At the Baltimore Aquarium
From Tea, in comments on ‘Contemplative wonder is doomed, doomed, I tell you’.
I went to the Baltimore aquarium last week, and I saw a most amazing species of fish (whose name I unfortunately don’t remember at all). It took me a while to actually see it: the tank looked like it contained nothing but water and some algae-covered rocks. An employee approached me and asked me if I can see the fish. “No”, I replied. “It’s right here”, he said, pointing his finger at a rock. “Where?” “Right here.” I just couldn’t see it – until I noticed that the rock blinked at me slightly with its big black eye. It was truly amazing – I still couldn’t tell where the rock ended and the fish began, its “skin” looked exactly like the algae leaves that surrounded it. I had to be dragged away from the tank after 15 minutes or so, but I still can’t stop thinking about it. Of course I’ve seen examples of mimicry many times before, but I was usually able to figure out which were the real plants, and which the animals pretending to be plants. But I’ve never seen anything quite like this before. AWEsome.
Now, if someone were to tell you that this fish was created by a guy with considerable talent in making sculptures that look exactly like rocks, that would be hardly awe-worthy, and there would certainly be little left to wonder about. You might be a little more amazed upon being told that this guy can also breathe life into such “sculptures”, but your amazement would vanish as soon as you’d learn that this guy also happens to be omnipotent. There’s nothing very wonder-inspiring about intelligent beings creating things they have always been able to create with ease.
However, learning that this incredible thing happened through the process of natural selection – now, that is truly amazing. That is the reason why I had to be dragged away – it just blows my mind that such stuff comes into being without an omnipotent guy creating them on a whim. Instead, it just slowly evolves from next-to-nothing, and that without any intelligence and omnipotence behind it – and yet, there you go: a fish that looks exactly like a rock. If you ask me, very few things are more awe-inspiring than that. I still can’t fully wrap my mind around it; I keep “wondering” about it. On the other hand, there’s no place left for wonderment when a guy who can create anything happens to create something.
Yeah Baltimore!
The National Aquarium is wonderful – visitors are left in awe of Nature for years with one visit. I think it is because they make it very clear the fish and sharks and seahorses evolved (as opposed to having been made.)
The majority of visitors are school children. Just about every public and private school kid gets a serious dose of good science on their obligatory trip to the Aquarium.
Yes indeed it does sound like it could be the ‘scorpion fish’ that Tea saw – judging, anyway, from her description -and that too of other visitors to the Baltimore Aquariam.
Discover Science Technology, and The Future.
“More than 600 species fly, writhe, hop, lurk, and, yes, swim in Baltimore’s Aquarium. By: Scott Kim, Marc T. Simon, and Michael M. Abrams.
…[O]ther tanks house venomous inhabitants in fresh or salt water – this is, after all, an aquarium. An anemone waits for prey, its white-tipped tentacles craning in unison like spectators at a ball game. In a sandy tank, camouflaged stingrays, orange toadfish, and spotted scorpion fish pretend to be rocks or part of the sandy seafloor, then ripple into softness as they swim. Various sea snakes and kraits, relatives of cobras, thrash through the water with their flattened, spoonlike tails.”
I really like goldfish. They are very soothing to watch floating around in their tanks. They remind me of birds when it comes to feeding time in the way that they open wide their mouths. They are indeed so amusing and a wonder to behold. But I do not, however, like seeing them in Chinese Restaurants as I often wonder what will happen to them.
Potentilla’s ‘fish’ link in last post is absolutely staggering.
I see what you mean by the omnipotence being a cheat. Wasn’t that what was supposed to take all the tension of the battles in Milton’s Paradise Lost? The outcome was never in dispute so no suspense.
There’s this sketch done by Mitchell & Webb where they are superheroes. Webb is BMX boy who wants to rescue the endangered on his BMX bike in a smart, Marvel comics way & Mitchell, who is omnipotent, simply calls up legions of angels every time. Webb becomes very frustrated and annoyed that he is inevitably trumped by omnipotence.
Heroic evolution far more interesting than divine snap your fingers and it’s done any day.
Yes, I was just saying how amazing potentilla’s fish link is. That first one…that’s a fish? Outasite.
‘the battles in Milton’s Paradise Lost’
Some of the most unreadable absurdity in all of literature…
This claim of more ‘wonder’ in not having a scientific knowledge is such rubbish. The people I know with the MOST wonder, are the real scientists who understand the depth of what they are seeing.
If worthwhile ‘wonder’ is founded on ignorance, surely that points in a recursive direction – back to uneducated muck-grovelling serfdom, all so we can increase the WONDER at… er, stuff.
Actually I think wonder is for the right people a foundation of curiousity – ‘Wow!…I wonder how that could happen? Let’s see…’
See, that’s the kind of wonder I can appreciate! In fact, that’s the kind of wonder that keeps me enthralled with nature – even in my own backyard – for hours sometimes.
My favorites for camouflage are the seahorses and pipefish. Here are many links to pretty pictures:
A collection of very nice seahorse pics from a professional photographer.
Several terrific underwater camouflage images from an online ecology text.
Underwater ninja invisibility master, the pygmy seahorse.
Another sneaky blending seahorse.
A pipefish among the seagrass.
And perhaps my very favorite, the Leafy Sea Dragon. Unfortunately, few of the images in this search show it in the context of it’s kelpy home – probably because it’s so bloody hard to spot there.
Spiders and spiderwebs enthrall me, too, but I’ll spare the pretty pictures out of deference to arachnophobes. :-)
Thanks, G. I hate the big hairy and venomous varieties of spiders, BUT….
I have watched an orb spider building its web and it is truly a wonderful thing to see. I’d love to know the evolutionary story behind the web; spiderweb that is. Like when did spiders develop their silk, what was it used for before they started to weave webs for hunting.
Back on topic tho, it seems to me that half the time theists seem to use omnipotence as the “answer”, and the other half of the time explaining it away.
Is it not amazing that the silk that spiders produce to weave their webs, is the strongest known natural fibre.
Wow! Wonders too will never cease… with the fact that Spiders are being taken up into space to see how they weave weightless webs.
I was reading on the web ’67 Spiders,’ it outlines in clear language great aspects of Spiders’lives.
Talking to Scientists – through email David Bininda and Stanley Schultz responded to the inquiry questions of the students.
Here is one e-mail example which I thought was incredibly fascinating.
David’s email response: “Have spiders always had the same structure or have they evolved over time?”
Stan’s email response: “Spiders and other chelicerates are very ancient-they were around in Cambrain times-that’s nearly 500 million years ago! Now at that time they were seen as sea scorpions, not spiders. Spiders themselves were around on land many millions of years before the dinosaurs although I do not have the exact date. Today spiders mostly live on land. Relatives of theirs are horseshoe crabs. They are the only aquatic relatives that are not extinct. The first spider fossils are dated at about 380 million years ago. They predated the dinosaurs by 140 million years. In fact, they predate any vertebrate!”
Get a load of that,- is that not flabbergasting spider news.
“I’d love to know the evolutionary story behind the web; spiderweb that is. Like when did spiders develop their silk, what was it used for before they started to weave webs for hunting.”
“Study Says Spider Web Developed Just Once, ABC News, Randolph E. Schmid.
“The classic spider’s web, like Charlotte would have woven, was invented just once, way back in the Cretaceous period some 136 million years ago, scientists report.”
The article is on CreationEvolutionDesign Commentary by: Stephen Jones.
Absorbing stuff!
1) Google: Study Says Spider Web Developed Just Once,
2) Google: Spiders Spin Out.
“Will you walk into my parlor, said a Cretaceous spider to an ancient fly?”
Hope I am not getting too much caught up in the spiders web. It is albeit so awe-inspiring.
There’s also some interesting legitimate research on how various toxic ingestibles effect spiders’ web production.
This video is not about that legitimate research, but it is hilarious in a rather juvenile sort of way.
“A fish? Outasite.” – is a fish outeastithink? Moreover, it definitely is not in B&W tank! ~~ :~0?
No, seriously though did any of ye know that goldfish when in water can/do sometimes lose their golden colour and become white. I commit to memory once asking a pet shop owner, “Why is the goldfish white/golden in colour?” He simply did not know. For some unknown reason – the whiter they were the more keener I was to purchase them. When they died, I always buried them in matchboxes, and put them in the soil. I do not know if this was /is correct way. I thought /think it is better than flushing them down the loo – like some people I know that did. More dignity, attached to the former I gather?
Thank you indeed G for your stunning ‘fish’ link snapshots.
M-T O’L – Thanks for that.