Oh criminy, are we still confused? Didn't we go over this like a zillion times? Wasn't Deep-Sea News' excellent primer on how Humboldt Squid are Not The Same Thing as Giant Squid clear enough?

Sigh. Just let a few fishermen catch a few hundred Humboldt squid, and suddenly the headlines are blaring: GIANT SQUID INVADE CALIFORNIA ZOMG!1!!

I have been known to admit that I fell in love with cephalopods because they are the closest things to aliens coexisting with us on our home planet. (I love aliens.) Clearly I am not the only person to come to this conclusion:

The giant Humboldt squid could be some sort of alien species from a 1980s science fiction film. Flashing white and red like a Klingon stealth cloak, they blanket an area to attack and devour any creature they can, including each other. They employ long tentacles covered with suckers and claw-like "teeth" to grasp their prey and bring it in to a large, hard black beak, which resembles that of a demon macaw.

Not a whole lot of squid news this week, although the cephalopod mailing list continues to host a lively discussion, spurred by that coconut octopus story, of concepts like "tool use" and "intelligence". Everyone's got a different perspective! One of my favorite questions: is an archerfish that spits a jet of water to knock an insect off a branch a "tool user"? Is "using" a jet of water different from "using" a rock or a coconut shell?

Hey, I'm back! I went to a rockin' party and an awesome conference and now I am full of interesting tales. Also, I am full of determination to finish my thesis this year, and an unfortunate byproduct of that resolution is a need to cut down on my blogging. Therefore, as you can see from my mutilated banner, squid-a-day is temporarily squid-a-week, until I finish my degree.

So once a week I will be delivering a concentrated dose of squid! Are you ready for the first? It's extra concentrated, since I had to cover the first twelve days of the new year . . .