by Matthew Cobb
A tw**t from the King of Gifs (pronounced…), @JohnRHutchison, containing a gif of a horned lizard squirting blood from its eyes. THIS IS REAL and is one of the most bizarre animal adaptations I can think of.
Here’s a National Geographic video that gives some more information. And yes it is blood. It’s not squirted from the eyeball though. National Geographic says:
The ominous squirting blood emanates from ducts in the corners of their eyes and can travel a distance of up to three feet (one meter). It’s meant to confuse would-be predators, but also contains a chemical that is noxious to dogs, wolves, and coyotes.
Greg, the WEIT resident herpetologist, will probably know more about this odd phenomenon…
Can anyone think of a weirder adaptation?
UPDATE: It would appear that whatever the effect of the blood-spurting eyes on mammals, the American kestrel is unimpressed. This photo by John Roser shows over 30 horned lizard skulls that were found while clearing out a kestrel nestbox (h/t @ftcreature on Tw*tter)
I’m both intrigued & repulsed!
Pistol Shrimp’s Shooting Claw
Oh my. That *is* impressive! I presume by the “temperature of the sun” the narrator means one of the cooler areas near the surface, and not the interior! 😉
The Sun’s temperature gradient profile is actually quite complex and counterintuitive. As viewed straight-on, it appears to be about 5800K, but the outer layers of the chromosphere are much, much, much hotter than that, on the order of 1,000,000K — though their tenuous nature means they don’t have nearly as much heat. (It’s the Sun’s violently twisting magnetic fields that heat them up.)
The core, though, has a temperature of 16,000,000K, and densities 150 times that of water.
(A quick peek at Wikipedia says the corona can actually reach temperatures comparable to that of the core, but, again, at a density that we’d generally call a vacuum — a mere quadrillion particles or so per cubic meter.)
b&
Yes, I knew about the hotter “layers” above the “surface”, but was trying to be concise. I was just shocked that it could have even been suggested, as I knew that the sun was not below about 6000 Kelvin anywhere. If the video’s statement is accurate, that is one intense critter.
I wonder if anyone has suggested a pathway for this evolve, it’s amazing.
“… but also contains a chemical that is noxious to dogs, wolves, and coyotes.”
Phew! Not noxious to cats.
On the basis that insects can out-weird anything, I’m goibg to go for beetle penises.
Barnacle penises! It’s not the structure, it’s the length
I’m thinking Bob Dole is a mighty weird adaptation….
b&
Yes, this is quite true. But “horny toads” as we called them in southern Arizona, seem to be pretty reluctant to do this. They are easy to catch and hold in your hands but I had this done to me only a couple of times. What I really had to watch out for was placing my thumb on the back of their necks because they will quickly raise their heads and spear you with those horns sticking out of the backs of their heads.
I agree! They seem very reluctant to squirt blood. I’ve probably handled 100+, of several species, and never had one display this odd behavior. Maybe I’m just not scary enough.
I can squirt saliva up to 5 ft., directly out of a gland at the base of my tongue, with semi “sharp-shooter” accuracy.
I have not tried this on a coyote, however, so I’m not sure what this adaptation is good for except an occasional bar bet victory.
The sea cucumber ejecting part of its guts to deter predators comes to mind, or the traumatic insemination of bedbugs.
Both of these are excellent examples of weirdness. Well done.
Or the frog that pierces its skin with its bones.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080624-frog-claws.html
I think “consciousness” is still weirder …
Must admit, you’ve got a point there…
Frogs that swallow their eggs and gestate their young in their stomach?
That one is pretty amazing. Did I not read, though, that it recently went extinct?
Bombardier beetles, but you probably aren’t thinking about them just because they’re so overused. I second the sea-cucumber-guts nomination too.
Carnivorous Hawaiian caterpillars? Chalicotheres and ground sloths? That isopod that takes the place of a fish’s tongue? There’s really no shortage.
There is an insect, and dammit I cannot think of the name, where the young feed off of the mothers’ body from inside, then burst out. The internet failed me on naming this one, but I hope the WEITers will come through!
I think you might be thinking of parasitic wasps that actually feed inside a caterpillar, not their own mother.
Parasitoid wasps don’t limit that behavior to caterpillars. They’ll deposit their young onto the backs of spiders, into the eggs of various insects, basically whatever they can find. Some wasps will lay their eggs only inside of the eggs of other parasitic wasps that are inside something else’s egg!
Talk about what goes around comes around!
I believe that some orobatid mites do that, though they aren’t insects.
Ah, I find an example in spiders: Kim, K-W., and Horel, A. 1998. Matriphagy in the spider Amaurobius ferox: An example of mother-offspring interactions. Ethology 104:1024-1037.
Geek that I am, I remember hearing the description of a spider being consumed by its offspring from Bladerunner where Rachael, the replicant that belongs to the Tyrell corporation, relates the false memories implanted in her from Tyrell’s niece.
There are probably a couple that fit that description, honestly!
The only thing I can think of off the top of my head would be Miastor metraloas, a Dipteran. They’re also paedogenetic – they reproduce in the larval stage – so these larvae are eating their larval mother from the inside out… !
Just plain-old mother-eating is somewhat more common, though, and shows up in spiders and flies and even at least one species of earwig. D
I vote for traumatic insemination, or virtually anything covered by the green porno series.
Also, ladybugs squirt blood (well, hemolymph but whatevs) out of their joints, if I recall.
armoured ground crickets squirt blood and vomit everywhere when attacked, and as they come in swarms it can be pretty impressive
… and before the days of original sin this nice little fellow among god’s creatures squirted Holy Water!
Seriously: great post — and another perfect remedy for everyone who wants to defend intelligent design.
I want vouchers for defense spending that I can use to support diplomacy.
The hollow, barbed, venom-containing harpoons that cone snails fire into their prey, enabling some species of these sedentary creatures to pose a lethal threat to things like fish, that you’d expect they’d have no chance against. (Other species prey on marine worms or other snails.)
Human fatalities have also been recorded. “Hey, this thing bit me.” And an hour later he was dead.
What’s so weird about that? Cnidarians do it all the time.
Which is not to say that nematocysts (I suppose there’s another name for them now) aren’t still a very weird adaptation. And then there are the sea slugs that co-opt them…
Thinking just about the angle “what is the farthest from what a ‘normal’ animal is like” my contribution would probably be the electric eel. I mean, 600 volts, from a fish???
When I first saw the Gif (Which I pronounce as in “gift”) I thought that the lizard had developed a laser gun in its eye.
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.
I always think of the hectocotylus when challenged on this. Proof positive that reading palaeontology text books is good for the brain. Euan Clarkson (Mr Trilobite Eyes himself) described it as “copulation by guided missile”, which shows that he knew his undergraduate audience.
Link. To the Squidly One.