🚿(under)water

Though people often talk about Asian carp as if it were a single species, the term is a catchall for four fish. All four are native to China, where they’re referred to collectively as 四大家鱼, a phrase that translates into English roughly as the “four famous domestic fishes.” The Chinese raise the famous four together in ponds and have been doing so

We came from the ocean, and we only survive by carrying salt water with us all our lives—in our blood, in our cells. The sea is our true home. This is why we find the shore so calming: we stand where the waves break, like exiles returning home. —Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

An animal that can change itself to match its surroundings, just by contracting its skin? That can weigh as many stone as a man and stretch the length of a carriage, and yet fold its body through a crevice? Whose brain is wrapped about its throat—a brain no larger than a pea—but who is clever enough to play actual games? An animal with this much