Shirley Hao's blog

The proud mother. Photo: New Zealand Herald

[UPDATE: "Friday Reads" is now moving to Mondays! Look for us at the start of your week.]

Imagine you're a prospective new mum, walking down the street, minding your own business. Maybe you're thinking about which hospital you should deliver your little ones at. Or perhaps which nursery school to enroll them in. When all of a sudden, a fellow pedestrian suddenly decides to help said little ones out of your womb—with their teeth!

Such was an unusual afternoon this week at Auckland's Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter and Underwater World for one school shark (Galeorhinus galeus), who was bit by a Broadnose Sevengill shark. Or, as Kelly Tarlton's curator Andrew Christie put it, "took some of its normal seasonal aggression out on her."

Unbeknownst to the aquarium staff, the school shark was pregnant, and the situation quickly went from horrifying to bizarre for stunned spectators, as four shark pups gleefully slipped out through the sizeable gash in their mother's side and into the wide world of the aquarium tank.

Nomura's jellyfish contemplates curious diver. Photo: CDNN

The jellyfish are coming! The jellyfish are coming! Off the coast of Japan, fishing boats are locked in battle with a veritable armada of jellyfish. They actually sank one boat! Also known as Echizen kurage or Nemopilema nomurai, Nomura’s jellyfish aren’t your garden variety jellyfish, growing 6 feet long and 400 pounds heavy.

The jellyfish are thought to originate in the Yellow Sea, picking up a pound or several hundred as ocean currents propel them towards the Sea of Japan. Hiroshima University Professor Ue Shinichi, a leading jellyfish researcher, told Yomiuri Shimbun:

The arrival is inevitable. A huge jellyfish typhoon will hit the country.

Gastropod meets Leucochloridium paradoxum parasite. The snail's appendages have seen better days. Photo: Thomas Hahmann

When Bugs Go Bad—Really Bad. Talk about uncomfortable relationships: Scientific American brings us up close and personal with several hair-raising tales of parasites in the animal kingdom, including a flatworm that multiplies inside snails. Once the worms are ready to trade up on a host:

"[They] push up into the snail's tentacles, making them swell and squirm, mimicking the action of bugs that birds like to eat. As the snail crawls, blindly, into the sunlight, a passing bird is likely to swoop down to snatch a tasty tentacle or two."

The worms return to terra firma to infect other unsuspecting gastropods courtesy of bird droppings.