Kraken comes to The O.C.

March 23, 2005 4:35 PM

Kraken comes to The O.C. More dead jumbo squid are washing up along Orange County's coastline, and although that's bad news for the creatures, it's good news for scientists eager to learn more about the mysterious deep-sea dwellers. If your calamarical appetite hasn't been quenched: Squidblog! Also, classical irony with Electra killing the Kraken.
posted by Dante5Inferno (13 comments total)

Oh man, I was ready to go all supermegasnarkobot on this FPP because I thought it was a fanboy post. But this is actually pretty interesting stuff.

Interesting in a is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-times way, that is. Should I have gotten that Acts of God contingency on my home owner's policy?

Squid creep me the hell out even though they taste good with lemon and tartar sauce.
posted by fenriq at 4:45 PM on March 23, 2005

Wonder if squid are cusp species, (I know there is a better term then that), that signal bigger biodiversity changes down the line.
posted by edgeways at 5:08 PM on March 23, 2005

what edgeways said; this totally seems ominous to me! those squid are no fools.
posted by atlatl at 5:12 PM on March 23, 2005

What's happenin' to my peeps?
posted by mistersquid at 5:28 PM on March 23, 2005

Welcome to the O.C., fish!
posted by Servo5678 at 5:31 PM on March 23, 2005

A 6-foot squid? You could make an awful big salad with that!

Actually the "meat" would probably be all tough and taste bland.
posted by clevershark at 5:42 PM on March 23, 2005

Welcome Squid Overlords
posted by mcstayinskool at 6:52 PM on March 23, 2005

Hodgkin and Huxley won the Nobel Prize for figuring out the mechanism of cell membrane conductance in neurons. To accomplish this, they needed a big chunk of neuron to experiment on, and they chose one of the largest in the animal kingdom: the squid giant axon.

The squid giant axon is found in normal squid. It's about a millimeter wide in the small squid H and H used---since invertebrates don't have myelinated axons, they just have to make them bigger for signals to travel faster and further.

Ever since I learned about the squid giant axon, I've been dying to know what the giant squid giant axon is like. Presumably---it's giant!

But these are just jumbo squid.

Maybe I'll see if I can e-mail that Professor Gilly.
posted by tss at 6:52 PM on March 23, 2005

Wow! 4mm! That's a giant axon!

Folks, that's one cell, and it's thicker than a coffee stirrer!
posted by tss at 7:06 PM on March 23, 2005

I'm not gonna lie, these jumbo squid are probably gonna give me nightmares. And the very idea of colossal squid scares the ba-jeezus out of me. All in all, I think it's safe to say that Metafilter is very scary tonight, perhaps the scariest it's been in some time. That is all.
posted by .kobayashi. at 9:37 PM on March 23, 2005

On that subject, you can Ask the Giant Squid about virtually anything.

Also worth checking out, the writings of Jeff VanderMeer.
posted by Goblindegook at 5:45 AM on March 24, 2005

Lou Zeidberg, a squid biologist

Oh man, I hope I'm not the only one who misread that as Zoidberg and immediately thought of Futurama.
posted by mikeh at 8:08 AM on March 24, 2005

Oh man, I hope I'm not the only one who misread that as Zoidberg and immediately thought of Futurama.

I don't think a guinea pig tricked these squid into beaching themselves.
posted by LionIndex at 8:53 AM on March 24, 2005