11 posts tagged “squid”

this is what four copies of a 265-page thesis on squid looks like, immediately prior to submission.

that is all.

ok, i know i've been quiet on the whole colossal squid thing - busy week!  all you need to know is happening on the blog and webcams though the te papa site here. see you online :)

every once in a while, rumors of freshwater octopus or squid crop up (usually right around this time of year, in fact, as discussed over here on TONMO).  some people are, in fact, very taken with the idea; these folks may or may not also be fans of the tree octopus.  but sadly, no species of cephalopod has ever made the transition from sea to fresh water, as far as we can tell.

... until now! ;)

things have been a bit quiet - england is less stressful than france due to the (only semi-)reduced  language barrier, so there are less stories to relate.  also, i have been leading a rather sheltered existence inside this most impressive of edifaces.

this is the part i see the most of:

note  the large numbers of vials and jars of varying sizes and shapes.  so far i have been through about 150 lots, sorting out things i want to look at more closely.  some of the big ones haven't been opened in 40-100 years and present quite a challenge:

  ... and when they do eventually open, they often prove to belong to an entirely different group of squid from the one i'm studying.  so far i have come across no fewer than four large specimens marked 'Kondakovia' (a large antarctic onychoteuthid and therefore relevant to my thesis) that have turned out to in fact be the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis.  i do also have an interest in and use for these specimens and hope to look at them more closely later this week, but right now i have to prioritize thesis stuff.

i do get a little time to wander around the more cavernous front-of-house galleries, though, which are very worth seeing - i plan to do them more completely when my mom is here next week (she arrives tomorrow).

look, three days in a row!  i remember how this goes now.

i was going to write about an excellent book i just read and how it's influencing my everyday life, but i'm going to have to put that on hold because i also went to play with the SEM again today and i have cool pictures to show for it.  i thought i had already written about the SEM process here, but i can't find any posts about it, so i'll cheat by pulling in an explanation from my old site, below.  but first - the photos.

 
for this manuscript, there's been plenty of verbal/written describing and also pen-and-ink illustrating, but by far the most fun part of it has been working with the scanning electron microscope (SEM). basically this is a machine that bounces electrons off samples and lets you take magnified photos of extremely small and detailed things, by reading the reflected electrons to form an image, kind of like using sonar.  to do that, you need to have samples coated in a very thin layer of metal that will reflect the electrons but keep the detail, and to do that, the specimens have to be completely dry or the metal coating won't stick.

a private opinion of mine has just been publicly confirmed on the inter-web.  squid are cute! 

and to continue the theme, i present to you the brand new offspring of two close friends, born within a week of each other.  and who knows, maybe by posting them together here on the Site of Destiny (that i just made up), they will grow up half a world apart (in new zealand and finland), meet one day in, say, kenya while both studying rhinos, fall in love, and live happily ever after.  just remember, you heard it here first. 

hi.

i'm pregnant.  (pebbles, keep breathing.  mom, you too.)  no - not the kind of pregnant that everyone else seems to be these days, the literal biological kind that brings horrifically squashed internal organs and the physical gain of 50+ pounds and the prospect of baby showers (still working on that post, btw).  i have three friends due this week (well, one popped already), and while i follow their developments with interest, believe me, their imminent offspring are all the imminent offspring i need in my life, now and for about the next ten years.

i seem to be academically pregnant.  i have plenty of things i'd like to get written up here, but the manuscript i'm working on (not even technically the thesis right now, although this will be about another 1/4 of it) has grown from a few tiny cells of information to a stage where it's so big, i can't sit and comfortably do something else without it getting in the way.  it gives me carpal tunnel.  it makes me pee frequently (indirectly, due to increased tea consumption).  it wakes me up at night, with nightmares of some huge glaring oversight.  it has a specific deadline (three weeks from now) by which i absolutely want it to be born and on its way, otherwise it will get buried under the next round of overseas findings.  it also gives me the liberty to work from home, since i can do much of the finalizing on my laptop, makings lists of things i need to check on the specimens next time i'm in at the office.  i get cravings, mostly driven by the nagging knowledge of what's in the fridge, waiting to be eaten.  right now i can smell fresh bread.

i suspect that this state of affairs will continue approximately until i depart for europe, at the end of the month, at which stage things will probably start picking up again here - the period of time during which i historically posted the most frequently (in the 7 months since this site's inception) was while i was overseas on the last trip.  so hang in there, i'm sure there are photos and adventures aplenty waiting to debut.

but in the meantime, here's a glimpse of the ungainly, many-armed, many-paged thing waiting to see the light of day.  to me, orchestrating the final assembly is like watching the tiny, perfect fingernails grow, but i guess i understand if it turns out to be the kind of thing only a mother can love.

some days i can hype up squid like nobody's business.  some days, though, i have to be a party-pooper and debunk some squid myths.  today is one of those days.  since i happen (through pure coincidence... i swear... ) to be on the site of the action, i will report to you what i have learned from the resident expert, tree of life squid content contributor dick young.

some alert readers (hi, multiple levels!  hi, shortnamed!  hi, shmemil!) have emailed me, asking about the 'octosquid' found in hawaii last week.  (see this,  this, or this online story.)  summary: on the hawaiian coast, a small reddish cephalopod was sucked up through a pipe from about 3000 ft and found live in a filter.  this cephalopod appeared to be a squid, but only had 8 arms (no tentacles), so someone who knew that squid were supposed to have tentacles called it the 'octosquid.'  and the press ran with it.  as it turned out though, it was a 'normal' squid but the tentacles had been broken off during the trip up the pipe or in the filter, which is a common injury in captured squid.  in some of the photos, you can see the two white tentacle stumps near the bases of the arms (specifically between arms III and IV, the bottom two arm pairs) - that's where they broke off.  so, this is not a missing link between octopus and squid.

but before you get too disappointed, there are some cool things about it - it's a new species (which means it hasn't been named yet, not that it evolved recently).  it belongs to the genus Mastigoteuthis and was originally believed to be the same as M. atlantica, but the pacific specimens (of which there are 20-30 in collections) are now recognized as something separate, so far called only  'Mastigoteuthis species A.'  this is also the first time this animal has ever been seen/photographed alive, and since squid look very different dead, this gives some insight into its natural behaviors and coloration.  not that swimming around in a tank in your death throes is natural behavior - but it's more than had ever been observed before.

RIP 'octosquid,' but welcome M. sp. A!  and yes, i got to have a look at the specimen - it's in the office where i've been working this week.  :) 

(28 may) the museum received some fresh specimens last week (from a research cruise, actually, so 'bycatch' is inaccurate but fit in with the b-themed titles), including 14 species of cephalopod!  so i got the chance to have the first look at them, photograph them, and take tissue samples, before they were fixed in formalin.  i am also working on identifying them, and have most of the squids down to genus at least.  (the octopus IDs will come from someone a little more knowledgeable.) 

preliminarily, the specimens include: Lycoteuthis lorigera, Histioteuthis bonnellii, Teuthowenia pellucida, Liocranchia reinhardti, Bathyteuthis bacidifera, Octopoteuthis sp. (danae or sicula I think), ?Sepioloidea sp., and Egea or Megalocranchia sp.  none are onychoteuthids, but it's the first time i've seen most of these species, so it's exciting for me in an extremely dry taxonomic kind of way.

two other things of interest also came in - two tentacles from an (estimated) 2m ML colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), which are the first colossal squid bits for the museum, and also a baby pygmy sperm whale.
hooray for esoteric squid species!  :)

hey squid fans!  a press release went out yesterday about what is currently believed to be the largest colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni) specimen known to science. 

the specimen is estimated at 450kg and about 10m long, although we won't know for a few weeks for sure - it's frozen and on its way to wellington.  from the pictures, though (see here and here, or here on youtube), it does look like a big one - i can't wait to see it!  as far as i know, it was taken a few weeks ago, in the usual way: came up on a long-line in antarctica, wrapped around and happily munching on some toothfish.  the press release states that it was nearly dead when it reached the surface, which may be true, although the trip to the surface would not necessarily be fatal to a large squid in antarctica - the temperature difference between deep and shallow (which is what normally kills deep-sea squid brought to the surface - not the pressure!) is minimal.  but, supposing the squid was near death, the fact that the fishermen carefully brought it on board and stored it for examination does provide a unique opportunity for examining and learning from an extremely large, relatively intact specimen of this species.

at this point, unfortunately, not a lot more is known about this specimen, but it is being discussed here on TONMO (the octopus news magazine online).  and of course, i'll post updates when i know more!

in the meantime, i'll leave you with a few facty little tidbits about our friend the colossal squid.  it is...

- known from antarctica, where it comprises about 78% (by weight) of the sperm whale's local diet
- believed to reach total lengths of about 12m - so this one, if truly 10m long, would be almost fully grown
- the only cranchiid squid with hooks in the middle of its arms and on its tentacles
- not the same species as 'the giant squid' (Architeuthis dux) - in a completely different family, in fact
- thought to be quite an active swimmer (based on the musculature of the mantle, and size and thickness of the fins)
- a species that has been known to science since 1925, but received remarkably little press before 2003
- in fact ginormous, but does not suck blood, eat penguins, or come from mars.  but thanks for asking.