Monday, July 5, 2010

Cephalopod Links

First things first: a few recent cephalopods in popular news media:

Paul, the German octopus, successfully predicted yet another World Cup match.  An aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany had its animals place their bets on World Cup matches as a promotion, and the world discovered that Paul is the luckiest octopus to ever live.

In Australia, three men are arrested for stealing cuttlefish from a protected area of ocean.  The town police consider selling the catch as food - failing this, they will bury it.  I couldn't make this up.

In Oregon, researchers try to recruit fishermen to help them understand Humboldt squid population dynamics off the Oregon coast.

And some topical blog posts:

Marine Biologist William Gilley updates us on the progress of an expedition to study Humboldt squid in the Gulf of California.

A recipe for char-grilled baby octopus salad at Food Stories (this makes me sad, oh so sad, but I had to post it for the weirdness.)

Richard Ross gets very excited about a pair of Metasepia pfefferi getting it on (with video!)  I have to say, of all the animal mating rituals one could watch, cuttlefish are pretty easy on the eyes.  In all seriousness, though, culturing cephalopods is notoriously difficult, so this is probably a huge deal.

The Carnival of Evolution #25 is out at Culturing Science - take a moment learn about empathy in crows and all the other amazing things that the evolutionarily-minded blogosphere finds fit to write about.  You'll be glad you did.

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