear (which bears no relation to bears, believe me - they're ugly little suckers, even though indestructible). Mantis shrimp aren't merely gorgeous and gaudy, but they have these things like red boxing gloves that spring out at light speed and knock their prey out cold. Maybe THAT'S why they became so popular, especially in the United States (where boxing is king).

This is an excerpt from one of those NatGeo for Kids things that I find helpful because it gives me just the facts I need:

"Found in the warm waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the peacock mantis shrimp is arguably one of the most captivating creatures in the sea. Its hard-shelled body is bursting with color—hues of bright red, green, orange and blue, and its forearms are covered in spots. At the top of its head rests a set of protruding eyes, and they aren’t just for show.

These crustaceans have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom, containing millions of light-sensitive cells. With 16 color-receptive cones (compared to humans, who have just three), the peacock mantis shrimp can detect ten times more color than a human, including ultraviolet light. It can move each eye independently and uses this exceptional eyesight to avoid predators and track down prey.

The peacock mantis shrimp lives in the crevices of coral and rocks on the ocean floor. A territorial creature, it has been known to exhibit aggressive behavior toward intruders. This ferocious shrimp has club-like appendages that fold beneath its body, resembling a praying mantis.

With a spring-like motion, it uses these appendages to attack prey—and a mantis shrimp’s punch is no joke. With the ability to strike at the speed of a .22 caliber bullet (50 times faster than the blink of an eye), a blow from a mantis shrimp can easily break through the shell of a crab or mollusk."

Being incredibly lazy, I dredged up these mantis shrimp gifs  (which I made myself, so no stealing) from a previous post - but can you blame me? The weebly-wobbly eyes alone are gif-worthy, I think. When I first saw even a still photo of a mantis shrimp, I doubted my eyes, thinking it was a Facebook hoax. Looking it up, I saw all sorts of gosh-gee-golly blog posts about the New Cool Animal. Which they are, I fully admit (if not new any more).

I don't think every mantis shrimp is this gaudy. Some of the more pedestrian ones I saw just looked like brown lobsters with no claws. But the peacock variety is fascinating enough that photographers must look at them for hours to get just the right shot of its tarantula-like legs and alarming swivelling eyes with those awful little holes.

Everything this creature does is creepy, even if it's just going about its business. It's all those skittery little appendages, with things sticking out all over its body.

And this one, oh God. It is very slowly swallowing a fish, dissolving it on the way in.

But this is the crowning glory of the mantis shrimp: its incredible punch. I have read that they can actually break aquarium glass, so that lab technicians have turned on the lights in the morning to find an inch of water and shattered glass all over the floor.

That sounded like a social media myth to me.. But it's a fascinating species. I had a few questions, which of course the internet was kindly enough to answer: yes, you can eat them. Yes, you can buy them as pets (for around $90.00 - $130.00). Full-grown, they range from 2" to 7". And it's not a myth that they can shatter glass: that punch is the equivalent to a bullet fired at close range. 

This thing, though - it just sort of happened. When I have a lot of short gifs, I sometimes try to put them together into a compilation. Sometimes it works. This time, I came up with something infinitely more interesting. The gif animator just didn't like the gifs, or there were too many frames, or something, because they came out all patchy, but the effect is very cool because there's no background to these. I don't know how it happened, and I doubt if I could make it happen again. Normally if I try to feed in too much, the app just refuses to make the gif (and my, aren't I cool with the terminology today!). So this scary gif, made by accident, turns out to be the best of the whole set.

The Irish boogaloo

Who knows if these are true? Some of them seem buanchumadh/beal onna/fainne/boogaloo. And they left out "smithereens".

The house I grew up in

 

 

Captain Kirk and the Mugatu: a love story

An animation I made in homage to Captain Kirk's intense, if sometimes painful relationship with that loveable, horned albino space gorilla, the Mugatu.

And some outtakes. . . 

Special Action Figure version

Moonspinner

SLUG DISASTER: caught in a Venus fly trap!

Glob thingum

FAST! FAST! FAST Relief!

Who knows where that first gif comes from, or what it means - it's a "found" gif, like so many of them - but it reminded me of that old Anacin commercial where the hammers are pounding inside the guy's head. This was before the classic "Mother, please! I'd rather do it myself!" ad, which is (at last!) now available on YouTube.

Anacin goes on and on about having three ingredients, and one has to wonder what they are. Some pain relievers still add caffeine (though I don't know why - as a "pick-me-up"?), but back then it was not at all unheard-of for over-the-counter drugs to include codeine, which is now recognized as a narcotic. Which is perhaps why I used to love to take big slugs of Benylin cough syrup straight from the bottle. It went down warm, and made all my little troubles go  away.

Abandoned Edsels

I love old cars, but I hate Edsels, boxy, low-riding, with that hideous triangular toilet seat glommed on to the front. But seeing them abandoned and rusting away like this is somehow comforting. Collectors cherish these things because of their rarity, and the taint forever associated with it: from then on, anything which bombed badly after a huge buildup was called an "Edsel". The fact it was named after Henry Ford's son made the failure particularly excruciating. Wikipedia explains it like this:

Edsel and its failures

Historians have advanced several theories in an effort to explain the Edsel's failure. Popular culture often faults the car’s styling. Consumer Reports has alleged that poor workmanship was the Edsel's chief problem. Marketing experts hold the Edsel up as a supreme example of the corporate culture’s failure to understand American consumers. Business analysts cite the weak internal support for the product inside Ford’s executive offices. According to author and Edsel scholar* Jan Deutsch, the Edsel was "the wrong car at the wrong time."

"The aim was right, but the target moved"

The Edsel is most notorious for being a marketing disaster. The name "Edsel" became synonymous with the real-life commercial failure of the predicted "perfect" product or product idea. Similar ill-fated products have often been colloquially referred to as "Edsels". Ford's own Sierra model, which launched almost 25 years later, is often compared to the Edsel owing to initial buyer antipathy to its perceived radical styling, even though, unlike the Edsel, it ultimately became a sales success. 

Since the Edsel program was such a debacle, it gave marketers a vivid illustration of how not to market a product. The principal reason the Edsel's failure is so infamous is that Ford had absolutely no idea that the failure was going to happen until after the vehicles had been designed and built, the dealerships established and $400 million invested in the product's development and launch. Incredibly, Ford had presumed to invest $400 million (well over $4.0 billion in the 21st century) in developing a new product line without attempting to determine whether such an investment would be wise or prudent.

The prerelease advertising campaign promoted the car as having "more YOU ideas", and the teaser advertisements in magazines only revealed glimpses of the car through a highly blurred lens or wrapped in paper or under tarps. In fact, Ford had never test-marketed the vehicle or its unique styling concepts with potential buyers prior to either the vehicle’s initial development decision or the vehicle’s shipments to its new dealerships. Edsels were shipped to the dealerships undercover and remained wrapped on the dealer lots.

*My only question is: what's an Edsel scholar? Imagine doing THAT all day.

Come ride in my teal automobile

Though any color would do,

I would much prefer a green-blue.

Giant Ball of Matches: WATCH IT BURN!

Cat MANGLES baby trolls!

My new baby trolls were problematic from the start. It's not that they cost a lot of money, but shipping and handling charges on Etsy are always more than the item itself. Then there was a sort of import tax slapped on it, a DUTY of more than $14.00 (see bitter tirade, below). I don't understand this and am trying to get it back. If this is going to keep happening, it's the end of my internet shopping, because 95% of the stuff I buy is from the States. Canada just does not have these things. So what, and why?? But this video is more fun. Late at night, lying in bed, I was playing with my new baby trolls (having reverted back to childhood so I could do it right this time), when Bentley the cat appeared. The rest is documented here. 

Horse Playing in a Paddling Pool Funny

Pee tree

Jane Toppan's Characteristic Smile

19th-century serial killer Jane Toppan demonstrates her characteristic smile.

Jane Toppan: what you should know

Jane Toppan (17 August 1854 – 29 October 1938), born Honora Kelley, was an American serial killer, nicknamed "Jolly Jane". After her arrest in 1901, she confessed to 31 murders. She is quoted as saying that her ambition was "to have killed more people—helpless people—than any other man or woman who ever lived".

An article in the Hoosier State Chronicles published shortly after her arrest reported that Toppan would fondle her victims as they died and attempt to see the inner workings of their souls through their eyes. When Toppan was questioned (after her arrest), she stated she derived a sexual thrill from patients being near death, coming back to life and then dying again.Toppan would administer a drug mixture to the patients she chose as her victims, lie with them and hold them close to her as they died.

Toppan is often considered an 'angel of death', a type of serial killer who takes on a caretaker role and attacks the vulnerable and dependent, though she also murdered for seemingly more personal reasons, such as in the case of the Davis family. It is possible Toppan was also motivated by jealousy, in the case of the murder of her foster sister. She later described her motivation as a paralysis of thought and reason, a strong urge to poison.

Toppan used poison for more than just murder, reportedly poisoning a housekeeper just enough so that she appeared drunk in order to steal her job and kill the family. She even poisoned herself to evoke the sympathy of men she was courting. - Wikipedia

Cat in cherry tree

(Something tells me that these might not all be the same cat. But perhaps it's the same tree?)

'50s Treasures (and dubious pleasures)