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since it's topic unspecified, we can post about anything, right?

Have you ever been to the ocean? Isn't it huge? I wonder what's in it. I've seen some of the stuff that lives in there but not all of it.

It is huge and it's full of horrible jellyfish. I got stung by one when I was 10 years old, and have rarely ventured into the ocean since. My sting trauma occurred at the Scottish side of the Atlantic, btw.

I laughed intermittently the entire time while reading this thread.
:. it must be a good thread.

@dalcassian - i live in an island country. ocean surrounds us! I have only seen sand, salt, water, seaweed, logs, fish, starfish, crabs, and unidentifiable floating things in it, though. There are probably more things.

I also enjoy absurdity. The sort that you cannot really verbalise to other people or it doesn't really convey it (ie have to see it yourself and it is silly.).

with the ocean level rising, all we can really hope for is a sponge plague to fix things.

the mental images!

Maybe the scientists can engineer giant sponges that would float around in the ocean like islands..

Jellyfish! I've never seen an alive one in the sea but they have them at newport aquarium in fish tanks. Coelentrata tanks, I should say.

When I was little my family went to Maine (northeast USA) in the summer and the ocean was cold. Then when I was teenager I went to Ireland to practice speaking Gaeilge and the ocean there was really cold too. Then when my second daughter was born i went to fort lauderdale (southeast USA) and the ocean there was actually warm and it didn't hurt to swim in it.

A couple weeks ago I was at Mexico, on the atlantic side, and the ocean there was warm even in February. That's the furthest south I've been to the seaside. The furthest north was Nordkap, in Norway (northern Europe). I didn't swim there but i did get my feet wet.

I like the giant sponge island idea. I'll talk to some marine biologists to see if it's feasible then see what I can do.

Well, since this thread is under General, I expect there to be some expectation to be vaguely relevant to such.

Now that you mention oceans, what I'm wondering is if dolphins can be autistic. They're social creatures, but surely as humans, some of them must have problems with socializing. I wonder what happens to those.

I'd like a stripy one please!

If that's too complicated, then I'd be happy to make do with multi-coloured spots!

that would be funny. especially if they made them in coal powered sponge factories.

my post was referring to natural sea sponges like:


they are creatures that live in oceans

i was being silly.
i have heard about starfish plagues and sea urchin plagues etc, so i thought if there were a worldwide plague of sponges in the oceans, then it would solve the problem of rising sea levels.

the silliest part is thinking that sponges would reduce the volume of water they are in. if you put a sponge in a sink of water, the volume of water in the sink does not change (unless you remove the sponge without squeezing it).

it is something i would say (as if i was serious) at work if someone tried to talk to me about global warming.

i would be amused at their response. they would probably mutter "imbecile" as they walked off.

B9 Wrote:

I think you just solved the problems... now if we could just figure out how to get those sponges onto the Sahara...

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good question. do dolphins have the equivalent of a sylvian fissure? are there records of dolphins whose brains have anomalies in their sylvian fissures? do they exhibit repetitive/fixative behaviour or do they simply not survive due to lack of gregarious behaviour?

i may have used the word gregarious inappropriately?

Finding images of dolphin brains was surprisingly difficult. Best I could do was http://brainmuseum.org/Specimens/cetacea/dolphin/brain/dolphinpanel6.jpg

I don't know what the homologous portions are, but I do see a sulcus that sort-of-kind-of resembles sylvian fissure. But overall I'm not very well versed in brain anatomy, of human nor dolphin. I don't even know what the significance is of this particular fissure.

I'm beginning to think the ones unable to socialize get selected against (ocean can be rather vicious). OTOH, maybe there are some that are just barely able to fake it, and go on to, I dunno, invent tools?

Apparently, isolated dolphins have demonstrated decline in health ("dying of loneliness"), such as Howard and apparently a Pauline in "Nine True Dolphin Stories" (user reviews). I'm not sure what to make of this in the context of dolphins that lack the socializing knack.

Thanks for that! There is a surprisingly small amount of information about what that lateral fissure represents in non-human brains.

Googled [autistic dolphin]. Couldn't count on five hands the number of links to sites that said "dolphin therapy works for autistic kids!". Sigh!

The complete lack of information into animal neuropathy (except perhaps this case study of a brain-lesioned dolphin - google [sylvian fissure dolphin]) led me down another track: google [animals autistic]. Autismvox (not sure how reliable that site is, but it was an interesting article) gave up this: Can animals have autism?

What a fascinating topic. I'm surprised the research is so sparse.

I know..I meant live ones...bio-engineered...but good point..it wouldn't work to reduce the volume of the sea water...