Ecology & Zoology
Almost nothing in the ocean can resist eating squid. That includes the macaroni penguin, which "live almost entirely on krill" but "do supplement their krill diet with up to five percent squid."
I wonder if they get specific nutrients from squid that are lacking in krill? Someday when I have more time I'll have to pursue that . . .
More cephalopods in pop culture: not anime this time, but games! Mobile phone games, to be specific. "Squibble" sounds like a lot of fun:
A mad scientist has captured your cutesy, albeit deranged-looking octopus-self and locked you away in the attic of his mansion! Using your amazing brain-capacity (don't forget, there was once an octopus who predicted soccer finalists) and your two prehensile, sticky little tentacles, you'll need to make your way from the lab back to the ocean... where, I'm guessing you'll get eaten by a shark.
Eaten by a shark? It's quite possible, but…
We instinctively know how to keep ourselves safe and so do other animals, according to neuroscientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. University of Washington researcher Jeansok Kim demonstrates that rats weigh their odds of safely retrieving food pellets placed at varying distances from a perceived predator.
Stay or forage might seem obvious but rats need to get out and find food and how do they decide whether it's safe to leave the nest was the focus of Kim and co-author June-Seek Choi, a visiting professor in the UW psychology department from Korea…
The largest fish species in the ocean, the whale shark, is spectacular for lots of reasons, not the least is that their motion is an astonishing feat of mathematics and energy conservation.
In new research, marine scientists reveal how these massive sharks use geometry to enhance their natural negative buoyancy and stay afloat.
For most animals movement is crucial for survival, both for finding food and for evading predators. However, movement costs substantial amounts of energy and while this is true of land based animals it is even more complex for birds and marine animals which…
Yesterday I finished two novels. One was Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and I have babbled about it here. The other was my own invention. The working title is A Girl and her Squid, and that is what it is about. I am intending to make it a great deal better--perhaps four or five hundred drafts will be enough--and then publish it.
Now, on to the squid news that I missed during the last month of frenzied noveling!
Ammonite shells have bite marks in them that suggest they may have eaten by squid:
Shell-dwelling ammonites, believed to be ancestors of modern cephalopods, became…
Will polar bears survive in a warmer world? New evidence says their numbers are likely to dwindle.
As polar bears lose habitat due to global warming, biologists say, they will be forced southward in search of alternative sources of food, where they will increasingly come into competition with grizzly bears. Polar bears probably evolved very rapidly in response to glacial climates during the ice ages but rapidly on an evolutionary scale is not a realistic timeline for climate change.
In the timeline of evolution, polar bears evolved from the brown bear very recently,…
KenCog |
§ Suborder: Haplorrhini
§ Infraorder: Tarsiiformes
§ Family: Tarsiidae
§ Genus: Tarsius
§ Species: T. bancanus, T. dentatus, T. lariang, T. pelengensis, T. pumilus, T. sangirensis, T. syrichta, T. tarsier, T. tumpura
§ Subspecies: T. b. bancanus, T. b. borneanus, T. b. saltator
Other names: T. bancanus: Horsfield's tarsier, western tarsier; tarsier de Bornéo (French); västligt spökdjur (Swedish); T. b. borneanus: Bornean tarsier; T. b. saltator: Belitung Island tarsier; T. dentatus: T. dianae, Dian's tarsier, Diana tarsier; T. lariang: Lariang tarsier; T. pelengensis: Peleng tarsier…
Hank |
It used to be that broader understanding of zoology meant intuitively that new species would be harder to find and so it followed that there would be fewer of them when found - that is the nature of rarity.
Now, because newer species are so rare, it is fashionable to label them nearly extinct even though they have just been discovered and so may not have been prolific any time in recent memory, or at all. It can be a little numbing to the general audience. - when everything is rare, nothing is (see special snowflake).
So it goes with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy and their…
Hank |
A study by Wageningen University says radiation from wi-fi networks may be harmful to trees.
The researchers note that trees in urban areas in recent years have shown an increasing number of cracks, bumps, discolorations and various forms of tissue necrosis but no cause has been identified, so they sought to examine if it was more than biological factors like pests or disease.
Wageningen University was commissioned by the town of Alphen aan den Rijn to see if increasing sources of electromagnetic radiation, such as wi-fi transmitters or cellular towers, could…
I am 26,160 words into my squid racing novel, about halfway through the plot, and enjoying NaNoWriMo quite thoroughly. But I just had to pop out of my month of hibernation to link a few really cool squid-in-the-news stories. Evidence continues to build that squid are basically awesome: SQUID FLY: We've known for a long time that squid can fly, but a recent review paper summed up all the evidence and made some cool calculations about velocity and body postures.
SQUID HEAR: I've rambled before about the squid-are-deaf vs. squid-are-not-deaf debate. Squid-are-not-deaf seems to be winning…