Category: Critters

It’s not often that I can report a scandal for Squid Friday. Wednesday night, the History channel aired a program from its new series, Monster Quest, about a supposed ‘giant’ Humboldt squid, and whether it could be the famed Kraken of the past. Though the Humboldt typically are no more than a couple of meters […]

The legendary Washoe died this week: Washoe, a female chimpanzee believed to be the first non-human to acquire human language, has died of natural causes at the research institute where she was kept. I met Washoe when I was studying at Central Washington University and was lucky enough to take a linguistics course with Dr. Roger Fouts. […]

Perfect celebration for cat friday. Via Metafilter–be sure to check out comments. Even better: squid with human teeth for squid friday.

Cephalopodcast has found a couple of terrific old films on the ‘fish from hell’ from the Prelinger Archives. As the Cephalopodcast mentions, it’s not the footage so much as it is the accompanying voiceover. It’s also an interesting study in our earlier ‘science’ investigations, and the fact that in these old ‘science’ films, the scientists tend to […]

I couldn’t be a cephalopod fan without being excited about the discovery of the octosquid off of Hawaii. This seeming half octopus, half squid will lead to much interesting speculation. And it’s a beautiful creature, too. I could wish, though, that we could discover these creatures in circumstances other than them being accidental catches, recovered only to […]