Incredible New Photographs of Live Coelacanths

zapyon writes "German magazine Spiegel Online has just put some incredible photographs of coelacanths on their site. The article is pointing to the current German edition of National Geographic."

Comments

And this is news because...?

[Fallen Kell]

Just wondering why this is news. Coelacanths were discovered to still be living in ~1938. Having photos isn't new, as they had live specimens (and dead ones). There were even 2 species found, not just one.

Re:And this is news because...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because a picture of a cool fish is more interesting than what the result of the IT industry Poll for the presidential election?

Re:And this is news because...?

[beckett]

Just wondering why this is news. Coelacanths were discovered to still be living in ~1938. Having photos isn't new, as they had live specimens (and dead ones). There were even 2 species found, not just one.

Google for coelacanth pics and it's almost all dead, preserved specimens. This article is news because despite the dead samples in hand (n.b. no live specimens exist in captivity), little is known about the behaviour of the living coelacanth; encountering one at human-diveable depths is an event in itself. This article is not saying it's the first specimen found; it is basically the best in situ photo ever taken of a living coelacanth.

Re:And this is news because...?

[amicusNYCL]

This is news because dinofish.com needed a link to their site on Slashdot.

Re:And this is news because...?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because they used a non Wikipedian link to provide a reference about something... SHAZAM!!!

Re:And this is news because...?

[turkeyfish]

Yes, but photos and detailed information regarding their behavior in the wild remain extremely rare.

Re:And this is news because...?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that webpage was created in ~1938 (well maybe 1998, but close enough in Internet time where the near past is equal to the distant past.)

[Domain created in 1996 and still living at NetSol is impressive.]

Re:And this is news because...?

[rs79]

If you think a Coelacanth picture is so easy to get, go take one.

Sure there's already pictures, and video on YouTube. But for the longest time science had never got it's hands on one, they're still fairly "new" as these things go. And they live very far down. This isn't like scooping a fish out of a river or a lake. And there's none in captivity so you can't just take a picture of one; they're endangered now too from overfishing. Stupid as the flesh is pretty much inedible containing waxes, oil and urea at the very least. Things were different half a billion years ago when they evolved (then stopped).

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070730222707AA2bVkB
"Where can I buy a Coelacanth for my aquarium" (you can't)

http://www.dinofish.com/
All things Coelacanth.

"Many expeditions ,often amidst controversy, have sought out the elusive coelacanth, and an extensive bibliography of published papers has emerged."

These new photos are the best ever taken of the fish. They're quite something.

Two?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's technically plural, but /two/ pics? and a short blurb just advertising that there's more in the Nat Geo.

I like coelacanths, and this shouldn't have been on /.

Re:Two?

[v1]

hey I found a picture of a neat fish! put it on slashdot, yah!

Re:Two?

[turkeyfish]

This is not just a neat fish. You are literally looking at a very distant relative of yourself. A number of bones in the fins of these fishes exhibit homology to the bones in your arms and legs.

Re:Two?

[MagusSlurpy]

I like coelacanths, and this shouldn't have been on /.

Well, the first half of the byline is "News for Nerds." We may be IT-heavy here, but other sciences do show up from time to time.

Re:Two?

[CohibaVancouver]

A number of bones in the fins of these fishes exhibit homology to the bones in your arms and legs.

According to the US Senate, Jesus put them there.

Re:Two?

[hey!]

You are literally looking at a very distant relative of yourself.

Only more charismatic than most of your other relatives.

My bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be honest; the first thing that popped into my head was trilobites. To me, it was a very interesting news day for about 1.8 seconds.

Re:My bad

[ackthpt]

I'll be honest; the first thing that popped into my head was trilobites. To me, it was a very interesting news day for about 1.8 seconds.

Typical attention span for the interwebs these days.

It's not news on Vulcan

[Rogerborg]

Human beings, however, might enjoy simple ape-like wonderment gazing at some modern high quality images of a fish-o-saurus that's said "Fuck you, that's why" to evolution for 65 million years.

Re:It's not news on Vulcan

[Lotana]

Very true.

But they all stay out of stories like this. You can relax here and look at pictures of fascinating fish in peace.

Re:It's not news on Vulcan

[daem0n1x]

Reminds me of a cod fish, but uglier. I wonder if it tastes the same...

Fuck, now I'm hungry.

Re:It's not news on Vulcan

[Martin Blank]

I think I remember reading that when the coelocanth was formally rediscovered, some of the local fishermen seemed surprised. They had occasionally dredged them up in their nets, but always tossed them overboard because they tasted so bad. This site suggests that its oily flesh also acts as a powerful laxative.

Probably best to leave them in the water.

Re:It's not news on Vulcan

[turkeyfish]

Actually, according to John McCosker, who has eaten one, as to be expected they taste a bit like shark, since they retain urea in their body tissues.

Re:It's not news on Vulcan

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention creatures like this should make one wonder....what else is out there? With sats and smartphones, airplanes buzzing around the planet and craft exploring Mars we seem to forget there is still a lot of this planet yet to explore, deep oceans and deep jungles, who knows what is living out there complete unknown to us?

Articles like this are useful if for no other reason than to take us out of our jaded mindset for a few moments to ponder all the different things yet to know, yet to be found, its worth it for that alone IMHO.

Re:It's not news on Vulcan

[rs79]

Shark is excellent eating. Coelacanth not so much, it's not just urea but waxes and oils; eat one and, uh yeah "laxative" is one way of putting it.

Re:It's not news on Vulcan

[Anonymous Coward]

other dirt worshippers

Dirt giveth you food, food giveth you life, life giveth you iPad, iPad giveth you sticky fingers on the go. What's not to worship?

Re:It's not news on Vulcan

[Anonymous Coward]

This is correct. They are culinarily similar to Oilfish. They are somewhat safe for consumption in small quantities.

Re:It's not news on Vulcan

[Anonymous Coward]

Human beings, however, might enjoy simple ape-like wonderment gazing at some modern high quality images of a fish-o-saurus that's said "Fuck you, that's why" to evolution for 65 million years.

I could see this fish giving Charles Darwin the finger, if it bothered to evolve any.

Re:It's not news on Vulcan

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill yourself, you shit-eating retard.

It's photoshopped.

[turkeyfeathers]

You can tell from the pixels.

Re:Darn kids

[Sulphur]

GET OFF MY LAWN.

Coelacanths on your lawn?

Re:Darn kids

[ackthpt]

GET OFF MY LAWN.

Coelacanths on your lawn?

He should turn down his sprinkler.

Fascinating Animals

[O('_')O_Bush]

I've always wondered how Coelacanth survived for so long. Everything about it is primitive. It has a slow metabolism (or at least the ability to make it slow) and more or less rides the currents to its feeding grounds and back. Very different from the high energy, small, modern fish.

As a species, it has basically been in a evolutionary standstill for 400 million years, and current populations have low genetic diversity (which may be a hint as to why).

My best guess is that some mechanism to not mutate much, flesh that isn't good food for many animals (gives humans upset tummies), a robust way of obtaining food (eating anything), and good energy conservation have probably contributed to its durability as a species. But I would think that lots of species have had these attributes, long ago.

It's habits and characteristics are remarkably similar to another living fossil, the Nautilus.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[thegarbz]

They sound remarkably similar to the Great Panda. Another animal which would probably die out on its own regardless of human intervention on this planet.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[qbitslayer]

Coelacanths don't believe in random mutations and evolution. But they're not the only creatures on this planet who refuse to evolve. Many insects have not evolved for hundreds of millions of years. But I'm sure evolutionists have an explanation for that.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure we do. They're either lazy, or stubborn. Why we see the same effects in members of our own species who thanks to modern society don't have to evolve and can additionally breed with impunity until such time as they stifle all evolved members of the species through uncontrolled reproduction.

If only we had some sort of lottery to prevent this....

Re:Fascinating Animals

[squidflakes]

Coelacahths can probably thank that "unremarkable to humans" trait for a lot. The global Nautilus population has declined so rapidly due to fishing and slow breeding and growth cycles that I wouldn't be surprised if they pass in to extinction in the next 100 years or so.

While there are conservation programs in the works, they aren't working with a cute cuddly animal, so funding is sparse to non-existent and a huge portion of the human population in areas where the Nautilus is still somewhat common don't give much of a shit about conservation when a nautilus shell means the difference between feeding your family or going hungry.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[Bowling Moses]

Of course biologists do: coelacanths (and insects, and everything else) are evolving. Over the 360 million years coelacanths have been around there have been countless new mutations and new environmental pressures that have shaped the coelacanths. We know of around a hundred coelacanth species that are grouped into not only multiple genera, but multiple families which we can identify from changes in skeletal structure and which we can use as index fossils. They hit upon a successful basic body form a long time ago but they've been evolving the whole time. The only way a species can't evolve is if it goes extinct.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[DMUTPeregrine]

I wish to state a minor grammar point, though the correct meaning can probably be guessed.
"Regardless" means "without regard to" not "with regard to". "Another animal which would probably die out on its own regardless of human intervention on this planet." means "[It's] another animal which will probably die out on its own on this planet, even if humans intervene." I think you meant "[It's] another animal which would probably die out without human intervention."

Of course I could be wrong about the intended meaning, but it makes sense given the difficulty breeding pandas. That said, human intervention also includes habitat destruction which is a large part of the reason the population has dropped below self-sustaining levels, so I'm not totally sure.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[Anonymous Coward]

It likely has a very stable environment. Natural selection has the competitive exclusion principle, which ensures that no two species occupy the same niche, because one will be ever so slightly more efficient, eventually leading to the extinction of the other. Therefore species either occupy unique niches, or their population levels are in flux.

The reason we have such amazing biodiversity is because we don't live in a stable world. Conditions constantly change, aiding one species or another. Furthermore, every so often, something locally cataclysmic happens, so the dominant species dies off or migrates and re-population occurs with a different initial species mix. Very unstable environments are bad for biodiversity (only the hardiest survive), as are very stable environments. The deep sea is likely very stable, so organisms don't change much (their immune system does obviously, but little else), and their reign may last for a very long time.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[shutdown -p now]

Evolution doesn't care about arbitrary human labels like "primitive". We assign them because we have this strange mental picture of it proceeding from point A (the first living cell) to the clearly and obviously superior point B (us), with every step along that route being "in the right direction", so to speak - but that's just our anthropocentric thinking. Evolution only "cares" about how well an organism can spread its genes around. If you're wondering how Coelacanth survived for so long, why not wonder how other fish did, or any other of the thousands of "primitive" species?

Re:Fascinating Animals

[shutdown -p now]

In truth, there is such a thing as a "local maximum" in evolution - sometimes an organism becomes so well adapted to one particular niche, that it requires a chain of unlikely mutations to get it out of that niche and into something broader where it would have the "incentive" to evolve further. And what with most mutations being harmful or neutral at best (by themselves), they get weeded out by natural selection. Species can get stuck in essentially the same form for a long time if its environment doesn't change. But eventually it always does.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[belmolis]

Coelocanths are Creationists?

Re:Fascinating Animals

[Required Snark]

"The only way a species can't evolve is if it goes extinct."

Finally, a way for Christian fundamentalists to solve their problem with human evolution: human extinction.

I think we are well along on the way to this end point...

Re:Fascinating Animals

[Anonymous Coward]

I parsed it as: they'd be going extinct if humans didn't exist...

Re:Fascinating Animals

[turkeyfish]

Coelacanths have existed for a few hundred million years longer than Pandas. Their rhipidistina relatives gave rise to tetrapods that eventually came to dominate terrestrial environments.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[qbitslayer]

A hundred coelacanth species? So what? Your so-called species are not due to mutations (Darwinian evolution) but to the variety that has always existed within the coelacanth genome. This genomic variety is the reason that one can go from a pair of wolves to chihuahuas without mutations, just breeding. It is a good bet that the coelacanth genome of today is almost identical to the one that existed 400 millions years ago.

The only way a species can't evolve is if it goes extinct.

Aw, come on. That sounds like a religion. The tiny changes in the coelacanth over the hundred of millions of years were not necessary for its survival. It was just minor genetic drift arising from natural breeding and temporary isolation.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[turkeyfish]

Coelacanths are NOT deep sea fishes, as you can tell by the fact that these pictures were taken by divers using SCUBA.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[Fred Ferrigno]

Neutral mutations don't always get weeded out. It's only probabilistic and the odds depend on the population size. Over hundreds of millions of years, practically any sequence of DNA that can change will have changed.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[Anonymous Coward]

Horseshoe crabs are pretty cool, too....

Re:Fascinating Animals

[ZosX]

Why is the crocodile virtually unchanged from ancient times? if you ask me its because they hit upon an evolutionary design that was highly effective and they never had to adapt further. there are plenty of examples of living fossils. just because they don't evolve much because their adaptions make them well suited for their environment is not a flaw in evolution. its is an example of evolution being successful and producing an effective design.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[Bowling Moses]

Yes, there are a hundred coelacanth species, from dozens of genera, from a half dozen families, grouped into at least two suborders fitting into the order Coelacanthiformes. The taxonomic equivalent for dogs is the order Carnivora. Do you really wish to make a claim roughly equivalent to claiming that bears, badgers, and bobcats could all be due to variety existing in the same Carnivora genome? Keep in mind that Carnivora is only a little more than one-tenth the age of Coelacanthiformes, yet genetic basics like chromosome number can be wildly different. Just within family Ursidae the giant panda has 42 chromosomes, the spectacled bear 52, and the grizzly 74. From this comparison then it is a good bet that the coelacanth genomes of today are quite different from what existed 360 million years ago.

You're a bit muddled in your terms. Darwinian evolution is a collection of ideas which in Darwin's time didn't include mutation. He knew that species change over time, he knew that every group of organisms descended from a common ancestor, he knew that species multiplied by splitting into daughter species, he knew that speciation occurs through gradual processes rather than by saltation (sudden emergence of representatives of a new type), and he gave us one of the mechanisms of evolution: natural selection. Darwin didn't know the origin of new genetic information: mutation. In fact the merging of genetics and natural selection into the neo-Darwinian synthesis didn't happen until around 60 years after Darwin died. You're not getting genetic drift right either.

It is completely accurate to say that the only way species don't evolve is if they go extinct. At the most basic level evolution is simply the change in allele frequency in a population over time. Get a mutation, the allele frequency changes. Natural selection kills something off, ignoring clonal populations that's a change in allele frequency. Whether or not a change is necessary for survival is looking at it wrong. After all, other members of the species are getting along just fine without some specific mutation. A better way of looking at it is to ask if the mutation is compatible with survival. Does the mutation result in a nonviable organism? That's bad. Does it do nothing? Fine. Does it give you an advantage under some or all situations? That's good and as a result you might get more offspring and over time produce a large shift in allele frequency. These changes brought about by mutation and selection (and other evolutionary mechanisms) build up over time and new species inevitably result. There's nothing religious about it.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[rs79]

Wild assed guess: massive changes starting in the Devonian finally settled out and it found it's niche; there were no evolutionary pressures to change, so it never did.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[rs79]

Brilliant argument, fimd one species that doesn't evolve; this proves the other 100132 million that obviously did evolve are just a fluke easily explained away by this fish

Comic gold.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[rs79]

"During the daytime, coelacanths rest in caves anywhere from 100–500 meters deep while others migrate to deeper waters.[1][4] By resting in cooler waters (below 120 meters) during the daytime, coelacanths reduce metabolic costs" - Wiki

What do you call "deep".

Re:Fascinating Animals

[MagusSlurpy]

Probably has the chief characteristic of possums and sharks, too: a bitch to kill.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'm sure evolutionists have an explanation for that.

Sounds like you hold your biology teachers to one standard of proof and your pastor to another.

You should give some thought to why that might be, and who benefits from training you not to use the brains God gave you.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[Anonymous Coward]

For most of these "living fossils", when you get into the details you discover that they *have* changed, just not very much. The fossil examples look quite similar in superficial ways but are different enough in anatomy that it is clear they are different species. For example, there are about 6 species of modern Nautilus, and while there are plenty of older nautiloids going back hundreds of millions of years, all of the modern species have relatively recent origins and are distinct from the much more ancient ones. The same is true for the modern coelacanth. The ancient specimens are certainly recognizable as coelacanths with anatomy similar to today, but go back far enough and there are differences, and eventually you get to a time when there are coelacanth-like creatures that are fairly different.

"Living fossils" are not creatures that have not changed, they are creatures that haven't changed much, at least in terms of their morphology. They are not in a "standstill", but are changing relatively slowly. This could be because their anatomy works just fine for the niche they have adopted, so selection acts to stabilize it.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[CohibaVancouver]

Horseshoe crabs are pretty cool, too....

So are nude girls.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[Tablizer]

Crocodiles and Coelacanths have a few things in common: they wait for the food to come to them, or at least use the environment to bring them food or to food. They've mastered patience and metabolic conservation.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[steelfood]

Crocodiles and turtles are just as "stagnant" evolution-wise.

Re:Fascinating Animals

[jc79]

Interesting that you attempt to make this (easily refuted) argument on a science and technology site. The same processes of inquiry, hypothesis formation, testing, refutation, evidence gathering etc etc that led to the invention of semiconductor transistors, laser diodes, optic fibres, LCD displays and such other technologies as you are using to read and post on this site, when applied to biology, have led to the acceptance of speciation by evolution and provided evidence for this from every scale from the geological to the molecular.

If you don't accept evolution as a fact, then you shouldn't believe in the Internet either.

Go on, have a read of George Dyson. Evolutionary processes are as evident in information technology as they are in biology. It's just that the mutation and selection mechanisms are different.

Coela-what?

[stevegee58]

Looks like something a friend had in his aquarium.

Re:Coela-what?

[rs79]

You're probably thinking of a Bichir. There's lots of primative aquarium fish, but they all have fins ad are more recent than this, the Coelacanth has arms and legs with similar bones to ours.

The lumgfish is about the oldest fish kept in aquaria.

Re:Coela-what?

[Smauler]

the Coelacanth has arms and legs with similar bones to ours.

No, it doesn't have arms and legs. None of the Coelacanth's ancestors lived on land, so having arms and legs instead of fins would be a little odd.

Wonder if...

[jbwolfe]

they are becoming more prevalent because of the globally warm oceans. OTOH maybe humans are just finding more places to exploit mother Earth.

Re:Wonder if...

[rs79]

They're on the decline actually. There was zero commercial value in them, now they know scientists want them...

Actual temperature rise which is only in some areas at some time is one degree warmer. 100-500 feet down, where they live, this means nothing.

Great photos, but . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Photo number 4 looks like the fish has been hit by a truck.

That's no Coelacanth!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's no Coelacanth it's a Quastenflosser!

Re:Darn kids

[cyberzephyr]

Ha ha!

Link to Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth

for curious slashdotters that want to know more.

That picture shouts:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Coelacanth? CoelaCAN!" *lulzglomp*

FAKE

[Anonymous Coward]

can't be these types a fish they are said to live at such a low depth that to be that close as some of the photos show they literally blow apart due to the fact there isn't the sea pressure

Re:FAKE

[Sulphur]

can't be these types a fish they are said to live at such a low depth that to be that close as some of the photos show they literally blow apart due to the fact there isn't the sea pressure

They surface and explode, the terrorists.

Re:Of course

[shutdown -p now]

If you'd actually bother to read on how evolution works (starting with the fact that it doesn't have a well-defined goal), you wouldn't be asking such silly questions. You might as well ask things like, "if land animals have evolved from fish, why do we still have fish around?".

(Hint: if you think that evolution means that "humans have evolved from apes", then you don't understand what it's actually about)

The photo...

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like it's smiling to the camera.

NatGeo version is here:

[Anonymous Coward]

(in German, but the pictures tell the story):
http://www.nationalgeographic.de/reportagen/der-quastenflosser-ein-fossil-taucht-auf

Not much additional info in the text, and the photos are actually smaller than in the Spiegel edition, but there are two photos in the NatGeo gallery that der Spiegel doesn't reproduce

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

No, of course I don't. I just happen to listen to all of the yahoo's who keep trying to explain that everything just happened this way, from nothing, to something, to everything. And that this old fish has somehow defied the laws of... oh wait, the truths of... err.. I mean, the best guesses about what they think evolution is or does.... the best theories that anyone can come up with (seeing how none of us were around 400 billion years ago, let alone 400 years ago...)

Astronomically improbable. (But I'm sure you've bothered to look into those statistics, being so well read and all.)

Holy guacamole !!

[Taco Cowboy]

Went to the site, looked at the pics and holy cow !

If you go to wet markets in sea-side towns on the Borneo Islands you can see they sell this type of fish there !

Yes but

[Anonymous Coward]

All living things on the planet are distant relatives, it's just that some are more distant than others

Re:Yes but

[Anonymous Coward]

For a fish, this one is less distant than usual. Better?

Of course, all tetrapods are strange mostly-land-dwelling fish anyway, so I guess having some relatively close relatives among fish isn't much of a surprise. It's still pretty cool to see a fish that has a radius, ulna, and other homologous bones of our own arms and legs.

Irony

[AlexCorn]

Does anyone else appreciate the irony of a fossil fish being presented on what appears to be a fossil web page?

Re:Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

The statistics (Hovind, I'm assuming) are misleading. Natural Selection was never about dice rolling, it's about card counting.