hooded nudibranchs smell like watermelon
+ fruit flies using bloom filters, ladybug STIs, & short stories about motherhood
Hooded nudibranchs (Melibe leonina) smell like watermelon!1 And not just a hint of a whiff - it’s pretty intense, “like chewing Bubbalicious watermelon gum”!!!
you pull them out of the water to smell them. presumably you’d otherwise just get water up your nose. and maybe drown? since they can live down to like 37 meters
the fruity aroma comes from defensive terpenoid2 secretions produced by the “repugnatorial glands” (can’t make this shit up) (oh but i guess someone must’ve)
like, probably aquariums have some? but i assume they won’t let me just show up and take them out of the tank for a sniff. hi, yeah, just a sec, just gotta get a quick little snuffle in, I promise I’ll put it back! (I really would put it back.)
so pretty! they have the perfect group noun: a bouquet of Melibe sea slugs
you can buy a hooded nudibranch candle. (if you want to.) It’s watermelon scented. It comes from ilovenudis.com. As part of their nudibranch-inspired candles collection. i love every step of this path to the fruit-flavored abyss.
(they’re called hooded nudibranchs because instead of having teeth, they have these big glorious hoods edged in tiny tentacles that they use to gather food up towards their mouth. I want a Melibe leonina hoodie so badly now! I’d have to wear it with the hood up, but I’d get to explain it all the time and I’d be SO HAPPY3)
and while we’re on sniffs - fruit flies use a modified version of Bloom filters to detect novelty of odors, with additional features including “the similarity of an odor to previously experienced odors and the time elapsed since the odor was last experienced.”
Katharina Kepler, was accused of witchcraft in 1615. She appeared at her trial “unfortunately with the assistance of her son Johann Kepler, Mathematici.” (yeah, this was famous astronomer Mr. 3-laws-of-planetary-motion Johannes Kepler’s mom!) She was held for over a year & tortured for a week before he got her acquitted, and died 6 months later.
Ladybugs have a defense mechanism called reflex bleeding where they release an orangish liquid from their leg joints4
also ladybugs can carry an STI that looks like yellow crusty scales on their poor little wing cases (well, it’s really an ectoparasite5), but Senior Curator of Beetles Max Barclay says we can’t catch it from them - “It is a fungus that grows on the exoskeleton and we don't have one of these, and we don't have sex with ladybirds.”
short stories I recently read & enjoyed
My Mother, the Supervillain by Benjamin Blattberg
i was recently reminded6 to reread the v short & v cutting Ponies by Kij Johnson
actually I also liked Tyrtle’s Shark Facts My Grandma Told Me and When Maddie Tells Me She’s Pregnant too and oh geez guess I really oughta go through and read everything else they’ve ever written forever and ever now
This Week by Jackie Jennings
The Haunted Boy by Carson McCullers (via) (“What do we want from our mothers when we are children? Complete submission.” - Zadie Smith)
perfect sentences
“well! that sounds like a high agency play. godspeed.” - girltalk-maxxing in the cult compound
“It’s hard to believe that, in the history of literature, an episode of rimming has ever been presented in such gauzy terms, made quite so desperately sentimental.” - Tom Crewe’s review of The Emperor of Gladness
“Parents just like being fucked by people they know.” - chinese doom scroll
“Find something you love as much as Todd loves circumcision reversal and make it yours.” - Mike Monteiro
“I live for diminishing returns.”8 - Marcin Wichary
“It has to be accepted, because it can never, never be found again over the miles of earth, in all the clusters of bizarre and beautiful flowers in the world.” - Elaine Kraf, I Am Clarence
addenda
whoops, a little while back somehow I managed to discuss Thomas Midgley without telling you where i first learned of him (a much funnier version of the story than mine, really)
i’ve been thinking about this multiple times each and every day for the past week+, no joke
not to be confused with terpenes, which aren’t oxygenated
srsly if you’re willing to make me one or know where I could buy one, PLEASE let me know!
I just learned this from Zabby in Cannibalistic ladybirds that WON'T give you an STI
“(Internet slang, derogatory) Someone (not necessarily an incel) interested in extremely academic and abstract ideas, but having little to no practical skills.” (Wiktionary)
this is the most my-brother-Josh thing I’ve ever read
A watermelon-smelling nudibranch!! What's not to like?!