squidblog.net

You may have noticed that we have been very quiet at squidblog recently. We have been lurking around looking for tasty morsels, but not a lot of squidworthy news has appeared: no more giant squid sightings; no great squid revelations; and squidcam seems to be down.

So we have decided to dive down into the murky depths, to disappear for a while. We may surface occasionally if something worthy appears, but we will probably prove to be as elusive as the giant squid.

In the meantime if you are hungry for squid news then go to the following sites. They should more than satisfy any cephalophile:

1. TONMO.com: The Octopus News Magazine Online
   The one stop shop for all things cephalopod. Anything squid related will almost certainly be discussed in the forums. If you want to know about squid then definitely get involved here.
2. Pharyngula
   Not solely devoted to squid, but PZ Myers is definitely obsessed and well informed.
3. Squid.us
   Another good squidblog
4. squidblog.com
   Another squidblog. Sadly this one seems to be lost in the depths too.
5. Giant Squid
   Yet another squidblog
6. cephalopodcast.com
   Despite its name this is a more general marine science podcast blog.

I have also disabled commenting and trackbacks. The comment spam was becoming ridiculous, even with Akismet activated.

From the Esperance Express comes this squid related story:

Whale may have battled giant squid
Louise Bettison
Friday, 28 April 2006

AFTER spending several days getting up close and personal with the whale carcass at Thistle Cove, marine researchers and Recherche Advisory Group members John Totterdill and Dave Riggs say it bears many battle scars, including evidence of an attack by its favourite meal.

According to Mr Riggs, the carcass appears to be merely the head and neck of a “truly massive” bull sperm whale.

He estimates the original body length at 15-17m, with a weight of 50 tonnes and an age of around 50 years.

“Bull sperm whales tend to feed in the deep waters adjacent to our continental shelf, their preferred diet being giant squid known as Architeuthis,” Mr Riggs said.

“A myriad of circular scars are located all across the whale’s snout, visual proof of its predation on unwilling Architeuthis and most of the scars are 2.5-3cm in diameter, suggesting this animal preyed upon squid weighing 200-300kg.”

Cape Le Grand National Park acting senior ranger Peter Masters said he hadn’t yet had a chance to study the whale carcass in detail, but wouldn’t rule out the idea of it having had a tangle with a giant squid.

“It’s always possible - I’ll have a good look up-close later on and take some pictures for the records, then we’ll be able to have a better idea of what happened to it,” Mr Masters said.

Flipping the switch opens and closes the beak of architeuthis dux, aka the giant squid …

See it here.

As reported on ABC online, a recently completed PhD thesis by David Sinn from the University of Tasmania has revealed that the Southern Dumpling Squid Euprymna tasmanica has personality:

Squid have personalities that appear to be passed down from parent to offspring, but those traits can be modified by environment, an Australian researcher says. University of Tasmania research fellow Dr David Sinn has observed behaviour in the southern dumpling squid, Euprymna tasmanica, which is found in waters around South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania. He says that in general, these squid tend to be solitary, unromantic animals with a propensity to cannibalise their neighbours and take sexual favours by force. Within that profile, Dr Sinn has found some squid are shy, retiring, cautious types while others are bold, assertive and adventurous. “It turns out some squid are bolder than others,” he said. “For example, when presented by a threatening stimulus, they attack the stimulus or are ambivalent to it. “Others are shyer, they don’t inspect a threat, they back up, they flee.”

Fans of squid sex will be interested in the follow up work to this project:

Dr Sinn’s next project is to investigate the role of personality in the sex life of squid. He says mating in the squid world is forceful on the part of the male, but females play a role in choosing to associate with prospective mates or in attempting to rebuff unwanted advances. He says early evidence suggests bolder females prefer bolder males, while shy females are less choosy.

The complete PhD thesis can be downloaded from here.

Citation: Sinn, Dr David L. (2005) From Individuals to Populations: Personality traits in Southern Dumpling Squid (Euprymna tasmanica Pfeffer, 1884) and their life history correlates. PhD thesis, School of Aquaculture, University of Tasmania.

Slither is a new trashy, gore-fest film with a giant squid-like monster. Can’t wait to see it!! You can view the trailer here.

From the New York Post online:

Running time: 94 minutes. Rated R (gory violence, profanity). At the Lincoln Square, the Kips Bay, the Orpheum, others.

‘SLITHER” stars a giant, ugly slime from outer space. Of course you’re thinking of Randy Johnson, but the thing is even slimier than that. I hope I’m not giving away too much when I say that if you go out to eat after the movie, you won’t be ordering calamari. Or anything else.

Elizabeth Banks, as a teacher married to a blockhead who becomes a carcass-munching squid-man, and Nathan Fillion, as a cop, run for their lives while the squid turns its victims into zombies who plod around baying for blood. (It really is time for a fast-zombie movie. Maybe put them on Segways?) The slimy one also unleashes kitten-sized slugs that race around crawling in and out of people’s mouths. Its favorite song is Air Supply’s “Every Woman in the World” (the similar use of Lite FM as a key element in Stephen King’s new zombie novel “Cell” indicates that synth-and-strings balladeering has a booming new fan base among the fangy undead).

“Slither” is happily shlocky - the setup is pure ’50s and the special effects, involving quite a lot of guts and gore, are out of the ’70s. But if the horror scenes are formulaic, the audience will eat up the many jokey interludes the way the zombies feast on possum.

“Ain’t many places he can hide; he looks like a damn squid!” says Fillion (the “Serenity” star) of his tentacled target. “Sea World, maybe.” The mayor, whose expletive-laden commentary is consistently funny, responds that things can’t be all that bad: “It’s obvious the bastard’s got Lyme disease.” When two cops approach a menacing barn that contains creatures unknown, they pause to play rock-paper-scissors. Loser goes first.

Writer-director James Gunn, who wrote the “Dawn of the Dead” remake, is a graduate of the D-movie factory Troma Films, and it shows. But this is one horror film that could make the syllabus at Bob Jones U. The way the squid blasts its tentacles into doe-eyed girls seems designed to steer your daughters away from sex until they’re about 40.

Squid spell tourism

From Whyalla News:

Squid aggregations could spell money for Whyalla’s aquaculture and tourism industry.

More than $1 million of tourism spending could be injected into the community if squid numbers continue to rise.

Huge aggregations of squid have been found this season in the protected cephalopod area since Primary Industry Resources South Australia introduced a full-year protection ban last year.

Commercial diver Tony Bramley came across the large numbers of squid last October just after the cuttlefish breeding season ended.

“They’re all around you … hundreds of animals is not an exaggeration in view at any one time,” he said.

“I’ve been diving for 25 years and this has never, never happened before.

“It was just the most amazing thing.”

Mr Bramley said the latest rough figures saw $500,000 injected into the community through the cuttlefish season.

This could more than double if the squid aggregations continued to take off.

“All the divers that come to see the cuttlefish would stay to see the squid or come back to see the squid.

“We don’t want to put the cuttlefish down (but) this could be what we need to extend the season and make the whole cephalopod attraction more viable for investors.”

Mr Bramley said squid were even more dynamic and photogenic than cuttlefish.

“It’s just a wonderful thing.”

Despite the cuttlefish attracting hundreds, if not thousands of divers to Whyalla, Mr Bramley said the four to five month season was not long enough to justify adding infrastructure to the city.

“But the squid might be it.”

Mr Bramley also said the squid aggregations could also be that extra push needed to introduce the marine park the industry has been pushing for since 1998.

“This gives more desirability to getting the marine park established.

“It’s going to be good for the town if we can get it going … it will just be another straw that goes on the camel’s back to get the marine park.

“We’re really hopeful that because of the closure this will happen ever year.”

According to Mr Bramley everybody will be a winner.

“It’s a great thing for everybody, not just the divers.

“Everybody loves eating calamari … because it’s (the area) is protected they get the chance to aggregate as long as they want.

“What the fisherman have to see is that okay I can’t go into that area, but the hundreds of thousands of squid are not going to stay in that area.

“It’s a great example of you have got to give a little bit to get a little bit … and we’re not giving up a lot.”

This paper appears in the most recent issue of the journal Biology and Philosophy. It is quite technical, but shouldn’t be too difficult to follow. It basically argues, using the example of squid skin, that we need a new principle in biology: homeotaxy, or “peer conformity”.

Contribution to the whole (H). Can squids show us anything that we did not know already?

Biology and Philosophy (2006) 21:189–211

Key words: Community, Homeotaxy, Horizontal control of living things, Myogenic, Peer conformity, Physiology

Abstract. For a multicellular organism to proceed from egg to adult it must: (i) undergo cell division, (ii) differentiate, (iii) remain a unified whole (Ho). These requirements are at right angles to each other. The first two are achieved through hierarchical processes (vertical control) that are relatively well understood, the third through non-hierarchical processes (horizontal control) physiological evidence for which is abundant, though not widely recognized as a form of control. The essay gives an example of a tissue – the skin of a living squid – whose horizontal network properties come to light when nervous (vertical) control is removed. It offers the name homeotaxy or ‘peer conformity’ for the general principle (allied to the community effect, Gurdon 1988) that constrains the parts of the whole to be in the same state within any given layer of the network – where layers correspond to ontogenetic stages in the development of the tissue – and discusses the question of a need and a name for this principle in Biology.

Noticed this in the cupboard today.

Apparently one of the best fish sauces you can get, although we at squidblog wouldn’t know because we don’t eat our friends. It also has its own website.

Following up yesterday’s BBC report on the opening of the new giant squid display at the Natural History Museum in London, the museum has added a very informative page to its website. You can also see a video of the preparation of this immense beast.

Please note: You MUST book a tour of the Darwin Centre in order to see Archie:

• tours are free
• tours last 30 minutes, and run throughout the day, seven days a week
• maximum six people per tour
• unsuitable for children under 10 years old - ie. Children under 10 are not permitted

To book
Visit any information desk on arrival, or call the Darwin Centre information desk +44(0)20 7942 6128.

From BBC News:

Giant squid grabs London audience
By Rebecca Morelle
BBC News science reporter

One of the biggest and most complete giant squids ever found is on display at London’s Natural History Museum. Measuring a monstrous 8.62m (28ft), the animal was caught off the coast of the Falkland Islands by a trawler. Researchers at the museum undertook a painstaking process to preserve the giant creature, which is now on show in a 9m- (30ft-) long glass tank. Giant squid, once thought to be sea serpents, are very rarely seen and live at depths of 200-1,000m (650-3,300ft). They can weigh up to a 1,000kg; the largest ever spotted measured a vast 18.5m and was found in 1880 off Island Bay in New Zealand.

“Most giant squid tend to be washed up dead on beaches, or retrieved from the stomach of sperm whales, so they tend to be in quite poor condition,” explained Jon Ablett, the mollusc curator at the Natural History Museum who led preservation efforts. As a result, finding such a large, complete specimen was something of a rarity, he said.

Archie the squid

The team nicknamed the creature Archie, after its Latin name Architeuthis dux, but it may have to revise this after finding out that the squid is probably female. It took several months to prepare the squid for display.

“The first stage was to defrost it; that took about four days. The problem was the mantle - the body - is very thick and the tentacles very narrow, so we had to try to thaw the thick mantle without the tentacles rotting,” Mr Ablett told the BBC News website.

The scientists did this by bathing the mantle in water, whilst covering the tentacles in ice packs, after which they injected the squid with a formol-saline solution to prevent it from rotting. The team then needed to find someone to build a glass tank which could not only hold the huge creature, but could leave the squid accessible for future scientific research, and they decided to draw upon the knowledge of an artist famed for displaying preserved dead animals.

“We contacted Damien Hirst’s group after seeing their animals preserved in formalin. They put us in touch with a company who could make these tanks,” explained Mr Ablett. The squid now resides in a glass tank, filled to the brim with preservative solution, and is one of 22 million specimens that can be seen as part of the behind-the-scenes Darwin Centre tour of the Natural History Museum.

Well, guess what - squidblog just happens to be in London right now, and we’ll go and visit this beast the first chance we get. Stay tuned for photos and commentary.

There is another report here, and for a bit more background check out this thread in the TONMO forums.