Entries Tagged "squid"

Page 93 of 97

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Egg Sac Baffles Researchers

From Norway:

“It was 50-70 centimeters (19.5-27.5 inches) in diameter and looked like a huge beach ball. It was transparent but had a kind of thick, red cord in the middle. It was a bit science-fiction,” Svensen told newspaper Bergens Tidende’s web site.

The Svensens contacted associate professor Torleiv Brattegard at the University of Bergen, and other experts were notified to try and solve the mystery.

[…]

Colleague Arne Fjellheim, who works with Stavanger Museum, tipped off Brattegard that the organism resembled a photograph from New Zealand that he had seen. A zoology professor and squid expert in New Zealand corroborated by email – the peculiar gelatinous ball was a large squid egg sack.

“The gelatinous lump contains several fertilized eggs. This is not at all a common sight, because squids are some of the most inaccessible animals known,” Fjellheim told iBergen.no.

Fjellheim told Aftenposten.no that squid are found in such numbers along the Norwegian coast that they are a commercial catch, and used mostly as bait. Despite this, extremely little is known about their biology.

Posted on November 10, 2006 at 2:14 PM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Greenland Squid Balls

A snack:

These snacks had a cheese puff-like consistency and were a bit larger than your typical cheese balls. They had a somewhat fishy but sweet taste upon first biting in, and then the fishiness got stronger and worse with subsequent bites, with a hot taste also kicking in and then lingering for the aftertaste. Everyone who tried these just hated them. Nobody was able to eat more than one squid ball. The hot flavor on its own might have possibly been good, but we’ll never know, because the squid taste was bad, and the combination of flavors just didn’t work and tasted awful.

Posted on October 27, 2006 at 4:31 PM • View Comments

Friday Squid Blogging: Steganographic Squid

Seems that some squid can hide messages in their skin:

In the animal world, squid are masters of disguise. Pigmented skin cells enable them to camouflage themselves—almost instantaneously—from predators. Squid also produce polarized skin patterns by regulating the iridescence of their skin, possibly creating a “hidden communication channel”? visible only to animals that are sensitive to polarized light.

[…]

Mäthger and Hanlon’s findings present the first anatomical evidence for a “hidden communication channel”? that can remain masked by typical camouflage patterns. Their results suggest that it might be possible for squid to send concealed polarized signals to one other while staying camouflaged to fish or mammalian predators, most of which do not have polarization vision.

My favorite security stories are from the natural world. Evolution results in some of the most interesting security countermeasures.

Posted on September 29, 2006 at 2:59 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.