Having recently graduated, I was cleaning up and moving out of my lab, and in particular, I was deciding what to do with the animals in the aquarium room. I had several small aquariums with young squid in them--not Humboldt squid, oddly, but glass squid, those ethereal denizens of the deep.

The first remarkable observation, as I watched the small transparent squid jetting around their aquarium, was that I could actually visualize the low Reynolds numbers at which they were moving. (Smaller animals have lower Reynolds numbers, indicating that they encounter water to be a more viscous medium, more like honey or molasses.) I could actually see rippling lines of movement in the water around the squid as they struggled to push themselves through a viscous environment.

Second, and even more remarkable, was that these baby squid were eating. Not just nibbling, either, they were stuffing themselves. I had put copepods and brine shrimp into the water with them, and they were cramming these tiny prey items greedily into their mouths.

Even though they were glass squid, and not Humboldt squid, I was delighted. It's true that I spent many years trying unsuccessfully to feed baby Humboldt squid. But it's also true, at least as far as I know, that no one has ever raised baby glass squid, either, so in a way it was just as exciting to see them eating.