Ecology & Zoology

Thanks to my awesome brother, I have now acquired and read the full text of the paper I blogged about yesterday: "Purification and in vitro antioxidative effects of giant squid muscle peptides on free radical-mediated oxidative systems." I was promptly horrified by the authors' two-sentence background about the animals whose skin they were studying: Giant squid (Dosidicus gigas) is a cephalopod of the Ommastrephes genus and found in abundance in some parts of the world. This species is not much studied in depth due to its large soft mantel and low economic value. WHERE TO START…

UPDATE: I've learned more about how antioxidants work since writing this post. Maybe this is a sign that I've become cynical, but when I first read that peptides found in squid skin can slow aging, lower blood pressure, activate neurons, and reduce memory loss, I was like pshaw, right! More recently, Petslady sent me her article on the subject, suggesting I might want to blog about it. I added it to my list, thinking, yeah, maybe someday I'll blog again about how ridiculous this is . . . but then I started scouring the peer-reviewed literature, and behold! Real live science backs it up (…

Is the Age of Exploration long dead? At The Last Word on Nothing, Richard Panek made the point that there's no longer anywhere on Earth people haven't been. Even the South Pole, which many would consider the most remote spot on the planet, is a regular tourist destination. Ah! But what about the deep sea? Humans obviously haven't seen every inch of it--not even close. And the deepest spot in the ocean, the Challenger Deep, is much harder to visit than the South Pole. In fact, only one manned expedition has ever touched bottom, making it more like the moon than the pole. And--like the…

The Telegraph's first picture of the day is a terrifying action shot of a huge dolphin's toothy maw, about to chomp down on a sweet little red squid. Go look at it! Right now! But it's not my fault if you get nightmares. Dolphins are so scary. (As this picture was shot in the Bahamas, the squid is most likely a Caribbean Reef Squid.)

If you want to know basic things about animals, like who eats whom, you might guess that your days would consist of watching real-life nature documentaries. You might expect to go out into the savannah or into the depths of the sea to observe predators hunting and devouring their prey. Actually, it takes a lot of sitting still and watching to see even a single predation event. It turns out you can get a lot more data a lot more quickly by looking at predator vomit and feces. Oh, the glamour of science! When it comes to squid, the remmants they leave in their predators' guts or scat are…

Ever since the publication of The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Observations of Their Habits by Charles Darwin, the European Earthworm Lumbricus terrestris has had a pretty good press.  Darwin may not have been the first to appreciate their value: Aristotle called them “the intestines of the soil” [1].  And very valuable they are, this side of the Pond.  Though they are not getting it all their own way.  According to Wikipedia: In parts of Europe, notably the Atlantic fringe of northwestern Europe, they are now locally endangered due to…

Baby squid are the cutest, right? I mean, right?  In 2010 I was lucky enough to join a baby squid workshop in La Paz, Mexico, where I met Spanish scientist Roger Villanueva. He has quite the deft touch with rearing embryos. I'm super-excited that he's got a lab website up now, where you can see all the gorgeous photos and videos he and his group have taken. They're mostly Illex coindetti, an ommstrephid cousin to the Humboldt squid, Dosidicus gigas. Isn't that sweet? Aren't you just dying to see it squidge around in a petri dish? Well here it is: Go check out the rest of the…

To no one's surprise, environmentalists and industry lobbyists are butting heads in a major legal wrangle over California's "wetfish"--sardines, anchovies, mackerel, and market squid. As you may recall, the pretty little market squid is the state's single biggest fishery: Opalescent inshore squid by Joshua Sera And it's not just humans who like to eat them--they're a major food source for sea lions, seals, seabirds, sharks, etc. According to the Mercury News, Oceana is now suing to "force the federal government to consider impacts on the broader marine ecosystem when setting limits…

Bloomberg calls it "South Pacific's Cruelest Catch": Yusril says the officers hit him in the face with fish and the boatswain repeatedly kicked him in the back for using gloves when he was sewing the trawl nets in cold weather. Most unnervingly, the second officer would crawl into the bunk of Yusril’s friend at night and attempt to rape him. The abuse is horrible and wrong, no matter what kind of fish they're catching or where it's ending up, but the reason this particular story caught my eye is-- Squid was one of the most common seafood species caught by fishermen held on the Melilla boats,…

If you haven't heard the kerfuffle about flying squid by now, you've been under a rock. A cephalopod-free rock.  Jessica Marshall wrote a story for Nature which also ran in Scientific American. Then Discover, the LA Times, and Discovery News jumped on the bandwagon. They're all great articles, but Discover's got the cutest summary: To propel itself out of the water and into the air, the squid fills its mantle with water and then quickly shoots it out. This is the same thing it does underwater, but air is less dense, so it produces more scoot for the squirt. "Scoot for the squirt."…