Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/09/friday-squid-blogging-new-squid-species-2.html

An ancient squid:

New research on fossils has revealed that a vampire-like ancient squid haunted Earth’s oceans 165 million years ago. The study, published in June edition of the journal Papers in Palaeontology, says the creature had a bullet-shaped body with luminous organs, eight arms and sucker attachments. The discovery was made by scientists in France, who used modern imaging technique to analyse the previously discovered fossils. The ancient squid has been named Vampyrofugiens atramentum, which stands for the “fleeing vampire”. The researchers said that these features have never been recorded before.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/09/friday-squid-blogging-cleaning-squid.html

Two links on how to properly clean squid.

I learned a few years ago, in Spain, and got pretty good at it.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/09/friday-squid-blogging-glass-squid-video.html

Here’s a fantastic video of Taonius Borealis, a glass squid, from NOAA.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/09/friday-squid-blogging-were-genetically-engineering-squid-now.html

Is this a good idea?

The transparent squid is a genetically altered version of the hummingbird bobtail squid, a species usually found in the tropical waters from Indonesia to China and Japan. It’s typically smaller than a thumb and shaped like a dumpling. And like other cephalopods, it has a relatively large and sophisticated brain.

The see-through version is made possible by a gene editing technology called CRISPR, which became popular nearly a decade ago.

Albertin and Rosenthal thought they might be able to use CRISPR to create a special squid for research. They focused on the hummingbird bobtail squid because it is small, a prodigious breeder, and thrives in lab aquariums, including one at the lab in Woods Hole.

Is this far behind?

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/08/friday-squid-blogging-chinas-squid-fishing-ban-ineffective.html

China imposed a “pilot program banning fishing in parts of the south-west Atlantic Ocean from July to October, and parts of the eastern Pacific Ocean from September to December.” However, the conservation group Oceana analyzed the data and figured out that the Chinese weren’t fishing in those areas in those months, anyway.

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blockquote>In the south-west Atlantic moratorium area, Oceana found there had been no fishing conducted by Chinese fleets in the same time period in 2019. Between 1,800 and 8,500 fishing hours were detected in the zone in each of the five years to 2019. In the eastern Pacific zone, China’s fishing fleet appeared to fish only 38 hours in the year before the ban’s introduction.

“Ending squid fishing in areas where there is no fishing does nothing to protect squid,” said Oceana’s campaign director, Max Valentine.

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blockquote>

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/08/friday-squid-blogging-squid-brand-fish-sauce.html

Squid Brand is a Thai company that makes fish sauce:

It is part of Squid Brand’s range of “personalized healthy fish sauces” that cater to different consumer groups, which include the Mild Fish Sauce for Kids and Mild Fish Sauce for Silver Ages.

It also has a Vegan Fish Sauce.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/08/friday-squid-blogging-niwa-annual-squid-survey.html

Results from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Limited annual squid survey:

This year, the team unearthed spectacular large hooked squids, weighing about 15kg and sitting at 2m long, a Taningia—­which has the largest known light organs in the animal kingdom­—and a few species that remain very rare in collections worldwide, such as the “scaled” squid Lepidoteuthis and the Batoteuthis skolops.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/08/friday-squid-blogging-2023-squid-oil-global-market-report.html

I had no idea that squid contain sufficient oil to be worth extracting.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/07/friday-squid-blogging-zaqistan-flag.html

The fictional nation of Zaqistan (in Utah) has a squid on its flag.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/07/friday-squid-blogging-chromatophores.html

Neat:

Chromatophores are tiny color-changing cells in cephalopods. Watch them blink back and forth from purple to white on this squid’s skin in an Instagram video taken by Drew Chicone…

It’s completely hypnotic to watch these tiny cells flash with color. It’s as if the squid has a little sky full of twinkling stars on its skin. This has to be one of the coolest looking sea creatures I’ve seen.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/07/friday-squid-blogging-balloon-squid.html

Masayoshi Matsumoto is a “master balloon artist,” and he made a squid (and other animals).

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/07/friday-squid-blogging-giant-squid-nebula.html

Pretty:

A mysterious squid-like cosmic cloud, this nebula is very faint, but also very large in planet Earth’s sky. In the image, composed with 30 hours of narrowband image data, it spans nearly three full moons toward the royal constellation Cepheus. Discovered in 2011 by French astro-imager Nicolas Outters, the Squid Nebula’s bipolar shape is distinguished here by the telltale blue-green emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms. Though apparently surrounded by the reddish hydrogen emission region Sh2-129, the true distance and nature of the Squid Nebula have been difficult to determine. Still, a more recent investigation suggests Ou4 really does lie within Sh2-129 some 2,300 light-years away. Consistent with that scenario, the cosmic squid would represent a spectacular outflow of material driven by a triple system of hot, massive stars, cataloged as HR8119, seen near the center of the nebula. If so, this truly giant squid nebula would physically be over 50 light-years across.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/06/friday-squid-blogging-see-through-squid.html

Doryteuthis opalescens is known as the market squid, and was critical in the recent squid RNA research.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/06/friday-squid-blogging-giggling-squid.html

Giggling Squid is a Thai chain in the UK.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/06/friday-squid-blogging-squid-can-edit-their-rna.html

This is just crazy:

Scientists don’t yet know for sure why octopuses, and other shell-less cephalopods including squid and cuttlefish, are such prolific editors. Researchers are debating whether this form of genetic editing gave cephalopods an evolutionary leg (or tentacle) up or whether the editing is just a sometimes useful accident. Scientists are also probing what consequences the RNA alterations may have under various conditions.

I sometimes think that cephalopods are aliens that crash-landed on this planet eons ago.

Another article.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/06/friday-squid-blogging-light-emitting-squid.html

It’s a Taningia danae:

Their arms are lined with two rows of sharp retractable hooks. And, like most deep-sea squid, they are adorned with light organs called photophores. They have some on the underside of their mantle. There are more facing upward, near one of their eyes. But it’s the photophores at the tip of two stubby arms that are truly unique. The size and shape of lemons­—each nestled within a retractable lid like an eyeball in a socket­—they are by far the largest photophores known to science.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/06/friday-squid-blogging-squid-chromolithographs.html

Beautiful illustrations.

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EDITED TO ADD (6/4): Slashdot thread.

Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/05/friday-squid-blogging-online-cephalopod-course.html

Atlas Obscura has a five-part online course on cephalopods, taught by squid biologist Dr. Sarah McAnulty.

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