Underdone Comics

🔊 Sound on for slide 2 🔊
Red Knots are a new hero bird of mine! They migrate incredible distances, from the Arctic down to southern South America.
Along the way, they stop at places like Delaware Bay, where they arrive exhausted and need to bulk up. Their gizzards expand dramatically to help grind the huge number of horseshoe crab eggs they eat before continuing their journey.
Go get ’em, little red knots!

Yeah! Oh yeah! New comic!
Have you heard about the anemone Paracalliactis tsukisome and it’s hermit crab friend Oncopagurus monstrosus? They were discovered licking together in the deep Sea of Japan.
The anemone acts like a shell for the hermit crab. Would you like an alive, poop-eating shell with venomous tentacles on your back?
Let me know in the comments!

💌happy Valentine’s Day, everybody❣️
Be sure to send this to somebody you’d like to nibble on the way a plecko nibbles on algae😘

❤️

A monster hit from the Late Cretaceous.

^ ^
(о´∀`о)

Oh hi there. I’ve been trying to figure out the seagulls. Did you know there is no single species called seagull? They’re all different kinds of gulls. Some of them have black hoods on their heads. I decided to illustrate a bunch of hooded gulls that live in North America. I hope you like them. Should I do the regular gulls next? There’s only like 2 dozen species of gulls in North America. And they all look very similar. It’s kind of nauseating. But I’m trying to figure them out. Hopefully these pictures will help. Oh, 2 books helped me a lot: Understanding Gulls by Kevin Karlson and The Gull Guide by Amar Ayuash. They’re both great at showing how confusing these animals are! And one last thing: to illustrate these birds, I used some brushes from @alwaysbecoloring — they’re really nice and give me the “not made on an electronic device” look that I’ve been trying to find for a long time. Bye for now! #birds #birding #birdwatching #cartoon #comic #nature #science #sciart

🐯wonderful to you🐅

🧠an old brain joke for

Oh we owe so much to the horseshoe crab. I remember seeing them doze their way up the Jersey Shore when I was a kid. They’re harmless, they look angry, and nowadays they have a right to be.

They’ve been scooting along the sand for no less than 440 MILLION YEARS (that’s a while, like pre-dinosaur, pre-permian extinction) and now they’re endangered.

BUT—they’re endangered for a good reason! Their blue, copper-based blood has some chemicals in it that forms oozy walls around bacteria. So in 1970, scientists used it to form LAL, which is a substance that detects bacterial infections around medicines in labs. Before that, people who tested drugs had to inject lab bunnies with their pharmaceuticals to see if anything was contaminated.
Now people harvest about 600,000 horseshoe crabs a year, tap their blood and return them to the sea—some of which actually survive the process!
Because of their sacrificial blood, the IUCN has put these ancient creatures on their list of vulnerable species.

❓⏰What other articles do you think are in the Coastal Times? Let me know in the comments! (I’ll go first).

Keep these comics scuttling along! Get something in the shop or become a patron—links in bio.

Just when you thought I wouldn’t post any posts. Here they are. Do you think the world’s first blockbuster did more harm or good to sharks and marine life?

🌸 fun: What happens when somebody discovers that marine isopods pollinate algae?
It gets a comic, that’s what!

Scientists found that red seaweed, Gracilaria gracilis, gets the help of little crustaceans that attach male gametes, or spermatia to their bodies while feeding around the algae.
The gametes lack flexible flagella to propel themselves through the water—without the isopod “pollination” would be quite difficult for the seaweed.

In return, the little crustacean critters get food and shelter in the algae. Along with a chip on their shoulder from all the attention land pollinators get.

Scientists think this puts animal/plant(ish) relationships back hundreds of millions of years 😯

Here’s a succinct article about it, if you care:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-a-first-tiny-crustaceans-are-found-to-ldquo-pollinate-rdquo-seaweed-like-bees-of-the-sea/?amp=true

Keep these comics from going extinct! Follow or Get something in the shop! Many of the merch that’s sold directly donates to conservation groups like or and others!

everybody!