Haeckel's medusae come to life

[eub]

Generative models of animated medusae in a beautifully-drawn style.

Comments

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I'm just reading a book that is heavily influenced by/discussing Haeckel, as it happens.

[eub.livejournal.com]

Hey, did you see that Haeckel movie, Proteus? I am so bad at getting around to seeing movies, but I imagine this should be beautiful.

[eub.livejournal.com]

(What I meant to ask before my tangent to it ate my comment: what book?)

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I didn't even know it existed!

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

"metamorphosis" by frank ryan. It's seriously one of the most amazing books I've read in years. It's written in a thriller/detective manner, and sensationalistic, but it's about the history of research into metamorphosis, from the obvious caterpiller/butterfly through the less obvious but much weirder motile/sessile forms of marine invertebrates, to some discussion of puberty. But the part that makes it amazing is the discussion of how metamorphosis started, esp. in the marine environment: at least one guy is claiming massive horizontal gene transfer a la Barbara McClintock, where external fertilization has gone awry and sperm from one *phylum* is semi-successfully fertilizing eggs from another phylum, leading to bizarre cross-breeds that have a larval form and an adult form that are almost totally different.

[eub.livejournal.com]

Ooh. I would love to know more both about cool examples of metamorphosis (starfish larvae bilaterally symmetric and wacky homeobox tricks!) and theory on why creatures *do* that. And, um, is the cross-phylum thing made plausible?

Crossing fingers, does the book have good footnotes to the literature?