The ornate cowfish (Aracana ornata), like all cowfish, has a skeleton made of fused bones, essentially trapping it in a barely-flexible box. For this reason, these fish are typically slow movers; however, it does have an advantage: few other fish are able to eat adult cowfish.

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Jewel moray (Muraena lentiginosa)

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Viper Moray (Enchelynassa canina), particularly well known for its fierce set of teeth.

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Chain Moray (Echidna catenata)

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Banded creeping eel (Channomuraena vittata)

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Chitons are mollusks belonging to the class Polyplacophora. They are mostly flattened with eight dorsal, limy plates. This is where they get their class name from. (Polyplacophora means “bearing many plates.”) These plates overlap posteriorly and are typically dull in color to blend in with their surroundings (though this is not always the case). Most chitons rarely grow larger than 5 cm and the largest rarely ever exceed 30 cm. They’re usually found stuck onto rocky surfaces in the intertidal zone, but some have been found at much greater depths. If a chiton gets detached from its rock, it can roll up like an armadillo for protection.

Shown is the mossy chiton (Mopalia muscosa), whose mantle is covered in defensive hairs and bristles.

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I found this shy, magnificent specimen this afternoon when I went out to lay in the sun. I saw him moving from a distance and thought he was a woodchuck due to his size. After I came upon him, he wouldn’t extend his head back out, but seemed amicable enough to allow me to take his picture a few times. I’m pretty sure he was a common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) and a rather large one at that. I assume he was a very slow-moving gentleman because virtually his entire body was covered in one sort of slime or another.

EDIT: I’ve been informed it was probably a lady turtle. Unfortunately, I tend to identify all animals as males unless I know for certain they’re a female, and in this case I was too lazy to keep writing “him/her.”

Common terrestrial pill bug (Armadillidium vulgare)

Contrary to popular belief, pill bugs are not bugs. They are not classified into the class Insecta, and aren’t even in the same subphylum. Pill bugs are crustaceans, specifically isopods, which are more closely related to lobsters and crabs than they are to insects.

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True Facts About the Sea Pig

The bones of Ichthyostega (imagined by an artist in this picture), the most thoroughly studied of all early tetrapods, were first discovered on an east Greenland mountainside in 1897 by Swedish scientists looking for three explorers lost two years earlier during an ill-fated attempt to reach the North Pole by hot-air balloon. Later expeditions by Gunnar Säve-Söderberg uncovered skulls of Ichthyostega but Säve-Söderberg died, at age 38, before he was able to make a thorough study of the skulls. His assistant, Erik Jarvik, picked up where he left off and most of what we know about Ichthyostega (and consequently most early tetrapods) today comes from their combined efforts.

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