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An Open Letter To Squid

Dear Squid of the World,Excuse me. What is this? I have been your friend and advocate for years...

With This Devoted Squid Mama, I Bid Farewell

Squid typically die after spawning. Their orphaned eggs are left alone in the cold brine to develop...

ICAD 2012: Top Ten Cephalopod Stories From The Last Year

To celebrate International Cephalopod Awareness Days, I decided to comb through all the cephalopod...

Scavenging Cephalopods: Mild-Mannered Vampire Squid Just Want To Eat Waste

A couple of weeks ago ago, a debate about the existence of scavenging cephalopods broke out on...

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Danna StaafRSS Feed of this column.

Cephalopods have been rocking my world since I was in grade school. I pursued them through a BA in marine biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by a PhD dissertation at... Read More »

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The Tiniest Squid Is Also The Winningest Squid

The Tiniest Squid Is Also The Winningest Squid

May 03 2012 | 7 comment(s)

I love four things about this story.

First: there is an All England squid catching championship. Did you know that? I did not know that.

Second: the weather this year was so bad the competitors were almost completely skunked. Almost.

Third: This is the cutest trophy shot I have EVER SEEN.


Photo: Robin Howard/BNPS
A Zero-Sum Game Of Squid?

A Zero-Sum Game Of Squid?

Apr 24 2012 | 2 comment(s)

I may have mentioned before that squid fishermen of the Falkland Islands go after two very different species: Illex argentinus, the shortfin squid, an open-ocean animal that migrates between Falkland and Argentinian waters, and Loligo gahi, the Patagonian squid, which is present in both Falkland and Argentinian waters but doesn't move much between the two.
Cephalo-fiction!

Cephalo-fiction!

Apr 16 2012 | 16 comment(s)

It's called Knowledge and it's a short story by John Frizell in Nature. Did you know that Nature publishes short stories, one at the back of every issue? They do!
No human could have grasped the squid's name. Human eyes could not distinguish the differences in shades of colour or register the intervals at which they changed to define the unique pattern that was his name. The squid was concentrating hard because he was holding two conversations at once, one deliberately misleading, the other closer to the truth, as he glided through the deep ocean, his mantle pulsing gently, powering him with puffs of water.
Cephalopod April Fools' Roundup

Cephalopod April Fools' Roundup

Apr 10 2012 | 0 comment(s)

As a gullible sucker myself, I appreciate the cultural tradition of having one day out of the year when I know not to take anyone seriously.

Technologists may produce the most labor-intensive April Fools' Jokes, but cephalopods know how to have their fun, too. Here's the octopus "gesture to speech" technology that wowed us all just nine short days ago: