Allen writes:
“In our case, my wife and I got tattoos as our wedding rings. I can still hear the guffaw of one of my wife’s good friends at the wedding when it was announced what we did. Our tattoos are ankle rings composed of a siphonophore, deep sea relatives of the Portuguese Man-o-War. We modeled it after one of Haeckel’s plates, but have since been told by the guy who knows more about siphonophores than anyone else alive that it “doesn’t exist”. That is one aspect for which it is not an apt symbol.”
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Originally published February 16, 2008. Copyright 2008 Carl Zimmer.