[obol] 'funny' common names & Re: No - this is not porn...

[Cindy Ashy]

OK, if Tim Rodenkirk can talk about "Fairy Puke" I think I can mention "Sea
Snot" which is produced by a group of pelagic tunicates called larvaceans. They
create these big mucus houses to collect particulate food and when they're
discarded they become big balls of snot which as it turns out is very important
to cycling nutrients into the deeper parts of the ocean since they sink much
faster than individual particles. By the way, "Marine Snow" is also called "Sea
Snot" sometimes. 

Then there's "Fucus Mucus" (it rhymes - a.k.a. rock weed) which is a very
common brown alga in the mid-tide zone. In the reproductive stage the tips of
the fronds become swollen and bumpy (this contains the gametes) and if you
squeeze this a muscusy sustance comes out that is thought to have a variety of
medicinal powers....kind of the aloe vera of the ocean. In the field, the way
you tell the difference between Fucus and other genera of the same family is
whether or not it has a mid-rib on the fronds...and as you can imagine,
debating over whether or not this mucusy alga is ribbed or not ribbed is always
good for some levity :-)

One of my favorite common names is "Dead Man's Fingers" (Codium fragile) which
is a spongy to the touch green alga that used to be used for packing material.
A healthy specimen is pleasant enough but if you ever see this stuff half
decomposed and bleached a bit with parts peeling off (which seems to happen
quite often), you'll understand where it gets its gruesome name.

Then the common names of "barnacle" and "Barnacle Goose" is kind of funny if
you know the history....probably other OBOLers like Dan Gleason could add a lot
to this....but basically in the middle ages when people believed in spontaneous
generation, it was thought that barnacle geese spontaneously arose from wood in
the ocean (like rotting ship hulls)....the "feathery" feeding appendages of
gooseneck barnacles were the feathers of minature geese.

You gotta love this one. There's a relatively new genus of marine gastropods
from the Indo-pacific region called "Ittibittium" which was split from the much
older genus "Bittium"...the species of which are smaller than those placed in
Bittium. Gastropod taxonomy involves hours upon hours of tedious scope work
which can easily erupt into bouts of silliness.

As for fake porn...you'd have to be a complete prude and lack all imagination
not think of interesting names for the interesting body plans found in the
invertebrate world. My personal favorite has to be the "penis worms" :-) the
common name officially applied to the Phylum Priapulida named after a Greek god
with an exceptionally large penis thought to scare away criminals and harmful
animals (evidently big ones weren't always in vogue) - but the phylum name
actually means little penis worms. Not many people have seen these as they are
an anachronistic taxon living these days in polar regions and in very deep
water at lower latitudes but were once very abundant in Burgess Shale of the
Cambrian....Stephen Jay Gould once asked if the evolutionary tape of life were
rewound and played again would we end up with an ocean full of penis
worms...hey, he got my attention :-) There's another invertebrate phylum that
is much more common called "peanut worms" a.k.a. Echiurans....members of this
phylum are often unofficially called "penis worms" too (the term "peanut worm"
is because sometimes when the animals moves in a certain way you get bulges on
both ends....but then sometimes there is just a bulge on one end)...so
perfectly described that I've seen many a blushed face and heard many a giggle
while observing these....it's just one of those animals that you never ever
forget once you've seen it wiggling around. I just googled them to see if I
could find a good image but static photos just doesn't do them justice...the
living MOVING animal with its extensible proboscis conjures the comparison much
better :-) The best image I could find in my quick search is:

http://www.teara.govt.nz/EarthSeaAndSky/SeaLife/MarineAnimalsWithoutBackbones/3/ENZ-Resources/Standard/4/en

Now I'm blushing,

Cindy Ashy


 
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