favourite invertebrate

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spuriousmonkey

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yes it is that time of the week again...It is so easy to name your favourite fluffy mammal, but what about invertebrates!! There are by far more invertebrate species on this world than vertebrates (to which mammals belong too).

so what is your favourite invertebrate???

I like Patella vulgata, a sea mollusc. And if I am not mistaken a delicacy in Japan.
 
Originally posted by spuriousmonkey
And if I am not mistaken a delicacy in Japan.
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I'm guessing you aren't mistaken, after all, what ISN'T a delicacy in japan?:rolleyes:

Anyway, the octopus takes this one hands down for me:)
They are such an interesting animal with an enormous multi-faceted array of behavioural characteristics.
Every individual seems to have different tactics in the art of survival.
Squids are awesome too but they have that cartilidge thing in them, are they still invertabrates?
:( I'm serious, I don't know...
 
but of course theye are invertebrates!! they are actually close relatives to my beloved Patella vulgata. They all belong to the phylum Mollusca. This phylum includes clams, oysters, squids, octopods, and snails. More than 50.000 species have been described so far.

Squids belong to the Class Cephalopoda. about 600 species are known to exist at present.


and how do i know all this?

'Invertebrate zoology', by ruppert and Barnes is one of my favorite books...
 
In that case I know what my favourite invertabrate is except I don't the name of it, perhaps you can help.
I saw a documentary about the architeuthis deux(sp?) once, I think it was called "in search of the giant squid" but I'm not sure, it might have been a different one. Anyway in this documentary they talked about a species of squid that was about 6 foot long, they lived in warmer waters and they were very aggressive and they hunted in packs, they were thick and stocky in build and at the time I saw them they were red(for what thats worth). They were really freakin' awesome and I never knew a squid could behave like they did. A guy went down amongst them in a steel cage and was feeding them fish and stuff and when he ran out they turned on him and ferociously attacked the cage.
For some reason I remember one biting his leg and taking a huge chunk out but that could be my imagination.
Do you have any idea what type of squid I'm talking about?
 
Originally posted by Dr Lou Natic
In that case I know what my favourite invertabrate is except I don't the name of it, perhaps you can help.
I saw a documentary about the architeuthis deux(sp?) once, I think it was called "in search of the giant squid" but I'm not sure, it might have been a different one. Anyway in this documentary they talked about a species of squid that was about 6 foot long, they lived in warmer waters and they were very aggressive and they hunted in packs, they were thick and stocky in build and at the time I saw them they were red(for what thats worth). They were really freakin' awesome and I never knew a squid could behave like they did. A guy went down amongst them in a steel cage and was feeding them fish and stuff and when he ran out they turned on him and ferociously attacked the cage.
For some reason I remember one biting his leg and taking a huge chunk out but that could be my imagination.
Do you have any idea what type of squid I'm talking about?
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Unfortunately this book is more about the structure than behavior of invertebrates, so there isn't much about these things in here. The giant squid is definitely architeuthid…but that's the genus name so there are probably several species. I don't know about the aggressive ones, but they certainly sound very interesting and shows that we have much to learn about the world around us and especially oceanic life.

So…sorry…I don't know which squid this is…
 
The waterbear. Funny, almost microscopic thing that lives in wet moss. 2 claws on each foot.
 
I like comb jellies (ctenophores...I think) Anyway, there's huge ones that live deep in the sea and they're bioluminescent. Ever seen a squid change colors? It's really amazing!
 
Forgive me if i sound dumb, but i am fond of Caecillians. I am not sure if they have a spine... they are amphibians.. look like translucent worms..big white worms with hairs.. :D
 
i like hydras. i spent a good 2 hours watching one perform a ballet for me under the scope totally forgetting what i was supposed to be doing. they're such beautiful little things.

any kind of cephalopod is cool
 
Dragonflies are cool, did you know they see the world in slow motion?
For their size they are so fast that everything else seems to be in slow motion, you might say "well they wouldn't see a bullet in slow motion" but they would, it would just still be going really fast. Everything is going its real speed but to the dragonfly thats slow motion, its kind of hard to explain but its true.
 
Gotta ask why... This is SciForums after all

Originally posted by Dr Lou Natic
Everything is going its real speed but to the dragonfly that's slow motion, it's kind of hard to explain but its true.
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How do they differ from other fast-moving insects?

I think I know what you mean, at least applied to vertebrates. It takes something like .01 second for one synapse to fire, and it takes an average of ten sequences of synapse firings to comprise one thought. (Talk about "It's kind of hard to explain," I have no idea who made that decision.) So it's hard for us to perceive more than about ten occurrences of anything per second.

One would assume that a hummingbird, for example, would have a significantly faster cycle time.

Now dragonflies, with no central nervous system, no brain, I'm not sure how the concept applies to them, but it makes sense intuitively.

Still I wonder how they are substantively different from any other insect of the same scale.
 
SPONGE BOB SQUARE PANTS!!!
sspongebob.gif
 
Originally posted by blankc
Anyone have an idea what the most intelligent invertebrate is?
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see the post above yours....the octopus...

not sure which of the species is most intelligent. I don't know if there is much difference between squids and cuttlefish. Their intelligence is probably correlated to their carnivorous lifestyle and locomotor dexterity.
 
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