Adam Summers

oh myyyy 🥰

Antonio the capybara has grown a lot since I saw him last. He was his usual gregarious self. Snuggled anyone who wanted and put up with my examination of the soles of his feet.

SciPo was a great success, and the readings tonight will be awesome.

#capybara

Antonio the capybara has grown a lot since I saw him last. He was his usual gregarious self. Snuggled anyone who wanted and put up with my examination of the soles of his feet.

SciPo was a great success, and the readings tonight will be awesome.

#capybara

The poets gather under a papier mache sperm whale made from the pages of Moby Dick. The eyes light and the teeth are oysters. Science talks open with Bart Boom and a BIG title.

"Beauty is truth, and truth beauty;
That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Keats - Ode on a Grecian Urn

@karlycohen.bsky.social explains to the poets about teeth on the ratfish tenaculum. With an aside about cat sharks. And fossil sharks.

Me too. Here he is as baby. Now 110 pounds!

Hello Antonio I love you

Oh my word! - where is this??? ❤️

Friday Harbor Labs. Washington State. On the Salish Sea.

A capybara's face.

I don't think any of the poets are on Bluesky...so you all now know tomorrow's surprise guest. Antonio! Billed as the only captive capybara on San Juan Island.

The annual SciPo workshop begins. 80 poets and scientists meet to talk and inspire and scheme. Such great fun.

Left anterolateral view of a harbor seal skull.

Left lateral view of a harbor seal skull.

Right anterolateral view of a harbor seal skull.

Dorsal view of a harbor seal skull.

Well, Tommy (a UW varsity rower) did not disappoint. A week of CT scanning training and an ability to cadge a seal head lead to these outstanding images. Phoca vitulina in all her glory.
🧪🐡

Oh!

Left anterolateral view of a harbor seal skull.

Left lateral view of a harbor seal skull.

Right anterolateral view of a harbor seal skull.

Dorsal view of a harbor seal skull.

Well, Tommy (a UW varsity rower) did not disappoint. A week of CT scanning training and an ability to cadge a seal head lead to these outstanding images. Phoca vitulina in all her glory.
🧪🐡

The students are CT scanning. They managed to cadge a lopped off harbor seal head from the necropsy folks. Tommy was resourceful and he will get splendid data. I'll post the result.

The students are CT scanning. They managed to cadge a lopped off harbor seal head from the necropsy folks. Tommy was resourceful and he will get splendid data. I'll post the result.

Wow! That's more than impressive! Thanks for letting us know. The FHL Fish Biomechanics course is legendary and it's fantastic to know that so many of your graduates were, and have become, contributors to JEB. Please keep them coming 🙂

There might have been, but all I had was the severed head. Very Halloween.

Were there discernible stomach contents?

Head of a sleeper shark

Blue tote bucket with the head of a sleeper shark

A close up of the top and bottom tooth rows of a sleeper shark. The symphysial direction change is clear in the highly oriented lower jaw teeth.

The brain and cranial nerves of a sleeper shark. Very small 15cm x 4cm

That time I dissected a 100kg sleeper shark head with Jose Castro. The teeth are dimorphic between upper and lower jaws. The brain is less than 100g and just 15cm long.

🧪

I'm kind of jealous 😁

I was at a chainsaw dissection of a 300-400 kg bluefin and the brain was smaller than a pea. They are not even pea-brained! Otolith was also tiny.

I did not grind through the skull to get the brain out of this fish, but the whole animal was just 140kg or so...that whole shark would have been over a metric ton. The skeleton of the only Salish Sea bluefin is now in the Burke Museum!

WAaaaay bigger than a bluefin tuna brain.

Here are a couple from your year. The back deck trawling, you are in gray. And, at the same Deadman's field site with Dylan Wainwright and Joe Bizzarro. I think I see Noraida as well.

One of two courses that I can legitimately say shaped my career.

Head of a sleeper shark

Blue tote bucket with the head of a sleeper shark

A close up of the top and bottom tooth rows of a sleeper shark. The symphysial direction change is clear in the highly oriented lower jaw teeth.

The brain and cranial nerves of a sleeper shark. Very small 15cm x 4cm

That time I dissected a 100kg sleeper shark head with Jose Castro. The teeth are dimorphic between upper and lower jaws. The brain is less than 100g and just 15cm long.

🧪

A group of young scientists at Deadman's bay bailing out a tidepool.

In 2001 we ran the FHL Fish Biomechanics course. The same one that will run this coming summer. Here, students and professors are collecting fish for projects. Of the 15 people 10 were or became @biologists.bsky.social JEB authors. What a wonderful group.

Yeah. It was an amazing crew. But honestly, that class has never had a bad year.