The world's biggest squids (accurately named "giant" and "colossal") have the world's biggest eyes, which may seem like a no-brainer until you consider that they are by no means the world's biggest animals. And yet, their eyes are more than twice the size of a blue whale's. Why?

A group of Swedish, American, and Israeli scientists (gotta love that multicultural research!) suggests that big squid need big eyes to see their big predators--sperm whales. Specifically, big eyes are great for spotting the luminous clouds kicked up by sperm whales as they jostle the bioluminescent plankton of the deep.

Thanks to my awesome brother, I have now acquired and read the full text of the paper I blogged about yesterday: "Purification and in vitro antioxidative effects of giant squid muscle peptides on free radical-mediated oxidative systems."

I was promptly horrified by the authors' two-sentence background about the animals whose skin they were studying:

UPDATE: I've learned more about how antioxidants work since writing this post.

Maybe this is a sign that I've become cynical, but when I first read that peptides found in squid skin can slow aging, lower blood pressure, activate neurons, and reduce memory loss, I was like pshaw, right!