cephalopods
pharyngula | January 30, 2009Sepia erostrata
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | January 29, 2009You've got to be impressed with the cephalopod-butchering skills of this dolphin. Especially be sure to check out the gallery of grisly photos.
I know, I like cephalopods. But I eat them, too!
edyong | January 25, 2009Cuttlefish are intelligent animals that can hide from predators by changing colour and texture, and squirting out a smokescreen of black ink. But amazing though cuttlefish are, their defences mean nothing against one of the most intelligent hunters in the ocean - the bottlenose dolphin.
Julian Finn, Tom Tregenza and Mark Norman (the trio who first described the amazing mimic octopus) have discovered a single female bottlenose, who has developed a way of hunting cuttlefish. Not only does she successfully capture them, but she has learned how to prepare them for the perfect meal, with all the…
pharyngula | January 9, 2009Everyone start singing now, this is a heartwarming story. Sid is an octopus in the Portobello Aquarium. Sid has the clever octopus habit of escaping — he disappeared for days, and was later discovered hiding in a seawater drain. So what is the aquarium to do with the sneaky fellow?
Set him free!
Isn't that nice?
(Just because I'm cynical that way, though, I will point out two less happy reasons. They're going to capture another octopus before they release him, which means Sid is going to have to change his name to Barabbas. The really cynical side of me notes that the aquarium managers also…
pharyngula | January 3, 2009Everyone and their mother is sending me a link to this flickr set, via Boing Boing, of something called "cephalerotica". I just don't know…there are all these clumsy mammals inserted into the art that distract from the erotic part.
pharyngula | December 23, 2008
Squid don't just make sperm: they package it up into fairly elaborate little torpedoes called spermatophores, which are either handed to the female with a specially modified arm called the hectocotyl arm, or squirted onto her with a penis. Once on the female (or a male, it really doesn't matter), the spermatophore everts, forming a structure called the spermatangia, in which all the packed sperm uncoil, ready to do their job, and the whole mass is anchored to the target with a cement body. These structures do show species-specific differences, but here is one example from Heteroteuthis…
edyong | December 16, 2008The Humboldt squid is not an animal to mess with. It's two metres of bad-tempered top predator, wielding a large brain, a razor-sharp beak and ten tentacles bearing 2,000 sharp, toothed suckers. It cannibalises wounded squid, and it beats up Special Ops veterans. But over the next few years, the Humboldt faces a threat that even it may struggle against, one that threatens to deprive it of the very oxygen it needs to breathe - climate change.
The Humboldt squid (also known as the jumbo squid) lives "chronically on the edge of oxygen limitation". Through an unfortunate combination of…
pharyngula | December 15, 2008Put them on the first step to a lifelong obsession, and let them play with the Build A Squid game on the Te Papa Museum website. It's very easy and very cute.
pharyngula | December 12, 2008
(Image from Cephalopods: Octopuses and Cuttlefishes for the Home Aquarium(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) by Colin Dunlop and Nancy King.)
pharyngula | December 4, 2008Representatives of the Antarctic and deep-sea genera of
octopuses. (a) Pareledone charcoti, a shallow-water species from the
Antarctic Peninsula. (b) Thaumeledone gunteri, a deep-water species
endemic to South Georgia. (c) Megaleledone setebos, a shallow water
circum-Antarctic species endemic to the Southern Ocean. Specimen
shown is juvenile; adults reach a total length of nearly 1 m. (d)
Adelieledone polymorpha, a species endemic to the western Antarctic.
All specimens illustrated are adult unless speciï¬ed and were collected
from the South Shetland Islands except T. gunteri from South…
pharyngula | December 4, 2008So you've got a 30lb. squid. What are you going to do with it? Follow along with the photo guide and turn it into something delicious.
pharyngula | December 3, 2008Also, nice footage of the Indonesian Mimetic Octopus.
(via GrrlScientist)
pharyngula | December 3, 2008It's December, and Squidmas is coming. Maybe you're like me, and the kids have all moved out, so you're thinking having a little intelligent life at home would be nice. Or maybe you're kids are still home, and you think they'd love a pretty pet. Or maybe you just love cephalopods, as do we all, so you're thinking, hey, let's get an aquarium and an octopus! What a fun idea!
One word of advice: NO. Don't do it. You can't just rush into these things.
Here's a positive suggestion, though. Start reading TONMO, the octopus news magazine online, regularly. If you haven't been reading it already, you…
pharyngula | December 1, 2008Last week's Friday Cephalopod actually has an interesting story behind it. It was taken from a paper that describes the evolutionary radiation of deep-sea cephalopods.
First, a little background in geological history. Antarctica is a special case, in which a major shift in its climate occurred in the last 50 million years. If you look at a map, you'll notice that Antarctica comes very close to the southern tip of South America; 50 million years ago, they were fully connected, and they only separated relatively recently due to continental drift.
When they were connected, South America acted…