The mandarinfish is a small, brightly colored member of the dragonet family, which is popular in the saltwater aquarium trade. The mandarinfish is native to the Pacific, ranging approximately from the Ryukyu Islands south to Australia. To date, S. splendidus is one of only two vertebrate species known to have blue colouring because of cellular pigment. Mandarinfish are reef dwellers, preferring sheltered lagoons and inshore reefs. While they are slow-moving and fairly common within their range,
they are not easily seen due to their bottom-feeding habit and their
small size (reaching only about 6 cm). They feed primarily on small crustaceans and other invertebrates.
This is the other species of vertebrate with blue cellular pigment, the Picturesque Dragonet! (They’re very closely related to Mandarinfish). If you want to know more about why any animal not one of these fish only appears to be blue, here’s a great article!
it looks like an ancient rune activating its magic
Wouldn’t that be fantastic though? A cyberpunk story that deals with ancient magic that HAD gotten out but- ah- we were smart- we sealed it better. We put it in a CD. CD’s are outdated- nobody could ever release the monster.
Because every color is a different wavelength, it’s possible to have a lens focused in such a way that only one color at a time is clear and others are blurry.
So it seems that the eyes of cephalopods rapidly “sweep” across every possible level of focus. It might all look like different shades of grey to them, but in just an instant, their powerful brain registers exactly which shades of grey come clear at exactly which levels of focus and tells the skin which chromatophores to switch on and off to match that shade as close as possible. *focusfocusfocusfocusblurblurblurblurblurblur* I don’t know what these other assholes are seeing but THESE greys in THIS situation sure seem to confuse them”
Do you ever start bullshitting a paper, and then look over it halfway through and think, ’…Wait a minute, I could be onto something here.’
this is the definition of college.
Literally I was writing a paper on Asian salt water crocodiles, like a simple about them paper for a college class, and I started noticing some inconsistencies in the scientific papers I was sourcing and I accidentally discovered that the crocodile has been misdiagnosed as least concerned on the endangered species list when they should be classified as endangered and now my professor is having me write a formal report to the international Red List to have them reclassified and all I wanted to do was write this paper on an animal I thought was cool and now I’m considered an expert on this species…
this is how it works half of esteemed biologists trip and fall into their specialty while pursuing something else. one lecturer i just went to started as a biochemist researching antibiotics and discovered that crocodiles change colors based on environment and now he has 30+ crocs in his yard for research purposes and he’s just like… “wait… i’m a chemist…”
How did so many people end up with crocodiles on accident?????
Accidental crocodiles lol
Crocodiles are conspiring to become the third domesticated predator
It’s in that prophecy. “After a while: crocodile.”
setepenre-set 
