For once! Check it out: the colossal squid gets pride of place as the first entry in the Daily Mail's "Monster mutant animals" photo gallery.

This species is believed to be the largest in the squid family in terms of mass and its limbs are equipped with sharp hooks - some swiveling, others three-pointed.

I actually didn't remember the swiveling hooks (how could I forget!?), so to assuage my doubt I went to check out Te Papa's incredible online colossal squid exhibition. Indeed, the anatomy page explains:

Wait. Which one?

Three, yes three, separate books with kraken in the title came out this year:

1. China Mieville's Kraken, fiction of the New Weird literary movement. I understand it does legitimately contain a giant squid. Comes highly recommended by an English major friend of mine.


2. HP Newquist's Here There Be Monsters: The Legendary Kraken and the Giant Squid, apparently a chronological account of giant squid in myth and science over the years. No personal recommendations one way or another.

The National Mall, that is.

The inaugural USA Science and Engineering Festival is going out with a bang this weekend. And by "bang" I mean "Grand Finale Expo," featuring hands-on science exhibits

from flight simulators, virtual reality environments and surgical robots to making virus structures with marshmallows and toothpicks.

Not to mention squid dissections! Stanford's Lou Bergeron gives us the scoop on the Squids 4 Kids booth that will be at the Expo:

So, one time for my middle school gym class I was required to write an essay about a sport. Any sport. Unfortunately, I hated all sports. Fortunately, I was blessed with a creative spirit, so I invented a new sport to write about. This is the opening paragraph of my essay:

Squid racing is exhausting, often frightening, disorienting, and dangerous to participate in. It is also exhilerating, fascinating, and it cultivates a deep friendship between man and mollusk. This informational paper will cover the care and training of squid, race course descriptions, and advice to squid racers.

Again fortunately, my gym teacher had a sense of humor, and was sufficently amused by my fictional "sport" to grant me full credit on the assignment.

Jessica Hilo writes in Miller-McCune, during an extensive analogy between bacteria and Mafia:

Off land, the Vibrio family is a spritely bunch. They are one of few bacteria that can communicate through quorum sensing — a family summit, if you will. Through quorum sensing, the Vibrios enhance symbiotic relationships they have with bioluminescent marine animals — feeding off decayed organic matter on the animal while assisting in reproduction, metabolism and camouflage.

Probably the most famous of these symbioses, of course, is that between Vibrio fischeri and the Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes.