In an effort to be accepted by their peers, dolphins located in Western Australia’s Shark Bay have been spotted “conching.” What is conching? Conching is a method used to catch fish by trapping them in a conch shell, bringing that shell to the surface and shaking that shell with your beak inside the conch so that the fish falls into your mouth.  The curious part of conching is that this appears to be a learned behavior that other dolphins are observing and mimicking.  Early conchers were doing this as early as 2007 but in the last four months there have been as many as seven documented conching instances.  There is still much speculation as to the actual technique used underwater as scientists have only been able to observe “conching” from the surface.

“That’s significant on a few levels. For one, we already know dolphins are very intelligent creatures, but a horizontal spread of a learned behavior at this rate is pretty off-the-charts. Moreover, scientists appear to have gotten in on this fad at the ground floor (they were observing dolphins conching way before it was mainstream, bro), so they have the opportunity to observe this learned behavior as it spreads.”

[Popular Science]

Find out which of the three used to wear a Spider-Man costume under his clothes and which ones just wore ladies underwear. Listen to them describe their plans to capture a sea beast, fight alligators and find proof of Son of Hogzilla. Also, it becomes painfully obvious that when Justin, Brian and Andrew are a dying alien civilization’s last chance for survival, it’s better to die screaming in the night then hope to see another tomorrow.

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You know what would brighten up your life? Your own PT Barnum style FeeJee Mermaid!

This lovely lass is on sale via eBay with the bidding beginning at the low price of $399.99. After all, we are into the holiday season…

Thanks to Weird Thing reader Adam for the tip.

Mermaids are the Monster of the Week! Monday, Matt Finley investigated the evolution of the bang-able mermaid. Tuesday, he looked at the Mermaids history as a sideshow attraction. Enjoy!

Sometime during the 1800s, after centuries of alternately fascinating, discomforting and titillating seamen and civilians, mermaids disappeared from the oceans, a loss for which the advancement of oceanographic science and the advent of international industrial and commercial air travel share culpability. Coincidentally, modern aviation also provides a minor, but fascinating, link to mermaid folklore in the 20th century.

(There was a rash of mermaid sightings off the coast of Israel in August of this year, when residents claim to have repeatedly witnessed a half-human, half-fish creature frolicking in coastal waters. These encounters, however, seem less relevant to a focused discussion of mermaids than to a broader analysis of how regional socio-political upheaval can yield increased cryptid sightings. See Tanzania’s Popobawa for the starkest example of this phenomenon.)

As addressed in Monday’s post, the earliest mermaid sightings, outside of mythological iconography, were reported during nautical expeditions, and circulated among sailors, most of whom were, by stated allegiance or signed contract, government employees. During the first half of the 20th century, there weren’t many historically relevant appearances of merfolk, but two that do exist directly correlate to the creature’s original background in the fevered imaginings of haggard nationalists flung across latitudes in the name of their countries. In WWI, Warsaw, Poland, used the image of a mermaid, part of their traditional city seal, on medals of valor awarded to homecoming soldiers. During WWII, cartoon mermaids – lips puckered and ample bosoms straining against oyster-shell brassieres – were included in the spate of cheesecake pinup icons adorning U.S. fighter plane fuselages. The mermaids sighted so long ago in strange waters surrounding unmapped continents informed a continued linkage between the image of these mythological temptresses and the indefatigable will of a nation to assert itself beyond its physical boundaries, whether through exploration or warfare.

By turning innovation and engineering skyward, aviation lent the ocean a less-triumphant-than-antsy “veni, vidi vici” quality. It isn’t surprising, then, that as mermaid sightings tapered and died, 1877 brought the first recorded encounter with a flying humanoid, reports of which have increased in number over the last 135 years. Such is the joyful blind redundancy of folklore, guaranteeing myriad new cryptids that people will someday hatch from wild half glimpses stolen in the buzzing blue forks of light between telepods and the thin, shadowed creases of wormholes.

photo credit: tamra hays

Turritopsis Nutricula, a species of jellyfish native to the Caribbean, has now spread to all corners of the ocean. Why? Because they don’t die:

Turritopsis Nutricula is technically known as a hydrozoan and is the only known animal that is capable of reverting completely to its younger self.

It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation.

Scientists believe the cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it potentially immortal.

This according to a Telegraph article about the interminable little critters.

Amazingly these jellies can reach sexual maturity, revert to a polyp state, then grow to sexual maturity again ad infinitum. But don’t flee the oceans just yet. The little fellas are only five millimeters long and are harmless….for now.