. . . Wait! Stop the presses! They're not enormous, they're just somewhat large. They don't stab their prey, they just chew and swallow. Maybe that sounds nitpicky--big is big and sharp is sharp,…

I was delighted to receive a message yesterday from a teacher on the Oregon coast who had seized the opportunity to dissect a Humboldt squid with her students. First--how cool is that? Good teaching…

Thank you, Slate, for taking this opportunity to remind us of the dangers of angering the giant squid: The giant squid hates everything: It hates Kirk Douglas, it hates the crew of the Pequod, and it…

Spotted hyenas aren't smarter than chimpanzees but they cooperate better and it shows on cooperative problem-solving tests, says a new article about a very old study that just recently got some…

Jeff writes: "[Do] squid or cephalopods have any weird parasites similar to the isopops that replace the tongues on a number of fish . . . ?" (Heh. I am still chuckling over "isopops." Although…

On Tuesday, BBC News' Day In Pictures included a photo of a northern bottlenose whale, washed up dead on a beach in Southern England. (The bottlenose whale is a member of the beaked whale family,…

Not to beat a dead squid, but a reasonable question came up in a conversation with one of my labmates today: Who's to say that the Architeuthis collected in the Gulf of Mexico this summer was alive…

Yup, they found a giant squid. And this is exactly why I get snarlish about people referring to Humboldt squid as giant squid. If you cry "giant!" every time Humboldts appear, then when you get a…

A Google Image search for "cute squid" returns, amidst the cartoons and handmade objects, numerous photographs of real animals: - 1 baby octopus (cute, but not a squid)- 1 dumbo octopus (cute, and it…

I'm starting to suspect that my study organism, Dosidicus gigas, is a bit of a diva. It seems like every other day there's a news story on Humboldt squid, jumbo squid, or (my favorite!) giant squid…