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Image permission: Doing it right

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Whether you’re putting together a permanent exhibit or a last-minute powerpoint, it’s all but inevitable that you’ll encounter a point at which the most sensible option is to use material that someone else created. This is more frequently the case with images since they’re usually harder to recreate yourself. And in the age of Google Images and instant screenshots, there’s almost nothing in practical terms that can stop you from using any picture you want. Here at Talk Science however, we recommend being careful with your media usage—and we negotiate image permission for many of our clients.

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The face of an orange cat sleeping.

This just in: Twitter users like cats (#MyParasite poll)

A couple of days ago we posted the first of a series we’re going to call “treasures”: stories about random things in science that we think are beautiful, surprising, amazing or just plain cool. They’re going to be paired with the little circular image icons on our homepage, which we’ll begin rotating, so over time visitors to our site will see a changing set of discoveries. Tuesday’s treasure was the tongue-eating sea louse, a parasitic crustacean that lives inside the mouths of fish—and does exactly what its name says.

Read More »This just in: Twitter users like cats (#MyParasite poll)
Cymothoa exigua inside its host. Photo © Matthew R. Gilligan, Ph.D.

Treasures: The tongue-eating sea louse

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One of the things I love about science is the appreciation it can inspire for things I might otherwise consider horrifying, or just gross. One great example of this is Cymothoa exigua, also known as the tongue-eating sea louse. I should mention that the animal in question doesn’t necessarily “eat” the host’s tongue in the conventional sense: It latches on and consumes blood and mucus until the tongue completely shrivels up. Then the isopod crustacean stays right where it is and switches to just grabbing part of whatever the fish eats and slowly growing larger, before eventually detaching and swimming away. A few things about this before we go back to the whole wonder and fascination part…

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