See A Fish With A Transparent Head

Today there's a new addition to the "real life is stranger than fiction" category. Check out the fish Macropinna microstoma. It has tubular eyes and a see-through head.

Image: © 2004 MBARI

These photos blew me away today. Here's another:

Image: © 2004 MBARI


The common name for the fish is "barreleyes." Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute investigators recently figured out why this species has such an unusual head. Its eyes can actually rotate within its "skull," so the transparency allows the wary swimmer to keep a literal eye on happenings above it, as well as to the sides and directly in front.

Using video cameras, MBARI researchers Bruce Robison and Kim Reisenbichler revealed the fish's eye movements. When remotely operated vehicles approached the fish, its eyes glowed a vivid green shade in the bright lights of the ROVs. Usually the fish were just hanging out motionless under the deep waters offshore California's central coast.

Here's a "face-on" view showing the green glow.
Image: © 2006 MBARI


Although the fish has a tiny mouth, it possesses a large digestive systems. Two net-caught individuals contained fragments of jellyfish, which must have been their last meal.

A siphonophore jelly
Image: © 2001 MBARI


Such a potentially painful dinner requires incredible stealth, so it's now thought that barreleyes carefully maneuvers its body near such stinging organisms, keeping its "eyes on the prize," as the researchers said, throughout the entire hunt. Its tiny mouth then picks at the victim while a transparent shield protects the fish's eyes.

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Support for Marijuana Legalization Getting Higher, But a Nice Kind of Calm High

POSTED BY: Dennis DiClaudio

Nate Silver sees the legalization of marijuana coming eventually.

But probably not for another decade or so…

The first poll, conducted last week by Rasmussen Reports, has 40 percent of Americans in support of legalizing the drug and 46 percent opposed. The second, conducted in January by CBS News, has 41 percent in favor of legalization and 52 percent against. And a third poll, conducted by Zogby on behalf of the marijuana-rights advocacy group NORML, has 44 percent of Americans in support of legalized pot and 52 percent opposed…

My guess is that we'll need to see a supermajority of Americans in favor of decriminalizing pot before the federal government would dare to take action on it. If the upward trend since 1990 holds (and recall my earlier caution: it might not), then legalization would achieve 60 percent support at some point in 2022 or 2023. About then is when things might get interesting. But I'd guess we'll see other some other once-unthinkable things like legalized gay marriage first.

That's not quite as quickly as I was hoping. But I guess that's why god invented spray paint and paperbags.

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