You really think I'd get a tattoo without researching it? shakes fist at you Yes of course I know this! You know that they find each other - well the males find the females - because they have absurdly advanced olfactory organs, and they literally smell their way to the female? I think what I find most cool about their mating process is that they fuse together on a - I think it is - molecullar level and share bloodstreams. It seems very Platonian to me. People have pointed out that it's also possible to interpret that I see males as parasites, but it's more like - man, that's something real and true. Whoever talks about penguins mating for life don't have SHIT on the anglerfish. Ah-ha! I shall read about the whiptail! There are so many things i find cool about cuttlefish. I wrote a poem about them recently (kind of about them). They start seeing before they hatch out of the egg. How weird would that be? Moreover, they - like the octopus - can camoflague themselves to their surroundings, but they are colorblind. So whatever they use to camoflague is some other sense that scientists haven't been able to figure out yet. The sea is full of fascinating, awesome, weird creatures. And again, part of what attracts me to the anglerfish is the fact that they are so conventionally "ugly." In a world where we often judge everything based off their appearance I am drawn to ugly things. Perhaps my tattoo is a warning to the predatory male :) Perhaps it is a symbol of how I feel inside. (Perhaps these are reading deep.) I agree that the bioluminscense is yet another fascinating factor about anglerfish. I also like to read about the honeybadger.
Last year I met a writer named Sy Montgomery on a flight to Chicago. She was on her way to Washington to do research on octopus mating behaviors. She's a great conversationalist and we talked about all kinds of things, particularly animals (which she primarily writes about). Anyway, she told me a bit about octopus intelligence and how they've been observed using tools and even building rudimentary structures, like entryways to crevices and little caves to protect themselves from predators. They're pretty damn cool. Here's something she wrote about octopuses (it's not cuttlefish, but same family)
I was just thinking that. But then, I've eaten dogs and I've eaten pigs and I've had both as pets. I wouldn't willingly eat my dog (or dog in general, again) or my pig (and I abstained from pork for a whole month, just to be on the safe side) or I guess my octopus (if I ever own one, unlikely as that may be). But yeah, eating intelligent animals is uncool, though not as uncool as a lot of other "acceptable" human behaviors.
Haha. Sorry. I should know better. You just strike me as the fiercely independent type. But I suppose everyone wants someone to stand by them for life. Anglerfish are a great example of how in the majority of species it's the female that is the strong, large, aggressive sex. We have a misconception of what it is to be a female, because among mammals (whose total species aren't very many--5,500 or so--while there are some 200,000 varieties of beetles, for example) males are so dominant. I wish this (well, biology and science, generally, for that matter) were taught more in school :/You really think I'd get a tattoo without researching it?
I cannot deny fiercely independent :) not in any way. But I would stop short of calling males parasites, which is where many go with that metaphor. I love many members of the fairer sex. Haha. Sometimes I feel like KB but the opposite, when he talked about how he realized he just loved women, as a gender/personality/whatever, and wanted to surround himself with beautiful, intelligent, clever women for his whole life. I don't love all men but there are some I greatly, greatly value. So really all I shy away from in the anglerfish parallels/metaphor is demoting men to mere parasites or leeches. I am not so radfemmy as all that.