Entries Tagged "squid"

Page 81 of 97

Friday Squid Blogging: Preserving Giant Squid

At the Smithsonian:

At the centerof the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History’s gleaming new Sant Ocean Hall lies a preserved giant female squid—the arresting, spineless star among the vibrant exhibition’s animal specimens. Tentacles menacingly outstretched and seemingly frozen in time, the 24-foot squid embodies humans’ fascination with the briny deep. But this squid also symbolizes something else: an ongoing experiment in the chemistry of preservation, without which the Smithsonian’s new exhibition would not have been possible.

Also note the terrorism tie-in:

To create the exhibit, the Smithsonian had to work around post-9/11 rules restricting flammable materials, while maximizing the lifelike appearance of the squid for public display. They turned not to formalin or ethanol, but to a new fluorinated chemical called Novec, developed by 3M.

If we give up our preserved giant squids, then surely the terrorists have won.

Posted on November 21, 2008 at 4:20 PM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Natural Squid Steganography

Squid can communicate with each other without any other fish noticing:

Squid and their relatives have eyes that are sensitive to polarised light and to them and are known to use it to signal to one another. Their predators on the other hand, like seals or whales, don’t share this ability and cannot see the squids’ signals.

Most of all, the polarised iridescent light, is not affected by the chromatophores and passes through unaltered. This means that camouflaged squid can have entire visual conversations while remaining invisible to passing predators. In the world of squid, conversations carry secrets wrapped in lies.

Posted on October 10, 2008 at 4:58 PM • View Comments

1 … 79 80 81 82 83 … 97

Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.