Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

A new study shows that coelacanths are long-lived and have the longest gestation period of any known animal.

The previous estimate was a lifespan of 20 years, which this study corrects to a century. The estimated gestation period is five years. The previous record-holder was the frilled shark, with a gestation period of about three and a half years; the mammal with the longest gestation period is the elephant, which carries its young for two years.

These are all estimates based on museum specimens (as was the previous number), but the new values fit better with what's known about other fish that live in similar habitats.

I had Craig stop after he'd finished doing the outlining on the tattoo, and take a couple of photos using cattitude's digital camera. Mostly for my own records, because while there will be plenty of opportunities to take more photos of the completed tattoo, this was the only chance to get a picture of just the outlines.

( cut-tagged to save bandwidth )

Here's the coelacanth, cut-tagged for your convenience ( view more )

I have the coelacanth tattoo.

It is very cool--and that's not just the endorphins talking, the artist and his business partner were saying cool things about it, and he was being enthusiastic while he inked it. There's one more color than I expected: just a bit of orange.

He also said I took it very well: it's on a sensitive spot, and hurt rather more than the previous three.

Afterwards, roadnotes and I walked up to La Lanterna and sat in the garden with tea and sweets and talked. Not much new in either of our lives, but it's good to spend time together. I'd asked her to come with me for dim sum beforehand, so I could be sure of getting a reasonable amount of protein for lunch, and double-check positioning with me. That was because while Craig (the artist) and I had agreed on a placement, I'd forgotten exactly what it was, which left me feeling unsure. He remembered, showed it to me, and she agreed with me that it was good. And it is.

No pictures yet, because I have to keep the tattoo covered a little longer and cattitude wants to see it in the flesh before looking at the photos the artist took for me on the digital camera.

My boss told me to leave work a little early today, so I took the F train to the Lower East Side and walked in to the tattoo parlor. Craig and I spent a little while discussing how long it had been since he'd seen me (we're neither of us great at remembering duration), and I showed him how well his earlier work is holding up, and we discussed tattoo size, placement, and such. I have an appointment for October 1 (a week from Saturday); he estimates it'll be two hours' work. I left behind one sheet of color printout of coelacanths: he's going to use one of the images on that page for shape and the other for color.
He also asked me whether I'd put a picture of the armband on the Web--because someone had emailed him that image a couple of days ago, after he hadn't thought about it in ages.

I'd been contemplating getting two or three coelacanths in the tattoo, but I've spent some time researching coelacanth behavior. It seems that while they congregate in caves during the day, when they're out swimming around and foraging they're solitary. One fish it is, then.

I just heard back from my tattoo artist, who says he is "so COMPLETELY into doing a tattoo of a coelacanth," and says he was looking at the models at Natural History last month.

He's there 12:30-7 Tuesday to Saturday, which means I could stop by and discuss things after work, but will probably need to make a Saturday appointment (or appointments) to actually get the tattoo.

After a slow morning, cattitude and I went down to the Museum of Natural History, just to wander around. (There's a new dinosaur exhibit, but it requires tickets, at an extra charge, and was probably jammed--I'll go on a weekday if possible.) We spent a bunch of time in the Hall of Ocean Life, starting with an exhibit (turn left as you enter, it's the first or second area on the wall) with a coelacanth near the upper right. It's a nice specimen, bluish, and the computerized label/information device has reasonable information about it. Then we looked at the rest of that hall, and I briefly explained what tube worms are to a couple of other visitors, and pointed to the label, which was not visible from the side of that exhibit they weere standing at. On the way out, Cattitude suggested another look at the coelacanth--and I spotted another coelacanth by itself against a different wall.

This one is an Indonesian coelacanth (brown), displayed so I could stand under it and get a good look at its belly, and a better look generally than at the Comoros coelacanth we were examining first. They have nice complex markings.

Thence, we went down to the cafeteria because I needed tea, looked at a few other things, and headed home--I had less energy than I'd hoped or expected, so it's as well we didn't try for the zoo. Cattitude made sure I got a look at the mosaic coelacanth on the subway platform as the A train pulled in.

Also, when I talked to my mother this morning, I briefly told her about coelacanths, and provided the dinofish web link. I think she'd rather I not do this--not because of the specific image, just because it's another tattoo--but she didn't try to talk me out of it, of which I'm glad. (It wouldn't have worked--there are two people, maybe three, who could have talked me out of this image, and they both say it's cool--and I'm glad not to have had an argument over it.)

I've been looking around the Web for coelacanth pictures. These three together might be good to take to my tattoo artist. I still need to decide on location--I like rysmiel's suggestion of low on the left side of my torso, but that would be harder to show people than the tattoos I already have--and whether I want one fish or more than one.
( three fish, with annotations )

My beloved cattitude pointed out that the coelacanth icon I had uploaded earlier--which had the advantage of having been found at that size in an image search--was unrecognizable as such. Hence, I have replaced it with this image.

If I go through with the coelacanth tattoo idea, I may need a color printer, so I can put together some images to take my tattoo artist as a starting point.