Fans of Awesomeness, We Give You the Disco Clam

Oh, glorious disco clam, most awesome of shellfish, how bright your disco lights flash down deep in the sea. The disco clam may well be the most fabulous clam in all the wide world. Don't take our word for it, though. The disco clam does its thing to scare off predators, like the previously posted awesome mantis shrimp. Add to this horrifying flashing the fact that the disco clam's tentacles are dosed with sulpheric acid, and you can see why even the mighty mantis shrimp takes pause. Check out this fight, and whatever follows between a mantis shrimp and a disco clam. Awesome.

Fans of Awesomeness, Behold The Goblin Shark

Today we're thinking about a weird and interesting animal. This animal, as you may have surmised from the title of this post, is the goblin shark. The goblin shark lives deep in the ocean and is only rarely seen by humans. They are slow swimmers and are thought to hunt by ambushing other critters on the sea floor. They're also, as you can see in the above video, pretty weird and even scary looking. Don't worry, though, as you're unlikely to run into a goblin shark during your next day at the beach. They live in all of the major oceans of the world, but are rarely even caught by fishermen. They are such ancient creatures that they are sometimes referred to as "living fossils." We know a few other living fossils, but their Members Only jackets are wearing thin these days, so they don't get out as much as they used to.

Fans of Awesomeness: Behold the Blue Dragon

It eats the deadly poisonous Man of War. It stores the venom. It's hermaphroditic and tiny and really beautiful. This is one cool animal.

Fans of Awesomeness, We Introduce the Mantis Shrimp

Now, don't let this little guy (or gal's) appearance fool you. Peacock mantis shrimp are pretty bad ass. I intend to post another video of one doing battle with several other marine animals just to give you a sense of how honey badger these things can be, but first let's see what Wikipedia says on the subject:

This mantis shrimp is a smasher, with club shaped raptorial appendages.[1] An active hunter, it prefers gastropods, crustaceans, and bivalves,[1] and will repeatedly smash its prey until it can gain access to the soft tissue for consumption. It is reported to have a "punch" of over 50 miles per hour (80 km/h). This is the fastest recorded punch of any living animal. The acceleration is that of a .22 caliber handgun, with a force created of 200 pounds per strike. In addition, the surface of its appendages is made up of extremely dense hydroxyapatite, layered in a manner which is highly resistant to fracturing. Glass aquaria can be broken by them. The composition is being investigated for potential synthesis and engineering use.[4][5]

It goes on to say that they are usually kept in solitary environments because they will eat the other inhabitants of their aquarium. This might give you an idea how much the mantis shrimp don't care about any other crustacean. It just takes what it wants:

Fans of Awesomeness: We Give You the Antlion

With much thanks to Andy for the enlightenment on this fabulous creature. The antlions are really pretty great. Read about them here.

Fans of Awsomeness Observe the Vampire Squid

From the Wikipedia entry on Vampire Squid:

The Vampire Squid is almost entirely covered in light-producing organs called photophores. The animal has great control over the organs, capable of producing disorienting flashes of light for fractions of a second to several minutes in duration. The intensity and size of the photophores can also be modulated. Appearing as small white discs, the photophores are larger and more complex at the tips of the arms and at the base of the two fins, but are absent from the underside of the caped arms. Two larger white areas on top of the head were initially believed to also be photophores, but have turned out to be photoreceptors...

Like many deep-sea cephalopods, Vampire Squid lack ink sacs. If threatened, instead of ink, a sticky cloud of bioluminescent mucus containing innumerable orbs of blue light is ejected from the arm tips. This luminous barrage, which may last nearly 10 minutes, is presumably meant to daze would-be predators and allow the Vampire Squid to disappear into the blackness without the need to swim far. The display is made only if the animal is very agitated; regenerating the mucus is costly from a metabolic point of view.

They spit glowing orbs of blue light when attacked. Try to tell me you're not jealous of that superpower. That's pretty darned awesome. There's actually quite a bit more awesomeness in the article I linked to, but that was my favorite fact about the Vampire Squid.

Vampyroteuthis in low light glowing

Still Awesome: the Pseudoscorpion

There's even an Oregon pseudoscorpion that makes an appearance in this excellent video about a really interesting creature.