Wildlife Wednesday - sea cucumbers

Sea cucumbers are one of the weirdest things underwater - well, I think so anyway! They are many and varied types of them, but they all are kind of slug-like (or in the case of this photo, it could do for a Friday post!)

Sea cucumbers are echinoderms, related to sea urchins, sea stars, brittle stars and feather stars. They have spiny skin, although sometimes the spines are small and unobtrusive. The spines help them move along the sand, acting like crampons when climbing in snow.

They eat by filtering sand through their mouths as they move, extracting any nutrients. Kind of doing a similar job in the ocean to that of earthworms in the soil.

The Australian Museum only has information on one sea cucumber, the Snot Sea Cucumber!! It's not one of the ones I saw, but you can find the information here. National Geographic have some information here.

On the National Geographic webpage, I particularly like this bit - When threatened, some sea cucumbers discharge sticky threads to ensnare their enemies. Others can mutilate their own bodies as a defense mechanism. They violently contract their muscles and jettison some of their internal organs out of their anus. The missing body parts are quickly regenerated.

Sea cucumbers bred sexually and asexually. The most usual is sexual where a large group of sea cucumbers release eggs and sperm into the water and when they meet, fertilisation happens. Romantic, hey? ;)

Sea cucumbers can be eaten and have been for centuries in China. I can't say I'm keen on trying them...but there are worse things to eat!

This one was moving, can you see the tracks to the left of it?

Photo notes: The two cucumbers in the really green shots were at a deeper depth to the other two shots (maybe 10m deep compared with 4m). It makes a big difference to the lighting of the photo, doesn't it?

Sunday Story - The Traveling Man

Happy Father's Day! 

This week I read The Traveling Man by Jane Harvey-Berrick, closely followed (okay, immediately followed by, even if it was 2 am) The Traveling Woman. Generally I'm pissed off when a book leaves me on a cliffhanger and it's a 'romance' because I think a romance needs a HEA or HFN ending, not an undecided one...but I don't know if this is marketed as a 'romance'. I think I got it from a Kylie Scott recommendation (I should stop looking at her recommended reads because they always keep me up all night!).

So, anyway, I totally loved The Traveling Man. It starts when the hero and heroine are ten years old. He comes to her town with the traveling carnival. She's a sheltered kid who reads, and for her, the carnival means magic. It's her birthday, so she's allowed to chose what they do, and she picks the circus. No one in her family is very happy about this but she's living a dream and it's gorgeous.

He steals her away from her stiff, controlling parents and shows her the inner workings of the carnival - and a different sort of life. This is the beginning of the most unusual, and beautiful, friendship.

These are fabulous books, with a riveting story about friendship and love. Book 1 has a cliffhanger, but Book 2 made me happy.

His name is Kes, for Kestrel, and that summed up the story for me. It's a story about learning how to fly, how to soar above the norm and find true happiness even if it's in unusual places.

Phallic Friday - penis size

I was worried about what to write on a Friday now that the fetishes are done, but something always seems to pop up :) and today it's penis size. This post is inspired by an article I read on the news website (here).

The article is about a man with an oversized penis and the problems it's caused him. Let me summarise the article so you don't get smut on your computer (Miss Lily) :)

A 52 year old Mexican man has set the record for the world's longest penis. It's 18.9 inches (48.2 cm) long, and the circumference at the tip is 10 inches (25 cm). The previous record was held by a penis with a 34 cm length.

Ah, yep. It comes down to his knees! (And if it was on me, it would rival the length of a maxi dress!!)

As for the girth, I can get both my hands to meet around it, so it's not as large as some heroes' cocks in some romance stories* :) (And if you want to know how I worked that out, I measured and A4 sheet of paper, folded back an inch or so, and then made it a cylinder to see if my hands wrapped around it! LOL Lucky no one sees me at my computer acting these stupid things out! How would I explain that?)

This poor man's penis rivals that of a horse's.

He says in the article that the size of his penis means he cannot get a woman or a job. He cannot work. His penis goes below his knees. He would like to be classified as disabled but that doesn't seem to have happened, or else there's no welfare in Mexico, as he lives in a room his brothers have given him, scavengers for food, and materials.


* In romance novels, regardless of sub-genre, there seems to be a mantra of 'big is best' but sometimes when I'm reading them and the girl's hands don't go around the guy's penis, my eyes get a little watery. Sometimes I even get the giggles. Big dicks don't do it for me, so I've always been amused as to why this phenomenon is so prevalent in romance.

Then I read a few authors' blog posts about this and I sort of could see their argument. Most of them were saying that we're writing fantasy, so why not make that fantasy aspect extend to the cocks that are servicing our heroines. And sure, I can see what they're saying, but don't we owe it to readers to keep it real too? I mean we have safe sex so it's real, shouldn't we have all sized dicks too? Or at least her hands should be able to hold it!

And if you think there was a similar post to this a while back, I found it here, from 2013. I can't believe it was so long ago!

Wildlife Wednesday - butterflies

On my recent holiday to Cairns, as well as diving, we went to the Australian Butterfly Sanctuary at Kuranda (http://www.australianbutterflies.com/)

You know I'm fond of butterflies, so this was rather high on my agenda. There's something magical about a butterfly fluttering on to you and the little drift of air as the wings flutter.

This place has a walk-through butterfly 'aviary' where butterflies can come and land on you - as Mr E found out. He wasn't as excited by it as I was!

But the part I really loved, was the butterfly laboratory. You didn't get to go inside but they had glass viewing areas where you could watch what was happening.

In the laboratory, they sterilise the food for the caterpillars, making sure that there aren't any germs for them to pick up, or predators to eat them. The caterpillars are cared for so that 90% of eggs, hatch and survive to butterflies. In the wild, this percentage was much much lower (although I can't remember it. Maybe 15% or so).

The lifespan of the butterflies was interesting, and I took a photo of that information board so I wouldn't forget it!

The Ulysses Butterfly is my favourite. The bright blue is so completely shocking and vibrant, when you see one you really can't be mistaken. It makes my heart race and my hands go all sweaty...and I know that makes no sense, but the thrill of seeing one is incredible for me.

Ulysses Butterfly

When I was in Cairns in 1988/89, I did a bushwalking trip into the Daintree rainforest and these butterflies were everywhere. They thrilled me then. In those days, I had a film camera (there was no digital) and I was limited in my photo taking. These butterflies just don't seem to stop moving, so I never got a photo of one. My aim was to get a picture here at the butterfly sanctuary, so I'd have one. The thing that shocked me at the sanctuary was that when a Ulysses rests, it's wings fold above its body and there is no blue. I couldn't even tell that it was a Ulysses. They didn't rest for long, but they could have been sitting somewhere next to me, and I'd never know! Cheeky things :)

This is some of the stuff I learned in the laboratory (I bought a sheet so I'd remember!) -

• Female lay eggs on host plants and different species have different host plants
• there can be up to 300 eggs laid
• when the eggs hatch, they become caterpillars that devour the host plant
• when the caterpillar reaches a certain age and size, it stops eating and pupates (the age and size differs for each species)
• when all the changes from a caterpillar to a butterfly have happened (inside the pupae case), a crumpled butterfly emerges. It takes a few minutes for the butterfly to get its juices flowing into the wings and pump them wildly
• then the butterfly goes off to find a mate, and start the cycle over again.

Maybe a Red Lacewing

At the butterfly sanctuary, they had a small aviary for newly emerged butterflies. They remained in there for a few hours before being released into the large aviary, where they could find their mate.

It was a fascinating place. I think I could have spent hours there...maybe even asked them for work!

I could imagine spending all day marveling over butterflies - but maybe my fascination would wear off in a few hours :)