Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.
Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.
Kevin Zelnio is a Graduate Student Researcher at Penn State studying the ecology of hydrothermal vent and methane seep communities. He raises awareness of the plight of the spineless through folk music.
Many of you have probably seen this already. No doubt, you have said something like
This thing has teeth where a beak should be -- disquietingly human teeth, at that.The picture is disturbing to say the least and will haunt my dreams. So is the picture real? Yes.
The species is Promachoteuthis sulcus recently described by Young, Vecchione, and Roper. The published figure is...
What you see is the oral view of the brachial and buccal crown. The supposed teeth are papillae on the lips of the buccal mass common in cephalopods (See below).
Life Science
Comments
thanks craig. the real question is though, can it be stopped?
Posted by: Andrew Bleiman | October 29, 2007 5:22 PM
I wish I hadn't seen this right before going to bed...that freaky lookin' mouth will haunt me tonight. Thanks.
Posted by: BrianR | October 29, 2007 11:12 PM
"The supposed teeth are papillae on the lips of the buccal mass common in cephalopods."
So these "teeth" are just meaty lips and the beak is somewhere inside or maybe totally ripped from the specimen?
Posted by: Yuval Langer | October 30, 2007 11:47 AM
Shouldn't the post be called "Decapod Teeth"?
Posted by: plover | October 30, 2007 12:36 PM
Plover, it has 8 short arms (octopod) and 2 long tentacles.
http://img225.imageshack.us/done.php?l=img225/2742/promachspcoral783523ah8.jpg
Posted by: Yuval Langer | October 30, 2007 1:13 PM
Plover,
You are right it is oegopsid squid and thus decapodiformes. Most early blog post across the web misidentified it as a octopus thus the title. Forgot to mention this in the post. Thanks for catching it!
Posted by: CR McClain | October 30, 2007 1:40 PM
I'm confused. I've seen pictures of beaks removed from the other Promachoteuthis specimens. They look like beaks. There is no description of the beak for this specimen (P. sulcus) - they stat that "The gladius and beaks were not removed from the squid for examination." Therefore, the beak is still there.
I'm not seeing it.
Posted by: mandrake | October 30, 2007 7:21 PM
Mandrake,
The only thing I can think of is that it is withdrawn into the buccal mass. It is unclear to me too.
Posted by: CR McClain | October 30, 2007 7:27 PM
CR,
if you find out please post! It's bugging the heck out of me, and I don't have a teuthologist handy to ask if they do that a lot. (The squid, not the scientists.)
Posted by: mandrake | October 30, 2007 7:33 PM
I've put a link to this post up at Linnaeus' Legacy.
Posted by: Christopher Taylor | November 5, 2007 4:54 PM
Wow... With creatures like these, we don't need to explore space to find aliens - just hop in a submarine!
Posted by: ExistentialDuck | February 15, 2009 11:34 AM