Zombie Birds, Astronaut Fish, and Other Weird Animals

by Becky Crew

  “How close?” said Rout Hadley, a suave television broadcaster who was to announce whatever cosmic discoveries the crew made to the people back home. He was the only crew member who could stand talking to the wretched cook, but this was purely because he was a hypernarcissist who needed everyone he ever met to love and admire him and tell everyone they knew as much. “I wasn’t looking.”

  “This close,” repeated Lowy, somewhat impotently, because he hadn’t actually gestured any kind of discernable quantity the first time, and certainly wasn’t quick-witted enough to measure a space between his fins that he thought adequately signified how close they were to never having sausages and mashed potatoes again on command. So he just said “This close” in the hopes of Hadley understanding what he meant.

  “Oh. Then what are you complaining about?” said Hadley, because he didn’t.

  The four-strong killifish crew of the Starship Compromise had been tasked by the astrobiologists at NASA to fly to Enceladus—Saturn’s enigmatic moon—and investigate the possibility of life there. They had lost contact with the NASA astrobiologists about six months ago, to which the NASA astrobiologists responded with moderate levels of disappointment before moving on to their next project. The Starship Compromise crew responded with varying levels of panic, depending on their capacity to comprehend just how screwed they all were.

  Hadley’s level of panic was indifference. Nothing bad would ever happen to someone this good-looking, he reasoned, even if he was stuck in a spaceship that had been circling the same unidentified rocky planet for months because Captain Bsdot had utterly lost his nerve. “At least when we do run out of fuel, we’ll have somewhere to land,” he said before hitting the autopilot switch so he could work his way through the ship’s liquor supply.

  “Say, Lowy,” said Hadley, “would you mind offering your opinion on how I look in a number of suits? I’m polling the crew to see which would be the best for when we first go to air.”

  “Sure, whatever,” said Lowy, just as Captain Bsdot announced over the intercom that they had run out of fuel so were preparing to land on the unidentified rocky planet, where they would all surely die.

  “Ssssshtrap yourshelves in!” he added, before almost killing everyone with a landing that flipped the Starship Compromise around 180 degrees and then back again.

  The sparse, rocky planet that constituted their new home was shaped roughly like a muffin, and was littered with great, dark boulders that made for very convincing chocolate chips. Ashen Peech, the resident engineer and the only female that Hadley hadn’t successfully wooed in his entire life, shoved her space helmet on and opened the ship’s hatch. “What the hell?”

  A crowd of two, maybe three hundred aliens were staring up at Peech, blinking silently, waiting for her to utter the first means of communication between them. “Ahem!” yelled Peech, straining to reach the creatures right at the back, in case any of them were important. “Do you have any rocket fuel?” she continued, “and a GPS that can direct us back to Earth?”

  The aliens, who could only be described as a bunch of raisins with eyes, blinked, and then a relatively large one in the front row stretched the skin where its mouth should be so tight that it broke apart and formed a mouth. “Are you fish?” it yelled back at the Starship Compromise crew.

  “Yesh!” Captain Bsdot decided it was time he took charge of the situation, even if he did feel awfully queasy.

  “We haven’t had fish in a very long time,” said the raisin, to which the crew did not know how to respond, but then agreed when the raisin asked if they would like to be dinner.

  “Have. I think you mean have,” Hadley corrected them, having just emerged from his quarters in his tuxedo.

  “Follow us,” said the head raisin, before letting his mouth grow over into a wonky scar that looked almost like a grin.

  “Well I guess things could be worse,” said Captain Bsdot, taking a swig from his hipflask as he floated aimlessly through the blackness of space. “We could have been dinner.”

  “I wish we were dinner!” said Peech, struggling to stop herself from revolving head over tailfin. “If only Hadley hadn’t tasted so horrible because of that disgusting pond he used to live in on Earth, we’d be out of our misery by now. We were this close!”

  “How close?” said Captain Bsdot.

  “This!” But Captain Bsdot had floated too far away to hear her.

  Sunken Spider’s Bubble Web

  DIVING BELL SPIDER

  (Argyroneta aquatica)

  THE DIVING BELL IS a large device within which a diver can submerge him- or herself underwater and survive off the oxygen trapped inside. It was the earliest form of diving chamber ever invented, based on Aristotle’s descriptions of a “cauldron that retains air” from the fourth century B.C., and was used and improved upon right up until the end of the seventeenth century. But a tiny creature has been using its own version of the diving bell for a whole lot longer than we have, and this one can sustain its occupant underwater for an entire day.

  The diving bell spider is a remarkable species of air-breathing spider that spends virtually its entire life submerged underwater. It is found in freshwater ponds and lakes in northern and central Europe and parts of northern Asia, and is a good swimmer, capable of diving up to 98 feet below the surface. Not only is this species the only spider in the world to live its life under water, is it also one of the very few in which the males are bigger than the females, growing up to 0.7 inches and 0.5 inches long respectively.

  The key to their unusual lifestyle is the net of silk they construct between submerged vegetation, which they then inflate with air bubbles trapped among the fine hairs covering their legs and abdomen. It only takes the diving bell spiders a few trips to the surface to collect enough bubbles to pump its “diving bell” so full of air that it can fit its body inside and sustain itself for hours. The size of the diving bell can range from small—just big enough for the spider to fit its abdomen inside—to large—allowing the spider to move its whole body in and out through the opening at the bottom. The shimmering, silvery appearance of the underwater web is where the name of the diving bell spider’s genus, Argyroneta, comes from, meaning “silver net in the water” in Greek. The diving bell becomes the spider’s home, where it remains for its entire life, laying its cocoon of eggs and hunting tiny aquatic insects and fish from within. But just how the diving bell spider breathes so effectively inside for such an extended period of time was, until very recently, a mystery.

  Biologists Roger Seymour from the University of Adelaide in South Australia and Stefan Hetz from Berlin’s Humboldt University decided to investigate. The pair collected some diving bell spiders from the wild with some difficulty, as this species is becoming increasingly rare in Europe, finally finding some in the Eider River in Germany. They recreated the conditions of a stagnant, weedy pond in the lab for the spiders, and after watching their spiders create their diving bells, they used an oxygen-measuring device called an optode to poke inside.

  By taking a number of oxygen measurements inside the diving bell and surrounding water, Seymour and Hetz were able to calculate how much oxygen was flowing into each diving bell bubble and how much oxygen each spider was consuming. Publishing in the Journal of Experimental Biology in mid-2011, they reported that the underwater bubble could continuously exchange gases with the surrounding water, acting like a gill to provide the spiders with more oxygen from the water than was originally placed inside via the trapped air bubbles. The diving bell was so effective at being a gill that it could extract enough oxygen from the warm, stagnant water created by the researchers to sustain the spiders.

  However, as nitrogen diffuses back into the surrounding water as a part of this process, the diving bell shrinks and must have its oxygen physically replenished. Seymour and Hetz discovered that despite previous studies stating that the diving bell spiders must return to the surface as often as every twenty minutes to renew the oxygen in the bubble, their spiders
could remain submerged in their bubble for more than a day. Not only is this advantageous for the spiders, as frequently leaving their diving bell is likely to attract predators, but it shows just how effectively their bodies are able to metabolize the captured oxygen.

  Spiders’ Club Meeting 4/2

  Present: Evarcha culicivora, Palpimanus Spider, Bagheera kiplingi, black-lace weaver spiderlings, Diving Bell Spider.

  Housekeeping

  Palpimanus Spider addresses buildup of broken chairs. Moves black-lace weaver spiderlings be charged due to excessive rocking. Vote: 4:1. Spiderlings to replace one chair per week. Bagheera kiplingi raises issue of club picnic food. Feels there aren’t enough vegetarian options. Evarcha culicivora says there should be more blood if additional budget is allocated to vegetarian options. Palpimanus Spider feels more edible spiders should be added to picnic budget if more blood and vegetarian options are added. Discussion. Diving Bell Spider moves to keep picnic food as is due to competing interests. Unanimous vote. Diving Bell Spider moves to have pool installed in clubhouse. Vote: 1:4.

  Birthdays

  Nil

  Projects

  Diving Bell Spider says underwater tours still very unpopular. Requests funds for ten sets of scuba gear. Discussion. Request denied. Evarcha culicivora reports malaria project progress is slow, but steady.

  Xmas Party

  Bagheera kiplingi to check on this.

  Line Dancing Lessons

  Opportunities for future Community Involvement Programs discussed. Line dancing lessons nominated. Unanimous vote. We will do this again.

  Meeting adjourned.

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