cephalopods
pharyngula | May 2, 2008Sepioteuthis sepioidea
Since I saw Iron Man last night (short review: AWESOME!!!), I thought I'd try to find a cephalopod with a similar red and gold color scheme…and didn't get very close. But this one does have the sleek look of a rocket-propelled machine, so it will have to do.
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | April 30, 2008Why is it that every time a journalist writes about large squid eyes, they've got to compare them to dinner plates? It's so trite. How about hubcaps? Frisbees? How about just giving the dimensions and leaving it at that? Oh, well, I've had to miss most of the live webcasts of the colossal squid anatomy lesson, just because my schedule is horrid this week, but I've caught up with some of the details, thanks to the most excellent Te Papa Blog, which has nicely fleshed out the lessons with lots of photographs.
Last night's Café Scientifique here in Morris was discussing the dumbing down of…
pharyngula | April 29, 2008…that the colossal squid is dissected and displayed by webcam to the world. It's also the day I'm in class from 10:00 on, and have a Café Scientifique to attend, as well as another job candidate seminar, so I'm going to have to catch it all after the fact.
Anyway, Happy Squid Hacking Day to you all! Watch the webcams if you get a chance.
pharyngula | April 27, 2008Watch the communal spawning of squid off the California coast.
It's the last thing they do: one huge orgy of mating, and then they collapse, spent and dying.
pharyngula | April 27, 2008The colossal squid that was caught last year is in the process of being thawed prior to a public dissection. The Te Papa Museum of New Zealand is pulling out all the stops and are going to have webcams recording every step of the process — the schedule of events is online. I'll be watching.
This is an extremely cool thing to do, and a mark of respect for this magnificent animal — I wish I could have this sort of dismantlement done to me after I'm dead. Both my fans and my critics would enjoy it, but on the downside, my family would probably be a bit distressed, and to be honest, human…
pharyngula | April 26, 2008This is a very cool video of an octopus opening a bottle. It's entirely in Finnish, but you don't need to know the language to understand what is going on.
pharyngula | April 25, 2008Octopus maorum
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | April 18, 2008Octopus abaculus
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | April 11, 2008Euprymna tasmanica
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | April 4, 2008Nautilus pompilious and some chordate
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | March 28, 2008Last weekend, I met a young woman who asked me to sign a picture of a friend's tattoo (not the real tattoo, unfortunately!), and it's so pretty I said I'd have to include it on the Friday Cephalopod. Here it is:
(Eat your heart out, Carl!)
pharyngula | March 28, 2008Thaumelodone gunteri
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
edyong | March 27, 2008
Imagine that you hand is made of jelly and you have to carve a roast using a knife that has no handle. The bare metal blade would rip through your hypothetical hand as easily as it would through the meat. It's clearly no easy task and yet, squid have to cope with a very similar challenge every time they eat a meal.
The bodies of squid, like those of their relatives the cuttlefish and octopus, are mainly soft and pliant, with one major exception. In the centre of their web of tentacles lies a hard, sharp and murderous beak that resembles that of a parrot. The beak is a tool for killing…
pharyngula | March 26, 2008Look! He's been plastinated and hung in a Paris museum!
OK, that's not so bad — if anyone wants to plastinate me after I'm dead and string me up from the rafters, I won't mind. This next bit, though, is going too far: people are laughing at the giant squid's embarrassing little sexual accidents. Seriously, everyone looks ridiculous during sex and it's not unusual to have the occasional slip up … and we bipedal mammals can screw up in even more embarrassing ways. And to add ignorance to insult, the squid article even gets it wrong.
But males get round their inferior size by being endowed with…
pharyngula | March 21, 2008Octopus aspilosomatis
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
pharyngula | March 14, 2008Bolitaena pygmaea
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.