gallusrostromegalus:

bunjywunjy:

bunjywunjy:

hey everyone, happy friday and welcome back to another excellent episode of Weird Biology!

this week, we’re examining a charismatic and almost perfect oceanic killing machine! you might be picturing a shark, but you’re wrong. 

it’s the flamboyant, fantastic, and fucking ecological nightmare, the 

NAAAAAANTS INGONYAAAAMAA

Lionfish are a group of 12 species in the genus Pterois (tare-oh-eese), meaning “winged”. these fish are among the most striking and beautiful in the ocean! they’re also full of poison knives, but more on that later.

also called Dragonfish, Firefish, Turkeyfish, Tastyfish or PEZ DIABLO (Devilfish, or “underwater satan” if you use Google Translate), Lionfish are native to the Southern Pacific and Indian oceans. they are mostly found on coral reefs, where they can grow up to 17 inches long and reach about 3 pounds. 

3 pounds of pure whoopass.

small but mighty! SMALL BUT MIGHTY!

see, when it comes to sheer badass ability to survive anywhere, Lionfish are damn near perfect. most reef fish are specialized creatures with a fairly low set of tolerances. not Lionfish! for starters, they’re common in every level of the water column up to 1000 feet down. that’s impressive for a regular fish, let alone a reef specialist. they can also tolerate temperatures as low as 60 F, which again, fucking ridiculous. this fish could probably survive on the moon.

on top of that, their reproductive rate is insane. unlike many reef fish who follow a yearly cycle, Lionfish reproduce monthly. and every month a female Lionfish may lay- wait for it- 15,000 eggs. add in the fact that they have maybe three natural predators and it’s a wonder we aren’t knee deep in them right now.

good news! the Lionfish will submerge us before the oceans do!

Lionfish may look like delicate lacy parasols, but that bold coloration is actually Nature’s equivalent of wearing a bright orange hazard vest! but if we’re doing a direct comparison, in the Lionfish’s case it’s more like the equivalent of wearing a bright orange hazard vest while standing on the roof of a burned-out van, waving a submachine gun at traffic.

see, those lacy fins are are concealing dozens and dozens of long, razor-sharp spines venomous enough to incapacitate a human. any predator unwary enough to get a mouthful of the Lionfish’s poison shiv collection will experience immediate debilitating pain, paralysis, and almost certain death. (this venom isn’t strong enough to kill a healthy adult, but it really fucking sucks and can floor you for at least a day. do not touch.)

it’s time to play our favorite biology game, How Many Poison Knives Is This Animal Packing? if you guess wrong, you die.

Lionfish are voracious eating machines, in addition to being basically a floating wedding dress full of poison ice picks. they feed on fish, invertebrates, mollusks, and smaller Lionfish. these flamboyant cannibals feed by disorienting their prey with a jet of water, and then swallowing it headfirst like a Hardees breakfast sandwich.

and they’ll cram as many fish/shrimp/members of their own species into that ravenous maw as possible- a Lionfish’s stomach can expand to 30 times its original size on a binge! and in lean times, the Lionfish can slow its metabolism to a literal crawl. they can survive a three-month fast and lose only 10% of their body weight. jesus. 

can anything stop these frilly nightmares?

SPOILER ALERT: no.

the question is unfortunately relevant. in 1992, Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida and demolished a public aquarium. Florida had bigger things to worry about, so nobody noticed that six Lionfish had been tragically swept out to sea. in the complete absence of natural predators, those six Free-Willied Lionfish (plus many others released from the pet trade) have become MILLIONS. 

Lionfish have launched a hostile invasion of Carribean waters, and are now found from the Gulf Coast to North Carolina. this is a big fucking problem.

and that’s no joke.

apart from how dangerous they are, the Lionfish’s natural fish superiority allows it to easily outcompete meek and innocent native fish. this is putting stress on invaded reef ecosystems, and the problem is only getting worse as Lionfish continue to spread further north. Lionfish are even learning to tolerate mildly brackish water and have been found in estuaries four miles from the fucking ocean.

at this rate, we’re all going to wake up and find a Lionfish in our beds.

it’s their bed now. accept your inferiority before Earth’s true dominant species.

the fate of these oceans rests on the questionable shoulders of the Lionfish’s only (un)natural predator:

you.

the only current way to slow their spread is to just eat the absolute hell out of them. that’s right, Lionfish are edible. and not just that, they’re completely fucking delicious and heart-healthy! they’re called Tastyfish for a reason. and for all their prowess, Lionfish have yet to evolve a defense for projectile weapons. (that’s what happens when you put all your skill points into Melee, Lionfish.)

and remember: eating a Lionfish is taking part in the front lines of a battle for the future of your oceans. also, they’re just delicious.

so do your part, and eat up! 

WORLD IS A FUCK, 410,757,864,530

DEAD LIONFISH

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thanks for reading! you can find the rest of the Weird Biology series here.

if you enjoy my work, maybe buy me a coffee to support Weird Biology.

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IMAGE SOURCES

img1- Pensecola News Journal img2- Oceanea.org img3- Wikipedia img4- Don Johnson img5- Hakai Magazine

img6- Florida Keys Treasures img7- CNN img8- dmagazine.com

two weeks later and look who’s on the cover of Smithsonian!

I got to have Lionfish when visiting relatives back east and IT’S NOT A JOKE THSES THINGS ARE AMAZING THEY’RE LIKE LOBSTER BUT MORE OF IT AND SOMEHOW JUCIER.

tehjai:

aliyamirat:

naamahdarling:

setheverman:

tooquirkytolose:

My 26 yr old sister still says things out loud like ‘ermagerd’ and ’___ ALL the things!’ Like…is that what’s gonna happen to me?am I going to be 30 still saying stupid shit like O shit waddup! Are all the youngins gonna be embarrassed by my use of outdated memes….how long until I myself am not Hip With It….how long until I am no longer a trendy memer…

my greatest fear honestly

Listen, I am 40.  I was around for the early internet of webrings and hamsterdance. Homestarrunner.  Those little cats in the boat singing to Immigrant Song.  Longcat.  Ceiling cat.  Radiskull.  Powerthirst.

So to me anything that is funny on the internet is, and always will be, cutting-edge and hilarious.  If it’s funny the first time, it’s funny the eleven thousandth time.  No exceptions.

I accumulate memes. Social media sites form actual strata in my soul, revealing my geological age in layers: Geocities, Myspace, Livejournal, Tumblr.  Memes encrust me, like jewels, just layer on layer of reaction gifs and shitposts, some of which I barely understand, but I refuse to let go of.  I cling to them, they are ever-relevant, undying.

You callow youths, who think in your innocence that that memes come and go, you are tepid fools who still smell of milk.

I am where memes go to die. I am where memes go to live eternal.

Someday, if you are lucky, you will join me.  Bring your breadsticks meme, your Spiders Georg, your Bode, your big mood, your Supernatural gifs, your oh worm.  Come with me and rejoice in pointless in-jokes and long-forgotten references.  Embrace your encyclopedic knowledge of comedy sites ca 2006 and come share the knowledge with us. Come with me and lik the bred.  

You gotta.

“You callow youths, who think in your innocence that that memes come and go, you are tepid fools who still smell of milk.”

Put this on my headstone, underneath a picture of Ceiling Cat.

all your base are belong to us

iesika:

thebibliosphere:

I think one of my major problems with media that deals heavily in themes of good and evil is that my formative years contained Terry Pratchett’s work which just blew my head clean off and put it back on my shoulders a little more firmly and then told me “there are no heroes, no legends, no miracles, just you. It’s you against the darkness and the metaphorical wolves at the door…better bloody do something about that then, hadn’t we”.

And don’t put your faith in revolutions – they always come around again.

And being good isn’t an innate quality – it’s an action that requires doing good for other people even and especially if you don’t like them, it’s hard work and you don’t want to. Bad impulses, bad thoughts don’t matter if you recognize them for what they are and turn them into positive action.

And the duty of the police should be to protect the people, not the power structure.

And we, as people, make our own gods, our own stories, our own creeds, not the other way around, which means we can change those stories and thus change our world, because nothing is more powerful than a story.