Ecology & Zoology
Some discussion over the identity of Nemo's little octopus friend Pearl has led me into a deep investigation of Grimpoteuthis (dumbo octopuses) and Opisthoteuthis (flapjack octopuses). Both are shortened on the antero-posteral axis (which, yes, takes some head-scratching to figure out--octopuses are even more difficult than squid when it comes to axes of symmetry) but this shortening is carried to the greatest extreme in flapjacks. Hence the name. From the Tree of Life web project:
Most species of Grimpoteuthis [dumbos] are poorly known. They are somewhat less compressed in the anterior-…
Possibly I have found it:
Species of Opisthoteuthis are the most compressed, in the anterior-posterior axis, of any cephalopod.
Mmmm! Syrup, anyone?
Ever wonder why the slow moving sloth has a slightly greenish hue? Ever consider the sloth at all? Well, perhaps not. Location, location, location, is the mantra for many of us in our macro world, but it is also true for the small world of algae.
Blue green algae is a term used to describe any of a large, heterogeneous group of prokaryotic, principally photosynthetic organisms. These little oxygenic (oxygen-producing) fellows appeared about 2,000,000,000 to 3,000,000,000 years ago and are given credit for greatly increasing the oxygen content of the atmosphere, making possible the…
I'm at a conference. It's keeping me busy. Today my friend and fellow conspirator^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H grad student Julie gave an awesome talk about Humboldt squid in the California Current.
Also, there were three talks about octopuses! One of my favorite things about this conference is that every year the Alaskan Octopus Contingent shows up with new findings about the behavior and ecology of the Giant Pacific Octopus--the very species I blame for instigating a childhood cephalopod obsession that made me the grad student I am today.
It may even have been this very octopus, from the Monterey Bay…
The Monterey Herald hit close to home today with Turning the tables on giant, predatory squid:
These fascinatingly grotesque
creatures can reach 7 feet in length and weigh in excess of 100 pounds,
are known cannibals and can tear off a fisherman's hand with its
razor-sharp beak, dousing its prey with prodigious amounts of black ink.
I can't tell what's making me cringe more: the grammatical disaster that are this sentence, or the scientific absurdity of claiming a squid beak could tear off a fisherman's hand. Let's all say it together now: Humboldt Squid Do Not Eat Humans!
And, ink is a…
It doesn't get much better than strung-out spiders and a white dude using ghetto slang. And Canada.
Two caveats: one, you may want to watch this out of hearing from impressionable young children. It's not terrible but the occasional joke may be branded in their brain as scientifically valid and therefore not a bad decision. Two, I am mortally terrified of spiders, but I sucked it up for this video because it was funny. I will just be scratching at imaginary spiders crawling all over me for the rest of the day.
One of my favorite zoologist habits is to gesture on one's own body when describing an animal's anatomy. The weirder the animal, the funnier the implicit analogy.
"These worms have a ventral nerve cord," I explain, drawing a line from my collarbone to my navel. "This mollusc has gills on its dorsal surface," reaching over one shoulder to pat my back.
Easy to do in front of a class, harder on the printed page. There we rely on diagrams to indicate dorsal (top), ventral (bottom), anterior (front), and posterior (back). For example, here's a squid:
It's a beautiful drawing, isn't it? Full of…
My friend and colleague Stephalopod published this cool paper a couple of years ago about how deep-sea squids use their ink. The fun fact from this paper that I trot out most often in social situations is a weird behavior called "mantle fills."
Six ink release types were observed: pseudomorphs, pseudomorph series,ink ropes, clouds/smokescreens, diffuse puffs and mantle fills.
Most of these behaviors make some sense. Pseudomorphs, for example, are coherent, vaguely squid-shaped blobs of ink and mucus, left behind as decoys while the squid jets to safety. Smokescreens are self-explanatory.…
I live in an academic bubble into which very little pop culture penetrates. I guess a few years ago there was a movie called The Squid and the Whale? I have just learned of its existence. Disappointingly, it features no marine animals or underwater scenes (so obviously, I haven't actually watched it, and probably never will).
"Televison Without Pity" explains the problem:
We realize that the title is meant to refer to Jeff Daniels and LauraLinney, who play intellectual parents whose relationship isdeteriorating. Locked in a constant struggle with each other for theundivided love and attention…
A couple of years ago, Dr. Kubodera, who has a remarkable talent for filming large, unusual squid underwater, got some footage of Taningia danae. This octopoteuthid squid is notable for a) being large, b) lacking tentacles as an adult, d) having big, bright photophores on the tips of two of its arms and c) swimming with fins rather than jet propulsion.
Addressing points a)-c), we have a 2007 article from National Geographic:
The human-size squid were filmed at depths of 780 to 3,100 feet (240 to 940 meters) off the Ogasawara Islands during a scientific expedition led by Tsunemi Kubodera of…