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I was looking at the Asono MP3 player today and was a bit surprised by Hannah’s response to it:

“Ew that’s disgusting it looks just like a mermaids purse. I don’t mean a mythical mermaid’s purse, I mean the little creature things that actually exist. And they’re gross so that’s what I think of that.”

I’d never heard of Mermaid’s Purses before, but it turns out not only was she was right, but we can scientifically link Asono to sharks.

A mermaid’s purse is the eggshell of a the clearnose skate:

When it hatches, the discarded egg washes onto the shore, where Hannah can see it and think it is a “little creature”. The skate meanwhile will be swimming about nonethewiser eating little prawns:

When it’s all big and fat it’ll be scuttling along quite happily when suddenly:

A sand tiger shark chomps it up. The end.

I hope you enjoyed learning the life cycle of the clearnose skate. The Asono player is an interesting piece since it is primarily a design object, and speaks of a very different design language than we are used to seeing in gadgets. The matchbox sized player was clearly never going to make a big impression on the market, but it proves that non ipod-clones are a possibility, and will hopefully not be the last MP3 player we see come out of Scandinavia.