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You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Sunday Night Open Thread: What We Do For…

Sunday Night Open Thread: What We Do For…

by Anne Laurie|  October 10, 20219:17 pm| 31 Comments

This post is in: Nature & Respite, Open Threads

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… blind procreative instinct, or something larger:

The Japanese ?? Puffer Fish is probably nature's greatest artist ?

To grab a female’s attention he creates something that defies belief ?

pic.twitter.com/AiuQY9XzhN

— Erik Solheim (@ErikSolheim) October 9, 2021

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Reader Interactions

31Comments

  1. 1.

    Lapassionara

    October 10, 2021 at 9:25 pm

    What a beautiful design. Thanks.

  2. 2.

    Another Scott

    October 10, 2021 at 9:32 pm

    There’s a giant cat down the street that is shaped like an inflated pufferfish or basketball when it sits down. It came up to me a couple of days ago when I was walking Ellie – it wanted to say hello and get some stitches.

    I petted its back and was amazed to find that it’s almost all fur!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  3. 3.

    debbie

    October 10, 2021 at 9:38 pm

    @Lapassionara:

    it would be interesting to see the designs of other puffer fish. I wonder if they’re like snowflakes or fingerprints.

  4. 4.

    raven

    October 10, 2021 at 9:43 pm

    Here’s one I caught in 10,000 Islands.

  5. 5.

    West of the Rockies

    October 10, 2021 at 9:44 pm

    Man… and I thought it was a big deal because I did the laundry and made dinner.

  6. 6.

    LeftCoastYankee

    October 10, 2021 at 9:44 pm

    The romantic part of me was hoping Betty Bubblefish would wander by and be very impressed with Barney Bubblefish’s work of art.

    The post-2020 part of me was waiting for the shark….

    Seriously, this is very wondrous.

  7. 7.

    craigie

    October 10, 2021 at 9:47 pm

    That’s amazing, all the more so because he’s made a perfect circle (actually several of them) without ever being able to see them while he’s doing it.

  8. 8.

    Jim Appleton

    October 10, 2021 at 9:54 pm

    There’s a joke in here somewhere involving “fugu,” but I’m hopeless at finding it …

  9. 9.

    Ajabu

    October 10, 2021 at 9:56 pm

    To grab a female’s attention he creates something that defies belief

    Exactly what drove me to become a professional musician…

  10. 10.

    phdesmond

    October 10, 2021 at 10:17 pm

    @Ajabu:

    i think of my poet self less as a puffer fish and more as a bower bird:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U89tw093s_Y

  11. 11.

    Kalakal

    October 10, 2021 at 10:28 pm

    • That’s truly incredible, thank you.
  12. 12.

    SFBayAreaGal

    October 10, 2021 at 10:28 pm

    So perfect.

  13. 13.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 10, 2021 at 10:35 pm

    @craigie:

    It’s a marine mandala.

  14. 14.

    Benw

    October 10, 2021 at 10:45 pm

    @Another Scott: my folks rescued a pair of Himalayan kittens. We named them Edmund and Lucy after the Narnia siblings and it’s impossible to overstate how their gigantic floof disguised tiny cat bodies.

  15. 15.

    HumboldtBlue

    October 10, 2021 at 10:46 pm

    Imagine having to drag your li’l Johnny through the sand like that to catch a hottie, leaves my brow in a furrow!

    I’ll stick with ridiculous handsomeness and a penchant for silliness to catch a female puffer fish’s eye.

    It’s not easy being a Merman.

    Oh, and the Southsiders are staying alive with the bats!

  16. 16.

    Yutsano

    October 10, 2021 at 10:49 pm

    I sent El pufferfish to a friend of mine who also happens to be a specialist in marine life at the Monterey Aquarium*. I’m pretty sure he’s seen one of these in the water up close!

    *I think that’s where he works. I’m not going to bug him about it except he works at an aquarium in the Bay area.

  17. 17.

    John Cole

    October 10, 2021 at 10:55 pm

    Impressive, but it’s no mullet

  18. 18.

    Ian R

    October 10, 2021 at 10:56 pm

    Poor fish. All that work, only to have the target audience scared off by a submarine camera drone.

  19. 19.

    Lyrebird

    October 10, 2021 at 11:03 pm

    @HumboldtBlue: He’s dragging a fin through the sand iiuc, but you’re still right!  I wished that Betty Puffer had shown up too.

  20. 20.

    brendancalling

    October 10, 2021 at 11:19 pm

    @Ajabu: yup, same here!

    I thought knowing how to partner dance was the be-all, I got nothing on this fish!

  21. 21.

    mrmoshpotato

    October 10, 2021 at 11:21 pm

    It feels awesome to boo the Astros in person pic.twitter.com/lFagSpiayw— Zoe Galland (@zoegalland) October 11, 2021

    As I said before, they should have to dodge rolling trash cans, Donkey Kong-style.

  22. 22.

    Misterpuff

    October 10, 2021 at 11:21 pm

    Flowers always work.

  23. 23.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    October 10, 2021 at 11:24 pm

    I was just talking to friend, she does service jobs. She mention she does doordash three days a week, earsn, 300 to 400 for 20 hours of work. No wonder no one can be bothered to wait tables.

  24. 24.

    trollhattan

    October 10, 2021 at 11:37 pm

    Fans of “Chinatown” or folks generally interested in California water wars might find this of interest.

    State water officials took a significant step on October 1 toward reversing damage to the Mono Lake Basin from excessive water diversions through major revisions to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s (LADWP) water rights licenses. The changes approved by the State Water Resources Control Board provide significant updates to an existing stream restoration program and will restore instream flows to 20 miles of creek and fisheries habitats in the basin. LADWP is required to construct an outlet structure at Grant Lake Dam to facilitate higher peak flow releases during certain months and accelerate ecosystem recovery processes that will benefit the trout fishery and riparian habitats of Rush, Lee Vining, Walker and Parker Creeks, tributaries to Mono Lake. The new measures build upon a historical 1994 State Water Board decision that established water export limitations and conditions to protect the environment in and around Mono Lake.

  25. 25.

    Cameron

    October 10, 2021 at 11:56 pm

    Sorry.  Seen it already in an early ’50s sci-fi flick.

  26. 26.

    soapdish

    October 11, 2021 at 12:05 am

    So did he score or not?

  27. 27.

    Poe Larity

    October 11, 2021 at 12:26 am

    @raven: 

    It’s like you killed Gustav Klimt of the sea.

  28. 28.

    Chetan Murthy

    October 11, 2021 at 12:49 am

    That little clip was fascinating.  It made me immediately wonder what the variation of designs for such mandalas is  (what symmetries the fish are capable of expressing) : perhaps some fish create ovals?  ellipses?  squares?  Are they always rotationally symmetric?

  29. 29.

    Starboard Tack

    October 11, 2021 at 1:04 am

    @trollhattan: Hopefully there will be enough water in spite of endemic drought.

  30. 30.

    oldster

    October 11, 2021 at 3:44 am

    It’s cool, and props to the fishy.  But unique in the animal kingdom? Tell that to the spiders, the beavers, the weaver-birds, etc.  There are many amazing architect-builders outside of the primate taxa.

  31. 31.

    Ohio Mom

    October 11, 2021 at 4:16 pm

    Disclaimer: I don’t believe in an intelligence behind the unviverse, I believe in evolution, completely.

    But what a marvel, that evolution selects for fish drawn mandellas!

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