montereybayaquarium:A solitary female copepod, about the size of this comma right here , rests for a
montereybayaquarium:A solitary female copepod, about the size of this comma right here , rests for a moment with her twin egg cases on the Martian surface of an anemone.We live life at human scale—because, well, yeah. But at night the stars remind us of the vast universe beyond Spaceship Earth. And, we’re something’s giants too, leviathans to the microcosmos, galactic shadows in the heavens above an expecting copepod and her anemone.Famed biologist Ed Ricketts and his merry band of collectors often recited the following rhyme, thinking of their time exploring the tide pools of Monterey Bay:“Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so, ad infinitum.And the great fleas, themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.”- “Siphonaptera,” Augustus De Morgan, 1915 -- source link
#ocean chat#plankton#poetry