The Joy of (Marine) Sex: in pictures

Today a bunch of Naked Hermit Crabs, Blue Water Volunteers, Chek Jawa guides and other volunteers attended Dr Dan's amazing talk.

Here are some pictures of the talk. I'm going to be slack and wait for Marcus to upload a proper summary of the talk on his budak blog :P
The host of the talk, N. Sivasothi introduces Prof Dan Rittschof of Duke University, affectionately called Dr Dan by the volunteers. Dr Dan has been a tremendous influence on many of the current biologists, ecologists and volunteers in conservation throughout the decades that he has been visiting Singapore.

Dr Dan gave us lots of tips about sharing about all kinds of animals on the shores through engaging stories. And what could be more engaging that food...and of course, sex.

Food is a funny thing.If it wasn't chicken what was it?

Some food may taste good, until we find out what it was!No, these are not long-tailed pigs. And what's the big one? Cultural ideas also influence our taste, literally.

Dr Dan shares about the different kinds of tastes. There are 6 different tastes that we can discern. But we had a hard time coming up with more after we quickly mentioned the first four: bitter, salty, sweet and sour. Was it durian perhaps?
No, it's MSG (aka Umami...no, it's not an insult on parentage) and the lovely taste of deepfried food.

Tastes affect how animals behave. Dr Dan shares his experiences with developing bait for the big Bass.These voracious fishes can eat turtles and even ducks!!

When tastes are combined with smell, we can get really kinky stuff going on.Dr Dan then shares some field and experiemental work with crabs on his shores.These are volunteers working with fiddler crabs. They're doing the 'crab dance', much like whales gather fish by circling. Amazing!

Dr Dan gives a demonstration of how female and male crabs get it together.As he ends the talk, Dr Dan reminds that we are all animals! From there, it's easy to explain how shore animals might go about their business. We really learnt a lot from a most informative and entertaining talk. Thank you Dr Dan!

More posts about the talk
on siva's otterman speaks blog