did youknow capybaras hatch from tangerines and they re called capybabys pretty cool huh

im being serious every time you reblog this a hostage dies

lalallalalalalalal *frolicking* 

omgg lalalalyayyayayyy *chases you*

I think I stumbled upon some kind of ichthyological forbidden knowledge. Opened up a book of names that were never meant to be read.

You've probably heard of "can-opener smoothdream", right? It's practically a meme by now.

But the thing is, it's a deep-sea fish. And deep-sea fish have historically not had English names because nobody drops them into the conversation over a hot cuppa. Sure, there's generic stuff like hatchetfish and barreleye, but when you want to refer to the actual fish you're probably saying such euphonious phrases as Diretmus argenteus, Sternoptyx diaphana, or maybe even Opisthoproctus soleatus.

So whence "can-opener smoothdream"? Certainly no non-ichthyologist has ever used that name. It's not even a direct translation of the scientific name Chaenophryne longiceps - that would be "long-headed gape-toad". Which to me is even cooler than "can-opener smoothdream".

But I digress. The "dream" bit comes from the anglerfish family Oneirodidae, from oneiros, "dream", because those marvelous fishes look like they came out of a dream (Pietsch, 2009).

Note that Pietsch (2009), more or less the anglerfish bible, uses English names at the genus level only. So Chaenophryne is the smoothhead dreamers genus but no mention is made of "can-opener smoothdreams". So no luck there.

Wikipedia, root cause of a lot of misinformation, has this to say.

"Longhead dreamer" is a far more accurate name. And in fact, despite Wikipedia prioritizing "can-opener smoothdream" (because it's funny?), the links listed use "longhead dreamer" and "smoothhead dreamer" as the name and "can-opener smoothdream" as an alternative.

So. Again. Where did "can-opener smoothdream" come from?

The answer, as it turns out, lies with McAllister (1990).

In the book A List of the Fishes of Canada, ichthyologist D. E. McAllister sought out to list every single fish known to Canadian waters, providing both an English and a French name.

And when there wasn't an English name, like for most deep-sea fishes, he arbitrarily gave them a name. And his names "differ in many instances from the widely accepted names" (Holm, 1998)

This had varying results. This is his name for one of the netdevil anglerfishes.

The humpback anglerfish or blackdevil anglerfish becomes a werewolf (????).

This one is just confusing.

The white-spotted lanternfish or Rafinesque's lanternfish instead becomes...

And most embarrassingly, the Mediterranean spiderfish gets saddled with something that "violates the tenet of good taste" (Holm, 1998).

This then is the original source of "can-opener smoothdream". It was invented by an ichthyologist in 1990, and has seen little to no use outside of how bizarre the name is.

Maybe McAllister's goofier names will catch on. Who knows? They certainly aren't very popular in the scientific community though.

References

Holm, E. (1998) Encyclopedia of Canadian Fishes (review). The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 112, p. 174-175.

McAllister, D. E. (1990) A List of the Fishes of Canada. National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa.

Pietsch, T. W. (2009) Oceanic Anglerfishes: Extraordinary Diversity in the Deep Sea. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Not to be a hopeless romantic, but was anyone going to tell us that 2023 was the year scientists were able to visualize quantum-entangled particles for the first time and they literally look like yin and yang??

Full article published in Nature Photonics here, though I read a lay reader friendly explanation here!

straigt up one marvle they are smaller and less harmful than a bowler ball.

Finally got a clear shot of noonoo carrying her spring, it's her favourite toy

post nut clarity does not properly convey the gravity of the pre nut insanity. like truly.

new best hello street cat character

it's really cool how you can dedicate 20 years of your life to serving the US state dept and get murdered by a cop in one of their colonies and your government won't even mention that to avoid making the colony look bad

lying to myself that i’m enjoying this nondairy ice cream as if it doesn’t feel like i’m eating frozen sugar water

idk what i did for god to punish me by making me become lactose intolerant after spending my entire life living off dairy products but it must have been really bad

Gonna scream oh my Gd

coroners baffled as oj's body refuses to fit in the coffin, even though they're sure they got the right size

I cant do this anymore

how i feel when someone reblogs my stuff with a really really nice tag

Honestly we need a feminist movement again. I get that twerfs soured a lot of people on it but transfeminists are still developing illuminating and vital theory and I think it's time we all get behind that. It's the only antidote to the men's rights movement wave going on especially in LGBT spaces (for lack of a better term)

y'all are so unserious...the text is "even nonbinary and other marginalized ppl are not excused from checking their misogyny" and ur not gonna engage with that bc of a light in-community joke abt the way nonbinary people name themselves...okay