Fun with Cephalopods
Cephalopods are awesome. They are incredibly sexy and the most intelligent class of invertebrates. Due to the totally bomb-ass nature of these head-foots, I am hereby dedicating this months edition of "Awe and Wonder" to the cephalopod. And what better way to begin than with the sex life of octopuses!
Until recently, not much was known about the mating habits of octopodes due to their shyness (I dont blame them; Id be a little frigid if some pervy scholar were taking notes on how I like to get it on, too). But some intrepid biologists at UC Berkeley studying the octopus species Abdopus aculeatus have observed a number of surprising behaviors in the little Lotharios:
...macho octopuses that didn't just mate with the first female that crossed their path. Many picked out a specific sex partner and jealously guarded her den for several days, warding off rivals to the point of strangling them if they got too close. When flirting or fighting, they would signal their manliness by displaying striped body patterns.
That sounds like more than a few of my ex-boyfriends. Strangling, striped body patterns... Chris, you were an octopus all along!
Researchers also saw small "sneaker" males that moved in on unsuspecting conquests by masquerading as females. They did this by swimming low to the ground in feminine fashion and not displaying their "male" brown stripe.
So if the pulpo macho thing doesnt work out, the little dudes simply continue in the venerable tradition of Publius Clodius Pulcher and cross-dress to get to the ladies. I like this a lot; just think of a sea full of a bunch of little eight-legged Dr. Frank-N-Furters. So posh!
Moving across the cephalopods, we come to the squid. Now, we all know that cephalopods are quite squishy and apparently enjoy using this trait to crawl into jars (hat tip to the inimitable Karl Pilkington), so at some point Im certain that quite a few people have begun to wonder how something so... so... gelatinous could manage to exist with a beak as hard and as sharp as it has. The critters are made for cutting themselves (whether or not squids enjoy the Cure is yet to be seen.)
Researchers at UC Santa Barbara (you Californians have all the fun!) have been studying the Humboldt squid, Dosidicus gigas, in order to figure out how this incredible beak works. Its actually pretty amazing. The tip of the squids beak is exceedingly stiff, while the part attached to the squids body is 100 times more pliable, keeping it from tearing into the soft bits while still permitting the tearing-into of the soft bits of others.
UCSB engineer Frank Zok lays it out for us:
You can imagine the problems you'd encounter if you attached a knife blade to a block of Jell-o and tried to use that blade for cutting. The blade would cut through the Jell-o at least as much as the targeted object. In the case of the squid beak, nature takes care of the problem by changing the beak composition progressively, rather than abruptly, so that its tip can pierce prey without harming the squid in the process. It's a truly fascinating design!
Truly fascinating, Dr. Zok!
Zoks co-author, Herb Waite, focuses on something rather different than just the construction of a little beaknamely, what that beak can do:
Squids can be aggressive, whimsical, suddenly mean, and they are always hungry. You wouldn't want to be diving next to one. A dozen of them could eat you, or really hurt you a lot.
Why are squids such fucking assholes? While their cousins are simply content strangling passers-by and dressing up like the opposite sex, squids run rampant through the ocean eating people or hurting them a lot. The Kraken is apparently real and lives off the coast of Santa Barbara. Take that, hippies!
Actually, the more I read about the Humboldt squid, the more I am convinced that this creepy cephalopod is probably the Antichrist. And, like any good Antichrist, homeboy is situating himself in Northern California.
This ravenous species of squid has left its usual habitat and has settled along the Pacific coast of the United States, eating up a number of species that we humans like to eat. The above video is worth watching if only to see a bunch of grizzled old fisherdudes completely freak out over these creatures, which, like some nightmarish Lovecraftian dream, eat anything that moves in a manner described as similar to how we eat corn on the cob. Anything that moves does, apparently, include humans. The fact that the first fisherman interviewed describes them as like some kind of an alien thats about to come after [you] only serves to confirm the obvious: the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu are hanging out in the San Francisco Bay, eating people like corn, and waiting until the stars are right.
So, while octopuses are our sexy friends with whom we can rassle and dress up in womens clothing, the squids are their evil twins bent on enslaving humanity and raising us as mere cattle. Like most people, I once thought the intelligence of these creatures to be nifty and super-cool, but it is indeed a great deal more sinister. As I write, I am forming a non-profit organization to investigate this tentacled peril. If you are interested in donating to this worthy cause, please send money, size 37 Louboutins, and/or first editions of 19th and 20th century occult texts to Flux Suicide c/o Grand Central Station.
Flux, of course, is quite fond of Northern California and sincerely hopes that you are not consumed by demon squids any time in the near future: certainly not before I make it to Zeitgeist again.
Unknowable Space Horror Is Coming, Look Busy!
As I have long suspected, Howard Phillips Lovecraft's tales of eldritch horrors beyond mortal ken were seeded with the grains of truth.
Ten years ago now, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association recorded an ultra-low frequency sound around 50º S 100º W in the Pacific Ocean. This sound matches the audio profile of a living creature. However, the frequency of the sound implies a creature much larger than even the world's largest known creature, the blue whale. This mysterious sound has come to be known as the Bloop.
I have come to believe that the sound's origin was from just a short distance away, 47.9º S, 126.43º W, which you and I both know as the coordinates of the nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh. Brave scientists at BloopWatch.org share this hypothesis, and we tremble in dread, for great Cthulhu is waking. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Please eat me last.
Or so I worried, but now it looks like we'll be driven ill and insane first. As prophesied in "The Colour Out of Space", death and terror is raining down on us from the sky. This weekend, in Puno, Peru, a meteorite fell to earth. Of course, it brought the unknowable and horrifying along for the ride.
Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a "strange odour," local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP.
Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being taken to hospital, Mr Lopez said.
Ahem:
Winter came early, and was very cold. Ammi saw Nahum less often than usual, and observed that he had begun to look worried. The rest of his family too, seemed to have grown taciturn; and were far from steady in their church-going or their attendance at the various social events of the countryside. For this reserve or melancholy no cause could be found, though all the household confessed now and then to poorer health and a feeling of vague disquiet. Nahum himself gave the most definite statement of anyone when he said he was disturbed about certain footprints in the snow.
You will, of course, agree in the face of the evidence presented that we are dealing with the same non-humanoid, mutagenic, extraterrestrial "colour." Try not to buy any Peruvian skunk-cabbage this autumn, beloved readers.
Regardless, we're all going to die.
Flux has got her Mi-Go brain cylinder prepared for her exit from this doomed planet. How about you?