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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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/04/friday-squid-blogging-more-squid-camouflage-research.html

Here’s a research group trying to replicate squid cell transparency in mammalian cells.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/04/friday-squid-blogging-more-on-squid-fishing.html

The squid you eat most likely comes from unregulated waters.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/04/friday-squid-blogging-colossal-squid.html

Interesting article on the colossal squid, which is larger than the giant squid.

The article answers a vexing question:

So why do we always hear about the giant squid and not the colossal squid?

Well, part of it has to do with the fact that the giant squid was discovered and studied long before the colossal squid.

Scientists have been studying giant squid since the 1800s, while the colossal squid wasn’t even discovered until 1925.

And its first discovery was just the head and arms found in a sperm whale’s stomach.

It wasn’t until 1981 that the first whole animal was found by a trawler near the coast of Antarctica.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/04/friday-squid-blogging-squid-food-poisoning.html

University of Connecticut basketball player Jordan Hawkins claims to have suffered food poisoning from calamari the night before his NCAA finals game. The restaurant disagrees:

On Sunday, a Mastro’s employee politely cast doubt on the idea that the restaurant might have caused the illness, citing its intense safety protocols. The staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to officially speak for Mastro’s, said restaurants in general were more likely to arouse suspicion when they had some rooting interest against the customer-athletes.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/03/friday-squid-blogging-giant-squid-vs-blue-marlin.html

Epic matchup.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/03/friday-squid-blogging-creating-batteries-out-of-squid-cells.html

This is fascinating:

“When a squid ends up chipping what’s called its ring tooth, which is the nail underneath its tentacle, it needs to regrow that tooth very rapidly, otherwise it can’t claw its prey,” he explains.

This was intriguing news ­ and it sparked an idea in Hopkins lab where he’d been trying to figure out how to store and transmit heat.

“It diffuses in all directions. There’s no way to capture the heat and move it the way that you would electricity. It’s just not a fundamental law of physics.”

[…]

The tiny brown batteries he mentions are about the size of a chiclet, and Hopkins says it will take a decade or more to create larger batteries that could have commercial value.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/03/friday-squid-blogging-new-species-of-vampire-squid-lives-3000-feet-below-sea-level.html

At least, it seems to be a new species.

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Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/03/friday-squid-blogging-chinese-squid-fishing-in-the-southeast-pacific.html

Chinese squid fishing boats are overwhelming Ecuador and Peru.

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