Urban artist Phlegm took a break from painting on walls to create this squid canal boat in England. Unurth has more pics of the street ... er, canal art: Link

If you like octopuses and squids, you’ll love this collection of marine lithographs from the collection “I Cefalopodi!” at the the Biodiversity Heritage Library on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution. See nine pieces of the collection at BibliOdyssey. Link

This fascinating scene takes place in a restaurant in Hakodate, Japan. The squid is actually dead, but the sodium in the soy sauce causes its muscles to contract. YouTube user richayanami writes:

Dancing squid dishes seem to be at many restaurants in Hakodate, but this particular one may have been the only one with this bowl set. The place was located in the seafood restaurant arcade across the parking lot from Hakodate Station if anyone is interested.[...]

The brain is probably still in the body, but a significant part of its nervous system, the giant axon, I believe extends into the mantle, which has been cut. I’m not an expert on squids so I can’t really come to a definite conclusion about that. As you can see in the beginning, it’s not moving at all when it’s brought out so I assume that signals around the body have stopped, whereas a fresh intact squid out of water would constantly move around.

-via Geekologie

Plarchie is a 8-meter long squid knitted entirely out of plastic bags! Deadly Knitshade made and displayed him at London’s Natural History Museum, where he also posed for pictures with a statue of Charles Darwin. See more pictures at Whodunnknit. Link -via Ectoplasmosis

This video is in Japanese, so I’m not sure what the characters are saying. But it appears to be a trailer for a film about a squid who is a professional wrestler and the woman who loves him. Here‘s the IMDB listing for this totally awesome movie.

via WTF Japan, Seriously!?

So far, they don’t have opposable thumbs or laser eyes, but some squid can jump out of the water. Specifically, the Caribbean reef squid can leap 50 times its own body length:

Marine biologist Silvia Maciá was boating on the north coast of Jamaica in the summer of 2001 when she noticed something soar out of the sea. At first she thought it was a member of the flying fish family—a group of marine fish that escape predators by breaking the water’s surface at great speed and gliding through the air on unusually large pectoral fins. But after tracing the creature’s graceful arc for a few seconds, Maciá realized this was no fish. It was a squid—and it was flying.

With her husband and fellow biologist Michael Robinson, Maciá identified the airborne cephalopod as a Caribbean reef squid (Sepioteuthis sepioidea)—a lithe, torpedo-shaped critter with long, undulating fins. They think the squid was startled by the noise of the boat’s outboard engine and estimated that the 20-centimeter-long mollusk reached a height of two meters above the water and flew a total distance of 10 meters—50 times its body length. What’s more, the squid extended its fins and flared its tentacles in a radial pattern while airborne, as though guiding its flight.

“It was doing this weird thing with its arms where it had them spread out almost in a circle,” recalls Maciá, who teaches at Barry University in Florida. “It had its fins kind of flared out as much as it could—it really looked liked it was flying. It hadn’t accidentally flopped out of the water; it was maintaining its posture in a certain way. It was doing something active.”

Link via Geekologie | Photo: Bob and Deb Hulse

While the notion that a few animals produce polarization signals and use them in communication is not new, 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 another while staying camouflaged to fish or mammalian predators, most of which do not have polarization vision.

Mäthger notes that these messages could contain information regarding the whereabouts of other squid, for example. “Whether signals could also contain information regarding the presence of predators (i.e., a warning signal) is speculation, but it may be possible,” she adds.

Link via Make | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user Sharife used under Creative Commons license

I realize that if you go peruse the NeatoHub, you’re probably looking for more great links and you might not make it all the way down to the bottom of the page. I did, and was delighted by the artwork by Adam Koford (Apelad), so I thought you might enjoy it as well.

The driver, a 71-year-old Oxnard man, was uninjured in the crash and no other vehicles were involved, the California Highway Patrol said.

The truck was traveling south on Highway 101, south of Los Coches Road, when the driver allowed the truck and trailer to go off the road, overturning on a dirt frontage road adjacent to the highway, CHP officers said.

As the truck and trailer flipped, the load of squid spilled onto the frontage road and into a broccoli field.

The highway was not blocked, but everyone involved in the cleanup probably lost their appetite. Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Flickr user Georgie Sharp)

Colossal squids are found in the oceans around Antarctica, and were only recently photographed alive. Measuring up to 14 meters long and weighing up to 200 kgs, it is easily the largest invertebrate in the world. It also has the largest eyes of any living animal; these eyes allow it to see in the dark, an useful ability for an animal that spends most of its life in the deepest parts of the sea. Colossal squids are powerful, formidable predators armed with eight arms and two long tentacles; unlike the giant squid, which is armed with suction cups only, the colossal squid has both suction cups AND “tiger-like claws” on its tentacles, which allows it to catch bigger prey and to defend itself against its two main enemies, the sperm whale and the giant sleeper shark, both of which can sustain serious injury while trying to attack one of these squids.

Read about more of these little-publicized species at Listverse. Link -via Look at This

“Most of the fish we catch are better to eat, but they don’t give you much of a fight.”

He said the squid were “trying to crawl around and blow ink all over everybody.”

Mr Woodbury said that 400 of the creatures had been caught since Friday night.

The animals weigh between 20 and 40 pounds, but a few fishermen have reeled in 60-pound squid.

The Humboldt squid is also called the jumbo squid or jumbo flying squid and squirts ink to protect itself.

They can grow up to 100 pounds in weight and six feet long and follow food sources.

Link via Digg | Image: NASA

1st Place Winner:

Water flea Daphnia atkinsoni. This specimen has a "crown of thorns," a defensive trait induced in offspring only when the parents sense chemical cues released by one of their main predators, the tadpole shrimp Triops cancriformis. The water flea´s exoskeleton (exterior structure, green) and subcellular details within the organism (nuclei – tiny blue dots) are both visible – Dr. Jan Michels, Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, Germany.

5th Place Winner:

Unicellular alga Penium, treated with the microtubule poison oryzalin – by David Domozych, Skidmore College.

Ma. Ivy Clemente of Pulilan, Philippines, got an honorable mention in this year’s competition, but I think her entry is the most stunning. Behold, the cancer alphabet:

Spelling out the diagnosis: Glandular structures from fibroadenoma and nodular prostatic hyperplasia cases – by Ma. Ivy Clemente, Pulilan, Philippines

Fetal cat coronal section – by Mike Peres, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York.

Squid embryo – by Rachel Fink, Mount Holyoke College, Massachussetts

Link: Winners Gallery of the 2009 Olympus BioScapes

“It is difficult to imagine how you can have something as soft and sloppy as an ink sac fossilised in three dimension, still black, and inside a rock that is 150 million years old.

“The structure is similar to ink from a modern squid so we can write with it. I suppose we could theoretically use it for food colouring, too, but I don’t think I will try tasting it.”

A sample of the ink has been sent to Yale University for further analysis. Link -via the Presurfer

(image credit: BMPS)

The evolution of the eye is fascinating stuff (in a nutshell, the eye is so complex that Creationists claim that it couldn't possibly have evolved ... and scientists countered that not only did the eye evolved into being, it is so useful that it did so more than one time)

Well, add this to the mix: Margaret McFall-Ngai and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that squids can detect light through an organ other than their eyes (and if that's not cool enough, it's done through a symbiosis with luminous bacteria!):

"Until now, scientists thought that illuminating tissues in the light organ functioned exclusively for the control of the intensity and direction of light output from the organ, with no role in light perception," says McFall-Ngai. "Now we show that the E. scolopes squid has additional light-detecting tissue that is an integral component of the light organ."

The researchers demonstrated that the squid light organ has the molecular machinery to respond to light cues. Molecular analysis showed that genes that produce key visual proteins are expressed in light-organ tissues, including genes similar to those that occur in the retina. They also showed that, as in the retina, these visual proteins respond to light, producing a physiological response.

"We found that the light organ in the squid is capable of sensing light as well as emitting and controlling the intensity of luminescence," says co-author Nansi Jo Colley, SMPH professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences and of genetics.

Link

Who doesn’t love giant squids? Whether you are fascinated by Kraken, love reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or you are actually into teuthology (that’s the study of cephalopods), we’ve got you covered!

The super-talented Nathan Mazur of scaredofbees (great stuff there, btw) has designed the perfect T-shirt for you. Here’s the tentacle-y fun shirt from the Neatorama Online Store: Link

More I Love Science designs:

NEW – I Love Forensics	I Love Math (now also available in black)	I Love Science, and others also in Onesie/Kids

We’re also slowly but surely building the web’s best selection of geekstastic Science T-shirts and cheeky Scientists Do It T-Shirts – so check ‘em out!

"Neatorama isn’t a cephalopod blog," but here’s a marvelous art of squid art by Skot Olsen, titled "Blessed Saint Architeuthis" (2008). Skot loves the sea but was stung by a jellyfish at a tender young age, which explains a lot about his artwork: Link – via Ectoplasmosis

It’s hard to describe Candice Tripp’s art – it’s a little dark and macabre but with a touch of gentle humor. This one is titled "The Escape" – and yes, that’s a splotch of ink on the girl’s head: Link – via Misadventures in Crazytown

Ever wish a squid could sit on your head all day? Well, here’s your chance. It’s even better than a real squid, since it won’t make you stink and doesn’t feel slimy. Instructables has all the details you need to create your own squid hat.

Link