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Female squid exhibit sexually dimorphic tunable leucophores and iridocytes. Just so you know.
Here’s the story in more accessible language.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Even I think this is weird.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
A 30-foot-long giant squid has washed ashore in Cantabria, Spain. It died at sea, with a broken tentacle.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Opens spring 2014.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
The Grimalditeuthis bonplandi is the only known squid to use its tentacles to fish:
Its tentacles are thin and fragile, and almost always break off when it’s captured. For ages, people thought it lacked tentacles altogether until a full specimen was found in the stomach of a fish. Weirder still, its clubs have neither suckers nor hooks. Instead, they are flanked by a pair of leaf-shaped membranes. Why?
Now, after observing a live individual off the coast of California, Hendrik-Jan Hoving from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California thinks he knows what how the squid uses its feeble tentacles. They’re not grasping limbs, but fishing lures. By waving the membranes, the squid uses its clubs to mimic the movements small animals and attract its prey.
Academic paper.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
The bacterium Vibrio fischeri is a squid terraformer. Although it can live independently in seawater, it also colonises the body of the adorable Hawaiian bobtail squid. The squid nourishes the bacteria with nutrients and the bacteria, in turn, act as an invisibility cloak. They produce a dim light that matches the moonlight shining down from above, masking the squid’s silhouette from predators watching from below. With its light-emitting microbes, the squid becomes less visible.
Margaret McFall-Ngai from the University of Wisconsin has been studying this partnership for almost 25 years and her team, led by postdoc Natacha Kremer, have now uncovered its very first moments. They’ve shown how the incoming bacteria activate the squid’s genes to create a world that’s more suitable for their kind. And remarkably, it takes just five of these microbial pioneers to start the terraforming (teuthoforming?) process.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Diamondback squid could be a source of food. No word on taste.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
The incomplete specimen weighs over 160 lbs. And here’s a map of squid spottings.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Structural colors rely exclusively on the density and shape of the material rather than its chemical properties. The latest research from the UCSB team shows that specialized cells in the squid skin called iridocytes contain deep pleats or invaginations of the cell membrane extending deep into the body of the cell. This creates layers or lamellae that operate as a tunable Bragg reflector. Bragg reflectors are named after the British father and son team who more than a century ago discovered how periodic structures reflect light in a very regular and predicable manner.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.