Incredible New Photographs of Live Coelacanths 88
zapyon writes "German magazine Spiegel Online has just put some incredible photographs of coelacanths on their site. The article is pointing to the current German edition of National Geographic."
Holy guacamole !! (Score:2)
Went to the site, looked at the pics and holy cow !
If you go to wet markets in sea-side towns on the Borneo Islands you can see they sell this type of fish there !
And this is news because...? (Score:3)
Re:And this is news because...? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because a picture of a cool fish is more interesting than what the result of the IT industry Poll for the presidential election?
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No, because they used a non Wikipedian link to provide a reference about something... SHAZAM!!!
It's not news on Vulcan (Score:5, Interesting)
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Very true.
But they all stay out of stories like this. You can relax here and look at pictures of fascinating fish in peace.
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Reminds me of a cod fish, but uglier. I wonder if it tastes the same...
Fuck, now I'm hungry.
Re:It's not news on Vulcan (Score:4, Interesting)
I think I remember reading that when the coelocanth was formally rediscovered, some of the local fishermen seemed surprised. They had occasionally dredged them up in their nets, but always tossed them overboard because they tasted so bad. This site [io9.com] suggests that its oily flesh also acts as a powerful laxative.
Probably best to leave them in the water.
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Actually, according to John McCosker, who has eaten one, as to be expected they taste a bit like shark, since they retain urea in their body tissues.
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Shark is excellent eating. Coelacanth not so much, it's not just urea but waxes and oils; eat one and, uh yeah "laxative" is one way of putting it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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GET OFF MY LAWN.
Coelacanths on your lawn?
Re:Darn kids (Score:5, Funny)
GET OFF MY LAWN.
Coelacanths on your lawn?
He should turn down his sprinkler.
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Ha ha!
Re:And this is news because...? (Score:5, Informative)
Just wondering why this is news. Coelacanths were discovered to still be living in ~1938. Having photos isn't new, as they had live specimens (and dead ones). There were even 2 species found, not just one.
Google for coelacanth pics and it's almost all dead, preserved specimens. This article is news because despite the dead samples in hand (n.b. no live specimens exist in captivity), little is known about the behaviour of the living coelacanth; encountering one at human-diveable depths is an event in itself. This article is not saying it's the first specimen found; it is basically the best in situ photo ever taken of a living coelacanth.
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This is news because dinofish.com needed a link to their site on Slashdot.
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Yes, but photos and detailed information regarding their behavior in the wild remain extremely rare.
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If you think a Coelacanth picture is so easy to get, go take one.
Sure there's already pictures, and video on YouTube. But for the longest time science had never got it's hands on one, they're still fairly "new" as these things go. And they live very far down. This isn't like scooping a fish out of a river or a lake. And there's none in captivity so you can't just take a picture of one; they're endangered now too from overfishing. Stupid as the flesh is pretty much inedible containing waxes, oil and urea at
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hey I found a picture of a neat fish! put it on slashdot, yah!
Re:Two? (Score:5, Informative)
This is not just a neat fish. You are literally looking at a very distant relative of yourself. A number of bones in the fins of these fishes exhibit homology to the bones in your arms and legs.
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A number of bones in the fins of these fishes exhibit homology to the bones in your arms and legs.
According to the US Senate, Jesus put them there.
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You are literally looking at a very distant relative of yourself.
Only more charismatic than most of your other relatives.
Re:Two? (Score:4, Insightful)
I like coelacanths, and this shouldn't have been on /.
Well, the first half of the byline is "News for Nerds." We may be IT-heavy here, but other sciences do show up from time to time.
My bad (Score:1)
I'll be honest; the first thing that popped into my head was trilobites. To me, it was a very interesting news day for about 1.8 seconds.
Re:My bad (Score:4, Funny)
I'll be honest; the first thing that popped into my head was trilobites. To me, it was a very interesting news day for about 1.8 seconds.
Typical attention span for the interwebs these days.
Fascinating Animals (Score:5, Interesting)
As a species, it has basically been in a evolutionary standstill for 400 million years, and current populations have low genetic diversity (which may be a hint as to why).
My best guess is that some mechanism to not mutate much, flesh that isn't good food for many animals (gives humans upset tummies), a robust way of obtaining food (eating anything), and good energy conservation have probably contributed to its durability as a species. But I would think that lots of species have had these attributes, long ago.
It's habits and characteristics are remarkably similar to another living fossil, the Nautilus.
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They sound remarkably similar to the Great Panda. Another animal which would probably die out on its own regardless of human intervention on this planet.
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"Regardless" means "without regard to" not "with regard to". "Another animal which would probably die out on its own regardless of human intervention on this planet." means "[It's] another animal which will probably die out on its own on this planet, even if humans intervene." I think you meant "[It's] another animal which would probably die out without human intervention."
Of course I could be wrong about the intended
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Coelacanths have existed for a few hundred million years longer than Pandas. Their rhipidistina relatives gave rise to tetrapods that eventually came to dominate terrestrial environments.
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Horseshoe crabs are pretty cool, too....
So are nude girls.
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Sure we do. They're either lazy, or stubborn. Why we see the same effects in members of our own species who thanks to modern society don't have to evolve and can additionally breed with impunity until such time as they stifle all evolved members of the species through uncontrolled reproduction.
If only we had some sort of lottery to prevent this....
Re:Fascinating Animals (Score:5, Interesting)
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In truth, there is such a thing as a "local maximum" in evolution - sometimes an organism becomes so well adapted to one particular niche, that it requires a chain of unlikely mutations to get it out of that niche and into something broader where it would have the "incentive" to evolve further. And what with most mutations being harmful or neutral at best (by themselves), they get weeded out by natural selection. Species can get stuck in essentially the same form for a long time if its environment doesn't c
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Neutral mutations don't always get weeded out. It's only probabilistic and the odds depend on the population size. Over hundreds of millions of years, practically any sequence of DNA that can change will have changed.
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Finally, a way for Christian fundamentalists to solve their problem with human evolution: human extinction.
I think we are well along on the way to this end point...
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A hundred coelacanth species? So what? Your so-called species are not due to mutations (Darwinian evolution) but to the variety that has always existed within the coelacanth genome. This genomic variety is the reason that one can go from a pair of wolves to chihuahuas without mutations, just breeding. It is a good bet that the coelacanth genome of today is almost identical to the one that existed 400 millions years ago.
The only way a species can't evolve is if it goes extinct.
Aw, come on. That sounds like
Re:Fascinating Animals (Score:5, Informative)
You're a bit muddled in your terms. Darwinian evolution is a collection of ideas which in Darwin's time didn't include mutation. He knew that species change over time, he knew that every group of organisms descended from a common ancestor, he knew that species multiplied by splitting into daughter species, he knew that speciation occurs through gradual processes rather than by saltation (sudden emergence of representatives of a new type), and he gave us one of the mechanisms of evolution: natural selection. Darwin didn't know the origin of new genetic information: mutation. In fact the merging of genetics and natural selection into the neo-Darwinian synthesis didn't happen until around 60 years after Darwin died. You're not getting genetic drift [wikipedia.org] right either.
It is completely accurate to say that the only way species don't evolve is if they go extinct. At the most basic level evolution is simply the change in allele frequency in a population over time. Get a mutation, the allele frequency changes. Natural selection kills something off, ignoring clonal populations that's a change in allele frequency. Whether or not a change is necessary for survival is looking at it wrong. After all, other members of the species are getting along just fine without some specific mutation. A better way of looking at it is to ask if the mutation is compatible with survival. Does the mutation result in a nonviable organism? That's bad. Does it do nothing? Fine. Does it give you an advantage under some or all situations? That's good and as a result you might get more offspring and over time produce a large shift in allele frequency. These changes brought about by mutation and selection (and other evolutionary mechanisms) build up over time and new species inevitably result. There's nothing religious about it.
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Brilliant argument, fimd one species that doesn't evolve; this proves the other 100132 million that obviously did evolve are just a fluke easily explained away by this fish
Comic gold.
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Interesting that you attempt to make this (easily refuted) argument on a science and technology site. The same processes of inquiry, hypothesis formation, testing, refutation, evidence gathering etc etc that led to the invention of semiconductor transistors, laser diodes, optic fibres, LCD displays and such other technologies as you are using to read and post on this site, when applied to biology, have led to the acceptance of speciation by evolution and provided evidence for this from every scale from the
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Coelacahths can probably thank that "unremarkable to humans" trait for a lot. The global Nautilus population has declined so rapidly due to fishing and slow breeding and growth cycles that I wouldn't be surprised if they pass in to extinction in the next 100 years or so.
While there are conservation programs in the works, they aren't working with a cute cuddly animal, so funding is sparse to non-existent and a huge portion of the human population in areas where the Nautilus is still somewhat common don't giv
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Coelacanths are NOT deep sea fishes, as you can tell by the fact that these pictures were taken by divers using SCUBA.
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"During the daytime, coelacanths rest in caves anywhere from 100–500 meters deep while others migrate to deeper waters.[1][4] By resting in cooler waters (below 120 meters) during the daytime, coelacanths reduce metabolic costs" - Wiki
What do you call "deep".
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Evolution doesn't care about arbitrary human labels like "primitive". We assign them because we have this strange mental picture of it proceeding from point A (the first living cell) to the clearly and obviously superior point B (us), with every step along that route being "in the right direction", so to speak - but that's just our anthropocentric thinking. Evolution only "cares" about how well an organism can spread its genes around. If you're wondering how Coelacanth survived for so long, why not wonder h
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Why is the crocodile virtually unchanged from ancient times? if you ask me its because they hit upon an evolutionary design that was highly effective and they never had to adapt further. there are plenty of examples of living fossils. just because they don't evolve much because their adaptions make them well suited for their environment is not a flaw in evolution. its is an example of evolution being successful and producing an effective design.
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Crocodiles and Coelacanths have a few things in common: they wait for the food to come to them, or at least use the environment to bring them food or to food. They've mastered patience and metabolic conservation.
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Wild assed guess: massive changes starting in the Devonian finally settled out and it found it's niche; there were no evolutionary pressures to change, so it never did.
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Probably has the chief characteristic of possums and sharks, too: a bitch to kill.
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For most of these "living fossils", when you get into the details you discover that they *have* changed, just not very much. The fossil examples look quite similar in superficial ways but are different enough in anatomy that it is clear they are different species. For example, there are about 6 species of modern Nautilus, and while there are plenty of older nautiloids going back hundreds of millions of years, all of the modern species have relatively recent origins and are distinct from the much more anci
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Crocodiles and turtles are just as "stagnant" evolution-wise.
Coela-what? (Score:2)
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You're probably thinking of a Bichir. There's lots of primative aquarium fish, but they all have fins ad are more recent than this, the Coelacanth has arms and legs with similar bones to ours.
The lumgfish is about the oldest fish kept in aquaria.
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the Coelacanth has arms and legs with similar bones to ours.
No, it doesn't have arms and legs. None of the Coelacanth's ancestors lived on land, so having arms and legs instead of fins would be a little odd.
Wonder if... (Score:2)
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They're on the decline actually. There was zero commercial value in them, now they know scientists want them...
Actual temperature rise which is only in some areas at some time is one degree warmer. 100-500 feet down, where they live, this means nothing.
That's no Coelacanth! (Score:1)
That's no Coelacanth it's a Quastenflosser!
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can't be these types a fish they are said to live at such a low depth that to be that close as some of the photos show they literally blow apart due to the fact there isn't the sea pressure
They surface and explode, the terrorists.
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If you'd actually bother to read on how evolution works (starting with the fact that it doesn't have a well-defined goal), you wouldn't be asking such silly questions. You might as well ask things like, "if land animals have evolved from fish, why do we still have fish around?".
(Hint: if you think that evolution means that "humans have evolved from apes", then you don't understand what it's actually about)
Irony (Score:3, Funny)