139 points

Lobsters have urine nozzles under their eyes, and pee in each other’s faces to communicate.

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89 points

subscribe

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89 points
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Lobsters have olfactory sensory neurons, located in the aesthetasc sensilla on their antennules, which allow them to detect the pheromones in the urine of other lobsters.

A dominant male lobster will pee to signal his dominance and deter other males from his territory. Females may also pee to signal their readiness for mating, and the urine of a dominant male can attract females.

Lobsters also communicate through touch and by using their claws, but no one really gives a fuck after reading about the pee thing.

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40 points

Tl;dr lobsters have a major piss fetish

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5 points

Im interested in the claw communication! How does that work?

Also, the pee stuff is hilarious

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27 points

I’ve seen them on the bus I think.

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8 points

Is there any other way to communicate? Peeing in someone’s face is a very effective way to send a message.

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91 points

When a whale dies and its corpse falls to the bottom of the ocean, entire ecosystems rapidly develop around eating every part of it due to how scarce resources are in the deep ocean. This phenomenon is called a β€œwhale fall” and it’s a major source of energy for deep ocean ecosystems.

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32 points

Whale whale whale, what do we have here? - deep ocean crabs

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7 points

Life is worth living today thanks to this comment

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14 points

Sometimes I wonder if a shipping container full of billionaires would have a similar effect.

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6 points

We have to find out. We need to try it immediately to see what happens. That’s just basic science

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3 points

Or a submarine.

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3 points

That seems like a waste of a perfectly good shipping container.

Why don’t we just use environmentally friendly hemp ropes and locally sourced boulders?

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4 points

Locally sourcing boulders over the Marianas Trench is going to be such a pain. I’m pretty sure the environmental benefits will outweigh importing some nice basalt from Hawaii before we leave out.

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74 points

There are lakes in the ocean called brine lakes/pools. Brine is essentially concentrated saltwater; its high salinity means it’s denser than water. On rare occasions, brine doesn’t mix enough with the existing saltwater around it, sinking to the bottom of the ocean and forming these lakes. The lake itself is usually devoid of life; brine itself is so salty that animals go into toxic shock if exposed for too long. However, the edges usually are full of life, where usually things like mussels and other extremophile organisms thrive.

Side note, subnautica’s lost river is based off of this. No big leviathans in real life though, at least none observed yet…

Video for fun: https://youtu.be/ZwuVpNYrKPY

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16 points

Similarly, SpongeBobs Goo Lagoon is a brine pool.

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20 points
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It was never stated but I always assumed the β€œgoo” referred to industrial waste. But SpongeBob creator Steve Hillenburg was an actual marine biologist and would have been well aware of brine pools, so that’s probably right.

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8 points

Brine can be from industrial waste

Technically, brine just means a high concentration of salt in a fluid. It doesn’t necessarily have to be sodium chloride like we know, it can be other salts, like calcium chloride. Though the most common case for industrial brine is just desalination plants, other industries can still create brine, like mining/oil drilling. It also depends on how it’s released. Large amounts dumped at once is the reason for manmade brine pools.

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4 points

Amazing

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2 points

Wow, I had no idea these were a thing… and it’s so funky how the surface of the brine pool interacts with the surrounding seawater!

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71 points

There are entire levels of the ocean where ecosystem is fed on the slow sinking of dying animals.

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10 points

Cycle of life is pretty badass.

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60 points

Greenland sharks are pretty amazing

They can grow up to 24 feet putting them at the same giant scale as great whites and basking sharks, but most are usually closer to 5 meters long

They can live for hundreds of years due to extremely slow metabolism and ambush feeding, some individuals found around 400 years old are as old as the Jamestown colony, Don Quixote, and the discovery of logarithms.

They are opportunistic feeders and have been found with polar bear and reindeer in their digestive systems, and can pull/vacuum in water to catch their primary prey of fish, eels, and other sharks.

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57 points

24 feet ~ 7.3m

5m ~ 16’5”

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7 points
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6 points

…i was going to say 16 β…” feet based on 1 Β½ meters being about 5 feet, pretty close…

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31 points
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Back to the horrors of the deep…

They also commonly have eye parasites that severely impairs their vision or blinds them called Ommatokoita elongata.

So they get to live long with multiple generations of parasites stuck in their eyes they can’t get out.

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14 points
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Be me

young shark, ready to make my mark on the world

Find a book falling from the sky called Don Quixote

eh_mid.jpg

Ignore humans for a few hundred years, eat some fish instead

Find out it’s become a core component of their identity and everyone knows about it

Even had a ballet about it

wtf

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4 points

Don Quixote is actually an awesome book, you should definitely read or listen to it. Give it a bit to get rolling, and you will absolutely be doubled over with laughter

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11 points

So 5 meter long sharks with 24 feet? That sounds terrifying. How far up the beach can they run?

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8 points

feet … meters

Oh, please.

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1 point

Are they the ones where you have to ferment the flesh or it is toxic? Or wasn’t that a shark?

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