Yikes! Somebody found a dead five-to-six hundred pound manta ray, with a wingspan of 11 feet, on a beach in Salem, MA. Apparently it took six guys to haul the thing onto a dock so scientists could poke at it. The picture in the Local 6 News article is sort of disappointing, so here is a better one (link):

Damn, that thing is big! There are some more pictures here. 

Via Local 6 News

Alexis: that toad is big

Via National Geographic

According to this article (San Jose Mercury News) giant "Humboldt" squid are infesting the waters of southern California:

It has probing arms and
tooth-lined tentacles, a raptor-like beak and an insatiable craving for flesh - any kind of flesh, even that of humans. It shows up briefly off California every four or five years, spurred by a warm current or some other anomaly, providing a boon for sportfishing businesses.

But amid this latest influx, to points as far north as Bodega Bay, there is a deepening concern among scientists that Humboldt squid are
entrenching themselves off California, and may expand northward, eating their way through fisheries as they go. The same thing is happening in the Southern Hemisphere, where squid are being blamed for depleting the hake fishery off Chile.

 From National Geographic:

Elusive and cannibalistic, the Humboldt, or jumbo, squid (Dosidicus gigas) has a reputation so fearsome that it has earned the nickname "red devil." […] Known as aggressive predators, Humboldt squid have powerful arms and tentacles, excellent underwater vision and a razor-sharp beak that easily tears through the flesh of their prey. They can also rapidly change their skin color in what appears to be a complex communication system.

Amazing!  

Via San Jose Mercury News

Image is from the First edition (1807) of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne. Via the National Maritime Museum, Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

via Facemakers

From Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials. I loved this book when I was a kid. It was publised in 1979 - I was a fetus - it’s some talented nerds’ depiction of martians from various sci fi books. I like the HP Lovecraft guy from The Mountains of Madness (see above) the most because it’s exactly how I pictured the monsters when I first read the story. The scenes when the explorers are wandering through the ancient city are really amazing, and it’s too bad thy never made any sort of good movie from it, since it’s all so cinematic. In reality, though, the movie would be a bunch of guys in parkas wandering around saying "Wow" in a really expensive set with very little happening.

Furthering the "nerdy science fiction books I liked as a kid" topic is Expedition, also by Barlowe, being a bunch of really nice paintings of martian landscapes. I really loved the bizarro expansiveness of this book. I remember buying it at the weird toy store across the street from the Natural History Museum as a kid, and some of the images really reminded me of the dioramas in the museum:

This one is pretty much cribbed straight from the African wing, but we’ll let that go. Also strange that my favorite images are essentially depictions of space-livestock in their natural habitat, not the more outlandish ones of the crazy flying green elephants carrying stalagtites, or oceans made of Jell-o, etc. The boring ones jst seemed more plausable, I guess.

I think everyone gets a little nerdy for stuff like this. Let’s hear it for really lush weird sci fi paintings!

Barlowe’s website

Gallery of GtE images

A good Barlowe gallery

By the way, THE HOST is one of the awesomest monster movies ever. I’m watching it for the third time now (I got a copy in Chinatown for ten bucks, and a legal copy too - it’s been out in Korea for a while) and it’s still pretty great. We’re about to come to the part where the monster barfs up human remains, so I may not be eating any more cookies tonight, but seriously, giant man-eating fish-monsters get the thumbs-up. Plot schmot I say. Eat more military guys in yellow suits.

Also the Apple movie trailer plot description is pretty stellar:

Gang-du (SONG Kang-ho) works at a food-stand on the banks of the Han River. Dozing on the job, he is awakened by his daughter, Hyun-seo ( KO A-sung), who is angry with him for missing a teacher-parent meeting at school. As Gang-du walks out to the riverbank with a delivery, he notices that a large crowd of people have gathered, taking pictures and talking about something hanging from the Han River Bridge. The otherwise idyllic landscape turns suddenly to bedlam, when a terrifying creature climbs up onto the riverbank and begins to crush and eat people.

That just about sums it up!

GWOEMUL/THE HOST (IMDB)

From our file “People Who Want to Kill Baby Polar Bears” comes this heartwarming tale of a baby polar bear named Knut:

Who, rejected by its mother bear, is being raised by zoo staff in Berlin.

Some activist guy says that because the bear will not ever be sociable with other bears (due to a lot of human contact), it should be euthanized. Probably not going to happen (cuteness, international celebrity, etc.), but a charming prospect nonetheless. This is apparently all very controversial in Europe, where bear-protection laws are serious business. MSNBC ran a short article about it (see below), with some Tsk-Tsking at the wannabe baby-bear-strangler.

My favorite part of the article, however, is this tidy bit of intra-Teuton poo-slinging:

[…]Petra Pau of the opposition Left Party invoked the widely-reported case of an Italian bear dubbed “Bruno” that wandered last year into southern Germany, only to be killed by hunters at the behest of local authorities worried about residents and livestock.

“Berlin is not Bavaria, therefore it will be better for Knut than Bruno,” Pau said.

OH SNAP! Chew on THAT, Bavaria!

Via MSNBC

MORE PUG HERE

So some guys in a boat caught a COLOSSAL SQUID (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) off Antarctica, while it was eating a Patagonian toothfish (which also exists, I guess). Apparently the Colossal Squid is a lot like the Giant Squid, but (according to Wikipedia, always known for accuracy), besides being colassaler,

[u]nlike the giant squid, whose tentacles are equipped with suckers lined with small teeth, the suckers at the tips of the Colossal Squid’s tentacles have sharp swiveling hooks. Its body is wider and stouter, and therefore heavier, than that of the giant squid. Colossal Squids are believed to have a longer mantle than giant squids, although their tentacles are shorter.

Holy CRAP. SHARP SWIVELLING HOOKS? This just replaced the vinegaroon in my nightmares.

Via National Geographic, BBC

Here’s a picture of a Patagonian Toothfish. Delicious.