Ecology & Zoology

You're toxic, I'm slipping under . . . The music video for Britney Spears' hit Toxic would have been so much better with truly toxic creatures in starring roles. Can you imagine the pop star serving…

Charles Darwin described a canid on the Falkland Islands, off the east coast of Argentina, but it has long been extinct.  Darwin called it Canis antarcticus, placing it in the same genus as the…

Yay! "Squid Says: What's For Dinner?" made it into the finalists*. To celebrate, here is one of my all-time favorite cephalopod pix. I know, I know, it's a not a squid! But isn't it the cutest? The…

In honor of the impending holiday, the LA Times offers up a selection of thirteen "Nightmares from the animal kingdom". No costumed ghouls, ghosts or goblins that may ring your doorbell this Oct. 31…

You've never seen anything like these photos. No one has. The captivating pictures show adult sperm whales feasting on a rare* giant squid. The coolest part of this story is not that someone saw…

The squid family Ommastrephidae includes my favorite Humboldt squid, along with a lot of other big-time commercial fishery species. How do they sustain the largest invertebrate fisheries in the world…

After yesterday's cliffhanger, I suppose I should explain what it means for a squid to fly. Can they control their aerial trajectory? Can they gain altitude, once airborne, which is the definition of…

Speaking of cephalopods which have surprised by not being too heavy to fly after all, I was reminded of one little cuttlefish who is actually too heavy to swim: Metasepia pfefferi, or Pfeffer's…

Okay, even though nobody commented on my post about the Ocean Bloggers Challenge (funding marine science for classrooms in need), enough donations have accrued to completely fund one of the projects…

A fine question! As is so often the case in science, the answer is both yes and no, depending on what kind of squid you are. Squid come in two metaphorical flavors: Myopsida and Oegopsida. They are…