Welcome to the NOSPINE Homepage!

You made it. Now that you're here, whether you surfed in on a whim or actually searched it out, you've probably got a few questions. Or you're just going to surf out of here before things get too complex. If so, bye! Now, for those who have stuck around...

What does NOSPINE stand for?

NOSPINE stands for "National Organization to Seek out and Promote Invertebrate News Events". The obvious reason I chose the name was for the cool acronym. If you prefer, you can think of NOSPINE as the "Metazoan Diversity Appreciation Society", which is a better name, but makes a lousy acronym. As soon as enough people join to make this a viable society, we can have a vote on the name.

What is NOSPINE?

NOSPINE, put simply, is a society devoted to the concept that non-vertebrate metazoans do not get a fair shake on this planet. Humans, as arrogant vertebrates who think they run the world, spend a lot of time navel-gazing and paying special attention to other vertebrate animals, particularly mammals. This is reasonable. We are interested in things that are like us -- warm, more or less furry, soft (but not too soft) and fairly non-slimy.

Unfortunately, "warm", "furry" and "non-slimy" do not adequately describe most animal life on this planet. Considerably more than 90% of all metazoans (a fancy term for "multicellular animals") on Earth are NOT vertebrates. Most of the non-vertebrates are arthropods, like insects, crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, etc.) and chelicerates (spiders, scorpions, ticks, etc.). Many of the rest are molluscs (snails, clams, squids, etc.) or nematodes. A whole bunch of strange critters that you've probably never heard of, and some that you have heard of, like starfish, sponges and jellyfish, make up the rest.

If you are like most people, the mere mention of some of these critters caused a shudder to pass down your spine. This doesn't happen to invertebrates, lacking spines as they do. But seriously...in our opinion, invertebrates have generally gotten a bum rap. Undoubtedly, the simple fact that these animals seem so radically different from us plays a key role, but often the media builds upon these attitudes and makes the problem worse. From killer bees to those evil snails that chew up your lettuce, most of what we hear about invertebrates in the popular press is negative. The primary goal of NOSPINE is to change that. I also hope NOSPINE will become a repository for invertebrate information, and a forum for discussing topics of interest to invertebrate afficionados.

Why bookmark this page?

What's going to be on the NOSPINE Homepage? First, I hope to add several links to pages which generally provide a positive, or interesting, or just plain cool spin to invertebrates. I also hope to include several invertebrate JPEG's, animations, etc. that I've picked up by crawling the Web.

(as an aside, I would like you to note that the World Wide Web itself is linked to invertebrates -- search engine "spiders" crawl the Web, etc. FYI.)

NOSPINE should also be seen as a forum for discussion. I hope to provide a monthly survey addressing questions related to invertebrates, biology in general, etc. that society members (and others) can participate in. But most of all, NOSPINE should be FUN! I hope it will become a place where people can stop by, check out nifty invertebrate cartoons, find cool links, submit invert-related news items, and discuss these excellent animals.

You will be able to do all of these things at this site, and maybe more, without becoming a member. So what does being a NOSPINE member entail, how much does it cost, and how does a person sign up?

The cost is nothing.

Membership obligations (such as they are...)

The only obligations of being a member of NOSPINE are ...

That's all.

Go back to the NOSPINE Home Page!

About people have visited this site (or one of the other Fortress of Loligo sites).

Send me an e-mail to let me know what you think!


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