Hey, I'm in New Zealand, home of the colossal squid! I believe--oh yes, Scientific Blogging has seen mention of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltonii before. Suffice it to say here that M. hamiltonii, the colossal squid, is the largest squid in the world discovered to date. Yes, larger than giant squid. The only place you can see one (unless you are lucky (?) enough to be on a fishing boat in the Southern Ocean) is on display at the Te Papa museum in Wellington.

Sadly, although I am in New Zealand, I won't have time to go to Wellington, and thus the colossal squid will continue in its tragic state of not-being-viewed-by-me. The obvious solution is to return at a later date. When I do, I'll report back on THE LARGEST SQUID IN THE WORLD!!!

Unless an even larger squid species has been discovered by then, which is quite possible, and when it does happen, I fully expect it to be named the "ginormous squid." (People, that word is now in the dictionary, and the prescriptive grammarian in me cringes.)

As a side note, I'm sorry that squid-a-day is not so much happening every day. It probably won't get better when I come back from overseas, either, because of holidays and conferences and thesis-writing and that sort of bother. Depending on how things go, I may officially dial it back to squid-a-week for a while . . .


* Apparently this is an actual recipe.