Share Animal Pictures: For Animal Lovers

[BillTre]

An insect "hiding":

The black spots are the pseudo-pupils of the compound eyes. It is the ommatidia (individual eye units of the compound eye) where you are looking down the tube of the ommatidia (they lookk black). The ommatidia are radially arrayed in the compound eye.

 

[Ibix]

An insect "hiding":

View attachment 281436

The black spots are the pseudo-pupils of the compound eyes. It is the ommatidia (individual eye units of the compound eye) where you are looking down the tube of the ommatidia (they lookk black). The ommatidia are radially arrayed in the compound eye.

Wait... so its eyes would seem to follow you round the room?

 

[BillTre]

Wait... so its eyes would seem to follow you round the room?

Yes.

 

[DennisN]

The King and Queen of the park:
(taken yesterday)

 

[DennisN]

Today I was out testing a new lens for the first time (a vintage Canon FD 50 mm f/1.8 from the 1970s),
and a male mallard unexpectedly decided to pose as a model for me, so I just had to take a photo of it:

 

[fresh_42]

That is my stick!

 

[DennisN]

A pigeon in the city.
(Even comparatively calm pigeons can be a bit tricky to photograph when you have to use manual focusing as I did here with a vintage Canon FD lens. I took 15 photos and I think this one turned out best, though the focus could be better. A lesson learned for the next time .)

Sleeping animals are much easier to photograph, as this pigeon sleeping in a tree, also taken with a manual Canon FD lens:

 

[BillTre]

Some weird a$$ fish:

The Phantom Anglerfish (Haplophryne mollis) belongs to a group of anglerfish known as the "Ghostly Seadevils."

 

[DennisN]

The Phantom Anglerfish (Haplophryne mollis) belongs to a group of anglerfish known as the "Ghostly Seadevils."

Anglerfish are very cool.

By the way, @BillTre , if I remember correctly you've also taken your own photos of fish.
You don't have any photos you'd like to share here?
I would be interested in seeing them.

 

[BillTre]

Anglerfish are very cool.

By the way, @BillTre , if I remember correctly you've also taken your own photos of fish.
You don't have any photos you'd like to share here?
I would be interested in seeing them.

OK. Here are some pictures:

My fish studio, I lower a bright flash down on the copy stand to a few inches about the little tank:

I do it in the dark (reduces reflections).

Zebrafish (Danio rerio), the research animal about 2-3" long usually:

The fine black spots are single pigment cells. They are larger and flat.

Some fairly close zebrafish relatives (Danio kyathit, female on top), shot in a tank not the studio:

Danio kyathit, spotted variety (a variety from a different location):

Danio Choprae (a bit smaller than a zebrafish, more distantly related):

Danionella translucida, within a few mm's of being the smallest freshwater fish (photo through a research compound microscope) black round thing to left is eye, brain is grey-white blob above and to right of eye, gills and blood vessels below brain, spinal cord extends to right from back of brain:

One of the ~15 isles in one of the U of O fishrooms:

 

[DennisN]

OK. Here are some pictures:

Thanks for sharing!
Nice fish!

One of the ~15 isles in one of the U of O fishrooms:

All of those small containers (I don't know what they are called), are they for breeding or keeping fish, or both, perhaps?

 

[BigDon]

Mr. Tre,

Dr. Axelrod developed a wonderful technique for photographing small live fish.

Your setup is halfway there. An acrylic vessel eight by eight inches and 3/4 of an inch deep, (front to back), with a black backing. Fish can swim up and down, but still stay in the focal plane of the camera.
Your average plastics shop can make one in a hour.

Have you seen non-albino pearl danios? I think they're the prettiest of the lot.

I have to differentiate between them because locally some wholesaler got stuck with a massive load of the albino variety, while seeking to purchase the regular ones, and they were the only ones available for years.

Chicanery is very common in fish wholesalers I've found.

 

[BigDon]

Also...
I can just look at that bottom picture and I already know what that room smells like.

 

[BillTre]

All of those small containers (I don't know what they are called), are they for breeding or keeping fish, or both, perhaps?

Each can keep/raise about 20 zebrafish. The rack provides the infrastructure for each tank (water, air, return water flow to filter). The tanks are about 1 gallon. There are smaller tanks (~1 Liter) for raising young fish and other 1 liter tanks in which the fish can be crossed and eggs collected. We would get about 1 million eggs/year.

Dr. Axelrod developed a wonderful technique for photographing small live fish.

Your setup is halfway there. An acrylic vessel eight by eight inches and 3/4 of an inch deep, (front to back), with a black backing. Fish can swim up and down, but still stay in the focal plane of the camera.
Your average plastics shop can make one in a hour.

My set-up is a variant of his, which is well known. I have a little book on it that he made.
Because the tank is deeper (front to back) I can get photos of the fish doing more natural turns, which I like.

Have you seen non-albino pearl danios? I think they're the prettiest of the lot.

There are now about 3 species of pearl danios recognized, with slight differences in coloration. Many new Danios have been identified in the last twenty years. (Its a Danio-fest!).

Here's a pearl danio:

They have a lot of iridescence.

Here are a couple of Danio feegradei, which are pretty:

I have found several pigmentation mutations which are not in commercial demand, but have found homes in the lab of a friend who studies pigmentation in zebrafish.
Here s one with fewer black pigmentation cells and lots more iridophores (reflecting pigment cells):

The iridophores on the curved surface of the fish can produce a rainbow pattern of iridescence due to the differing pattern of interference:

Chicanery is very common in fish wholesalers I've found.

They often don't know much about the obscure fish they have
I hate the hobbyist names they are often less than worthless.

 

[BillTre]

Also...
I can just look at that bottom picture and I already know what that room smells like.

Actually, it didn't smell bad. Filtration kept the water good and we had a great HVAC system.

 

[BigDon]

One of the bigger disappointments in my life was commiting to memory the binomial names of over 1200 species of commonly kept aquarium fishes in the early 90's, exactly one year before there was a major revamping of the entire nomenclature system.

Kind of made me surly for a while. For years afterward whenever someone would correct me, my stock reply was, "You knew what I meant, right?"

 

[DennisN]

I can just look at that bottom picture and I already know what that room smells like.

Actually, it didn't smell bad. Filtration kept the water good and we had a great HVAC system.

I think I know what you are talking about. Is it that particular smell that can be around aquariums in e.g. pet stores? I actually like that smell, I don't know why, maybe I am weird.

Maybe it reminds me of childhood. We had an aquarium at home when I was a child, and I have memories of going around pet stores looking at and buying fish.

 

[BigDon]

But it did lead me to learn a lot of other binomial names, and thereby their connections to one another.

I believe you Mr. Tre, (or is it Dr. Tre?) Why? Because if that room wasn't redolent with geosmin, as suspected, point of pride would cause you to speak up, which it did.

It would be hard for normal Smoes* to keep that operation less than odiferous.*Portmanteau of Shmuck and Joe. Rhymes with Joe. In common usage locally.

 

[BigDon]

Mr. N,

The common mantra within the home aquarium industry is "A healthy aquarium, (freshwater) should smell like a warm plant."

The filtration system of healthy marine setups smells like cucumbers, at least to me.

 

[BillTre]

There are lots of kinds of smells possible around aquariums, some worse than others.

When I was four, my family moved to the DC area. For a year we lived in an apartment across the road from the National Zoo. It was my playground!
There are lots of smells in some of their buildings. Large animals buildings smelled a lot like a barn.

I had about 10-15 tanks when I was a kid (before going to college). Only some held fish.

It would be hard for normal Smoes* to keep that operation less than odiferous.

Well, we were well aware of the a bunch of problems like you describe. Since we got a lot of grant money to make a new facility, we designed things in, via the architect and many different engineers, to address our problems and improve conditions. This approach became standard for designing new NIH funded fish rooms.
I got along well with the engineers because I knew what I wanted to do and I was clear about it.
They were able to engineer it to happen with no problem other than cost and fitting it into the building.
We eliminated leaks, improved floors (sloping to drains has to be planned!), got an HVAC (air handling; heating ventilation and air conditioning) system able to keep the humidity and temperature down, got a great aquaculture water filtration unit (used on fish farms), computer controls/monitoring.
Lots of problems (and some labor) got engineered away. This was one of the most enjoyable, long term projects I have ever been involved in.
When done, everything was better.

 

[BigDon]

Mr. Tre, have you ever found yourself elbow deep in the alimentary canal of a large red tailed catfish, (the front end) trying to retrieve a piece of tank plumbing before the purchaser arrives to pick it up, and think about what life decisions you made that lead you up to that point?

Happened to me more than once.

Gastric juices make plastic elbow joints too slippery for gut hemostats to grip so one has to go in manually.

And *nobody* is happy about it. Not you, not the fish.

Normally we would just let the beasty regurgitate the piece, but there was a time factor involved. And nobody wants to pay for a very expensive fish with obvious mechanical parts in its stomach.

After the third time in as many years I was beginning to suspect the red tails were eavesdropping on the phone calls and doing this on purpose.

Everybody else, red tailed cats have white, flat stomachs and are shipped "empty". So when one does swallow tank hardware it's ridiculously obvious that something that doesn't belong in a fish is in there.

They swallow tank hardware that has a layer of biofilm on it as that and vibration fools their antennae system into thinking it's something edible.

 

[BigDon]

The largest Red Tail we sold was Kitty. She went to the Amazon display at the Mall of The Americas. She was the store's mascot for so long that when somebody did come up with a price the boss couldn't turn down, off she went. We had to router the top of the tank off to get her out and she weighed 65 pounds.

She was, without a doubt the largest fish I every sold. The next runner ups were four large morays that were all in the 35 to 37 pound range. Well over six foot long each.

Now THOSE were a chore to pack up and send home with a buyer.

That positively gets your adrenal glands a squeezin' btw.

I was already playing "Guess what bit me today!" with my brothers. Didn't want to add that to the list.

(I once had my right thumb completely dislocated by a specimen managuensis guarding his fry.)

 

[BigDon]

Another memorable fish was Queenie. She was a mature female Butterkoferi. Most people have never seen mature ones, just adolescents. Queenie had a 180 gallon tank all to herself. For very good reason. In the wild Butterkoferi will control 40 feet of river bank as their own exclusive economic zone. In Africa!

She was the most sold live fish on Earth.

We sold her to forever homes no less than ten times. Including times we felt positive about where she was going, because we were starting to take it as a challenge. We had two buyers who had large tanks and mature males. We waited until she was showing her ovipositor, the clearest indication she ready to mate, and both times she murdered her new beau in less than 24 hours. She even killed a 20 year old red eared slider!

We ended up having to donate her to Steinhardt.

 

[BigDon]

I was a prolific poster on the now defunct Fishindex dot com. One HUGE annoyance was this one articulate, well spoken poster who was also the editor of a major newspaper in Chicago. Wrote long, well written, informative posts.

That were patently wrong. Gawd!

Especially concerning cichlids. Proper pronunciation SICK-lid, not KITCH-lid. (Not addressed at you Bill.) His premise was all cichlids were naturally herbivores and only become carnivorous or omnivorous in unnatural settings.

I had the utter pleasure of reading the actual field notes of Dr. Axelrod the younger's expedition into the native range of the Oscar in the early 70's. (In the library of Steinhardt. My boss was on the board of directors so I would hitch along with him sometimes for behind the scenes activities.) In over 500 samples the *only* stomach contents Oscars had were immature crawfish. Samples were taken from both fish markets and fish collected more than 30 miles up and down stream from said markets, to exclude local conditions.

I got dunned by the mods for constantly pointing out this guy's errors. He claimed I was bullying him.

And it sort of did look like that, I confess. But he was just a well spoken bull slinger.

 

[jedishrfu]

These are great stories. You should consider writing a book on them. They’re reminiscent of the James Herriot books All Creatures Great and Small.

The Real Big Fish or some other catchy title.

 

[BigDon]

Of course one aspect of all this biology going on around you is that much like staring into the Abyss, (not advised as the Abyss stares back), biology will take advantage of any perceived weakness and exploit YOU.

Over forty years I've been treated for "aquarium lung" on three different occasions. Aquarium lung is like trombone lung. Comes from filthy habits i.e. mouth syphoning 1300 gallons a day of aquarium water over several years. (I was a busy beaver most of the time at that place.)

It goes without saying that aquarium organisms colonizing one's lungs is double ungood. And it gets bad fast too.

On the other hand I'm sure I developed a robust adaptive immune system.

 

[BigDon]

Way ahead of you sir.

My title was going to be "All Creatures Small and Slimey."

 

[jedishrfu]

Theres a parody song that matches your title sentiments from Monty Python I think:

 

[BigDon]

And for the life of me I can't fathom this site's quote system.

Well it's 8 pm local. Time to log out and go to bed. I'll check back with all of you tomorrow.

Goodnight all.

 

[BillTre]

Never heard of this Caecilius guy (who apparently was blind), but did used to keep Caecilians (which are also blind).

The ones I kept were aquatic blind, legless, tailless amphibians which shed they skin periodically (like reptiles), and gave birth (rather than laying eggs) after 21 months of gestation. Mine got to be 2-3 feet long. I have heard of them being referred to as the salamanders of S. America.

They are very active and look a lot like wiggly snakes. My son liked taking then the school because teachers often freaked out.