Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, man.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

We still have time to mess this up!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Republicans in disarray!

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Bark louder, little dog.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

The words do not have to be perfect.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

This fight is for everything.

Infrastructure week. at last.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Everybody saw this coming.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Because of wow. / Watch Giant Isopods Eat An Alligator

Watch Giant Isopods Eat An Alligator

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This video is from one of my favorite science blogs, Deep Sea News. They have a lot of great photos of sea animals, including a few bit players in this one. They dropped an alligator in the Gulf of Mexico to see which animals showed up to eat it. The giant isopods are relatives of roly-polys, pillbugs, wood lice, whatever you care to call them.

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Reader Interactions

59Comments

  3. 3.

    debbie

    @schrodingers_cat:

    It’s a dead alligator and they don’t seem to make much progress, what with the tough exterior. Not half as bad as a lion chasing an antelope.

  6. 6.

    Rand Careaga

    I had alligator in New Orleans last month. The consistency was distantly reminiscent of, you know, chicken, but under the cajun seasoning the flavor was surprisingly delicate.

    If I lived there, I probably would not eat alligator for the same reason that, swimming as I do each summer in Northern California, I do not consume shark, in the superstitious belief that I can expect a reciprocal courtesy—or at least that, in my last moments of consciousness before exsanguination sets in, I may legitimately feel myself to have been ill-used.

  8. 8.

    schrodingers_cat

    @debbie: I had a second interview with the publishing company this morning. I wore a black skirt and a black and white blouse topped with an orange pointelle cardigan. Very lady like. I was going to wear big hoops like AOC, but remembered what you said and wore mid sized ones (3/4 inch)

  12. 12.

    Mike in NC

    Great. We live on a golf course with plenty of gators. Will now have to be alert for giant wood lice eating hapless golfers!

  17. 17.

    Mnemosyne

    I have news that is strangely in sync with this: it looks like our middle cat Annie may have lymphoma. They’re doing a needle aspiration test right now (I mean I’m literally sitting at the specialty vet) to confirm it and then I take her home and we wait for the call.

    As we all know from Lily, animal lymphoma is fairly treatable, but we’re still talking about a matter of months at best.

    Not a good day today. ? And I’m supposed to go to a weekend writing conference starting tomorrow.

  18. 18.

    Mnemosyne

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I missed what’s going on, but good luck!

    G got a super cool archiving job that will send him to small archives all over the county for the next 2 years to help them plan how to digitize their collections. The big downside is all of the driving, but he can suck it up since it’s a limited-term fellowship. Plus is doesn’t start until May 1st, so he has to twiddle his thumbs and worry about our cat until then.

  27. 27.

    Michael J Allen

    @Rand Careaga: He said they are mostly lipids in side, so just gross bug fat. You could try breading and frying some you find under a rock or something.

  28. 28.

    Michael J Allen

    @Van Buren: If it’s in shallower water the crabs and such will have anything eaten just as quickly. I understand that a clothed body will pretty quickly have skeleton hands and heads with the rest puffed up like a balloon. I guess the shroud tied around a corpse would slow things down a lot. On the other hand, you’re dead already.

  30. 30.

    Rand Careaga

    @Michael J Allen: For most of the decades I’ve considered the subject of the fate of my remains, I’ve thought “Cremation, of course,” but lately—and in actuarial terms I probably have fifteen years, max—the notion of leaving behind a kind of physical echo of my existence, a buried skeleton, is vaguely appealing, since no other monuments will be erected to me, nor memories endure past those of my collateral descendants.

    ETA: wrong comment response.

  37. 37.

    Avalune

    They hope to retrieve some new bone eating worm. Um, no. Nope! Leave it down there thanks! Far too many worms about as is…

    Sorry to hear about Annie.

  39. 39.

    schrodingers_cat

    I saw a brief segment about Hotel Mumbai on the Snooze Hour, I caught the tail end of it. Apparently according to Hollywood, there is only one actor designated to play a young Indian man, in Hollywood productions Dev Patel. He plays a Sikh man in the movie and sounds like Appu of Simpsons. WTF?

    I don’t have a pithy name to describe this phenomena but it is fucking annoying.

  40. 40.

    Jay

    @Van Buren:

    The worms go in, the worms go out, the worms play penuckle on your snout,…….

    Just different kinds of worms and stuff doing the recycling.

  41. 41.

    Jay

    “CEOs are more than twice as likely to give to Republicans rather than to Democrats.

    Republicans support policies that favor rich people (like the Billions for Billionaires Bill). It really is one well-manicured hand washing the other, and now we have a study and data that proves it.

    I urge you to go to the Axios link and read the whole item, and then go to the study and look at the charts. Holy cow! The Bruhs got it so wrong.”

    https://mockpaperscissors.com/2019/04/04/there-really-is-a-difference-between-the-two-parties/

  43. 43.

    Kelly

    Spent this rainy afternoon binging my way to the end of season 3 of The Expanse. Wow, just wow. All the good reviews were true.

  44. 44.

    MomSense

    @schrodingers_cat:

    There’s no video but I’m still reeling from McDreamy the Warden talking about Bull Moose weighing 1200 lbs completely sucked dry of blood by ticks. WTF. Never fall asleep in the woods in Oxford County.

  45. 45.

    Jay

    “The strongman who controls two thirds of Libya has ordered his forces to march to Tripoli, the capital of the UN-backed government, raising fears of a major showdown with rival militias.

    Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who commands the “Libya National Army” (LNA) based in the east, described his forces’ move as a “victorious march” to “shake the lands under the feet of the unjust bunch”.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/04/un-chief-urges-restraint-as-libyan-army-leader-plans-tripoli-assault

  47. 47.

    Salty Sam

    @Rand Careaga: For most of the decades I’ve considered the subject of the fate of my remains…

    About 15 yrs ago, the Criminal Justice School at Tx State University in San Marcos Tx developed a forensics program to study the effects of weather, scavengers, etc on human remains. They acquired a plot of land in some of the most beautiful part of the Tx Hill Country, and when a donor comes along, will dump the remains out there to document what the coyotes, buzzards, fire ants, etc will do with it, with the goal of giving forensic detectives a way to estimate this sort of thing in investigations.

    As I mis-spent many lovely hours in this area while I was a (poor) student at that school, I have decreed in my will to donate my mortal remains for this purpose. My highest hope is to someday be scattered across Hays Co. as buzzard shit.

  49. 49.

    Rand Careaga

    @Salty Sam: I think that the open-air corpse programs have been going along for longer than fifteen years. I don’t have it readily to hand, but I think Mary Roach’s Stiff describes an older program.

    While I do not anticipate having strong opinions in the event, my present preference is to spend the 2030s mainly underground.

  50. 50.

    NickM

    Can anyone recommend a good article summing up (with receipts) why Wilmer is an untrustworthy egomaniac? I have a couple friends who are persuadable I think but my arguments could be better informed and aren’t doing the job.

  51. 51.

    Ohio Mom

    @NickM: I just googled “Don’t vote for Bernie Sanders” and there were some interesting article titles — including one from Teen Vogue, a magazine that has a good reputation for breaking things down.

    I’ll be interested if anyone else has any ideas for you because I have a few people in my life who might benefit from reading such an article.

  53. 53.

    Salty Sam

    @Rand Careaga: for sure, there have been many older programs. The one at TSUSM was initiated sometime in the aughts (don’t recall exactly when).

    I’m not nearly done on this side of the veil, and the next few years of sailing might show an untimely end of being gobbled by underwater pill bugs. Not as romantic as buzzards and coyotes, but all in all, the same.s

  54. 54.

    John Revolta

    I thought an isopod was one of these here gadgets that all the kids are always foolin with when they’re supposed to be watching the road.
    Now you’re telling me they can eat an alligator? Damn crazy kids!!

  55. 55.

    Mnemosyne

    Thanks, all. I just got home with her and she is sprawled out on the living room floor, happy to be back in her own territory.

    @satby:

    At this point, the best case scenario is lymphoma, because it’s treatable with chemotherapy and the majority of cats who get chemotherapy go into remission for a year or more afterwards.

    The other possibilities are much worse with a very poor prognosis, so we’re in the weird position of hoping for lymphoma. ?

  56. 56.

    Mnemosyne

    Also, a potentially interesting tidbit from Wikipedia for satby and other cat rescue types — apparently feline lymphoma is strongly associated with FELV and FIV, including cats with subclinical infections that never turn into the disease. Annie is our kitty who was found living with a feral colony as a kitten, so this may end up being relevant. ?

  57. 57.

    NotMax

    Gotta mention it. The movie: Five Star Final. Nominated for best picture Oscar.

    Boris Karloff’s character is named T. Vernon Isopod.

  58. 58.

    Bill Arnold

    @Jay:
    Interesting. (Just skimmed it.)
    Gender seems to be a big effect, detailed in Table 7, Figure 6. Since CEO ranks are male dominated, part of it is probably CEO (white-)maleness. (Not implying it would change (improve, from my pov) a lot if there were equality or female domination; probably would though.)

    Furthermore, CEO gender is significantly associated with partisan preferences, with male CEOs being much more likely to have pro-Republican preferences than female CEOs. These correlations persist also after controlling for all other variables in a regression analysis.

  59. 59.

    Donna

    I’m a big believer that the only good alligator is a dead alligator. That said, no way on earth do I want to watch that. I’ll never sleep again.

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