Paleozoic cephalopods in a blanket!!!

Now that I am unemployed and living in a burnt out cornfield in the Midwest, I can focus a lot more time on finding amazing things like this site, courtesy of the Kentucky Geological Survey. Now I thought geological surveys had to do with, well, rocks and oil and fossils and the like. But no! They deal with hot dogs! I haven't seen anything this amazing since the octodog!

The site is an instructional how-to on making cephalopods in a blanket, I 'm guessing to feed future geologists? The page is under the "earth education" section. Apparently it was either, feed the kids rocks, or feed them cephalopods in a blanket. A great, albeit misinformed, quote on the site about making cephalopods in a blanket (or for short, CIBs): "This recipe uses a variation of the old pigs-'n-a-blanket theme in order to make edible cephalopods. Cephalopods were squid-like animals that lived in shells. They were very common in Paleozoic-era seas. They would probably have tasted like calamari (a fancy name for squid to trick people into eating it), but what are your chances of getting a child to eat squid?"

There is also an amazing diagram of how to cut the ends of the hot dogs into tentacles, obviously done on some fancy computer program intended to map oil fields (although not fancy enough to give the cephs enough tentacles):

Here are the CIBs before their amazing transformation:

And after! Voila! CIBs!

It's not hard to picture these little guys swimming peacefully in a Paleozoic sea, with little cinnamon roll nautiluses, jellyfish made of cotton candy, and little jelly bean isopods. Wheee!

¿Se habla cephalopod?

Connie and Matt recently traveled to Mexico, where they spotted this mysterious octopus. That has something to do with drinking?

This is what Connie had to say about it:
"we saw this somewhere between mexico city and san miguel de allende. we passed more than one of these things. maybe a restraunt chain? we were on the bus, so we couldn't investigate. (the bus was moving, hence the awkward image quality.)"

Very mysterious.

¡Que mysterioso!

Viva octopus lovin'!

Behold, Abdopus aculeatus, a small octopus that lives in the waters off of Sulawesi, Indonesia. Christine Huffard, a grad student at Berkeley (now a post-doc at the Monterey Bay Aquarium) was studying a large population of these octopuses and discovered some of their (until now) secret bedroom tactics.

This is all big news because everyone used to think octopuses were solitary and would just mate and then go their separate ways, without even an exchange of phone numbers or a goodbye text message. Robert Caldwell, a researcher at Berkeley had this to say about octopuses and their ways: "They're obsessively secretive, solitary and pretty spooky," Caldwell said. "If you watch them, they watch you back. It's hard to study them." Oh my god, octopuses are like the masons!

Researchers found that male Abdopus aculeatus will intently guard the females they choose to mate with. They will also strangle other males who try to get near their mate of choice. The press release for this story stated that the octopuses "hold hands" but this is actually referring to the fact that the male will insert his sperm releasing tentacle (known as the hectocotylus) and leave it inserted for a long time. If the female goes anywhere, the male gets dragged along...by his "hand."

Christine Huffard, PhD extraordinaire, also found that there were tiny males who would "sneak" matings with females. They did this by mimicking female colors, or hiding until the larger male went away--proof of the existence of metrosexual octopuses?

Finally, one other thing that I love about this story is that it found that males like larger female octopuses much more than tiny ones. That's right! Eat your sandwiches octopuses! Male octopuses do not like skinny bitches!

Thank you to Erin, Fabienne, and my mom for sending info about this my way!

I ruthlessly stole information from the Globe and Mail video, Berkeley news announcement, and NPR story for this post.

ivy league squid!

my friend marycat gave me this eons ago. behold, the yale squid:


he lives in the Peabody Museum's lobby, and he is watching you!


According to a postcard and info MC gave me, the squid is 37 feet long, and is a life-size representation of the giant squid Architeuthis dux. The model was made in the 1960's. How sweet would it be to have that hanging in your living room? Beats a weird ikea lamp any day.

in the event of a water landing, look under your seat for a squid tube flotation device.

Oh man, squid tubes for dinner again??? I'm the luckiest girl in the world!!! (from supremelobster.com) But points for Supreme Lobster on using the really fancy font to describe something that sounds pretty gross.
(*I know, these are just calamari before the deliciousness of frying. but tubes? as a word to describe a food?)

Run octopuses, run! The yuppies are after your tender tentacles!!!!

MORONG brought two articles from the NY times to my attention this morning (do you like how I don't even have to look for cephalopod stories? They just come to me! From the cephalopod fairies!)

Apparently cooking octopus is the new thing to do. You can click on the above link to see Mark Bittman man handling an octopus. Next, the curious cook is trying out different ways of prepping octopus. Apparently the best thing to do is brine it. Like a turkey. But it appears that no matter what, the octopus will turn out quite "gelatinous," a word I don't usually associate with "tasty."

I probably won't be trying out these recipes soon since I feel guilty eating octopus since I started this blog. I mean, someone who had a blog on how smart and cute and wonderful dogs are probably would stop eating them too. Even though hotdogs are so delicious.

Hexapus alert! Hexapus alert!

The blog has been receiving a rash of six legged octopus sitings and reports lately. The first came from Rik, of the Netherlands. (If you have ever spent five minutes with me, you will find out I am 1/2 Dutch, so I'm excited Dutch people are reading my blog.) He sent in the following image, which was drawn by his colleague's six year old:

(Rik said there was more info with the picture, but that didn't come through, so if you have time, send it in, Rik.)

What I suspect is that this six year old was telepathic and already knew about Henry the Hexapus from London:

Don't you just picture the octopus having a Cockney accent? And complaining about the freakish eight legged octopuses in its tank? Thanks to Brendan for sending in the breaking news about the Hexapus!