September 8, 2022 • 43 mins
Squids are very closely related to our old friend the octopus, but there are some key differences. You can learn all of this and more by simply clicking the play button right now.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and this is Stuff you Should Know
the podcast. That's right, this is our octopus adjacent uh.
(00:23):
Continued love for cephalopods episode on one of the weirdest
looking creatures on planet Earth, the squid. Not just weird looking, Chuck,
also pretty smart, widely cannibalistic, and beaked. Yeah, they're weird
looking animals, man, the squid. Imagine if a human had
(00:44):
its face in its belly button and no arms, and
that's kind of what a squid is, right, And also
our esophagus went through our brain on the way to
our stomach. Imagine that that is really weird. They look
like they're uh, they look sort of like an octopus
wearing a big papal hat. Yeah, let's just sit here
(01:07):
and take weird descriptions of of squid for the rest
of the episode because I like it. They're very very
strange creatures, but they are awesome and like you said,
possibly as smartest dogs. Yeah, we'll get to that for sure.
But um, squid have been around for a very long time.
Exactly when is not quite certain. But at least a
(01:27):
hundred million years from what I've seen, and um, since
that time, there there have been either a plethora of
species three hundred or it's been whittled down to three
hundred species. I'm not entirely certain, but those three hundred
species of squid are basically divided between two suborders of squid.
And for my money, Chuck, I love it when suborders
(01:49):
are like these are like this, and those are like that,
and that's that. And this is one of those instances.
You've got my opposida and oisida. I pro this too.
Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't, and I didn't pay off.
So that's that's the lesson here. Everybody, don't practice. Don't
even bother. I figured one of those in the second group,
(02:10):
one of those first two letters would have been silent,
but they're both pronounced. That's that's my take of um
Latin pronunciation. Oh we gaps that. Uh, all right, So
we'll talk a little bit about a few examples of
the my opposite a sub order. First, Uh, these fellows
live in a pretty shallow water compared to their friends.
(02:31):
And as you'll see, some you know squid, uh, certainly
the giant squid live very very very very in very
deep waters. Um. But the that first group has uh
suckers only, and as you will see, that's uh not unusual.
But that's just one thing that they can have on
those tentacles. They have a transparent membrane that covers their eyeballs.
(02:55):
And here's a few of those dudes. One very common
one is the California gets squid and they live in
very shallow waters and the eastern Pacific basically from Mexico
all the way up to Alaska. Yeah. I saw that
that Alaska as recent as as recent as two thousand fifteen,
and that they think they're moving northward because of climate change. Actually,
(03:17):
tons of these in the Monterey Bay and where they're
fished very heavily. And by the way, we should thank
Ocean Bites dot org. Uh. And it's not a seafood website,
believe or not. H The Guardian, the Spruce Eats, which
is a food website, and our old friends at house
Stuff works for most of the stuff. Yep. Um. There's
also the common European squid for our listeners in the UK. Hey, everybody,
(03:42):
these are the squid that you swim with every day.
They're found in the Mediterranean. You could also find them
in the Atlantic, the Eastern Atlantic, and they are a
little less shallow than the California market squid. They swim
anywhere from twenty which is undred and fifty feet, and
they weigh up to about three pounds on average, and
they're about sixteen inches long. UM. So it's like a
(04:05):
good sized, decent sized squid that you have to hold
with like two hands. You know, if you're picking one
up out of the water, which you shouldn't do, No,
you shouldn't do that. Then you've got your Caribbean reef
squid obviously lives in the Caribbean and then off the
Florida coasts and these you know, this is where you're
find the first mention of the cuttle fish. Um see
you t t not cuddles and cuddling up with one.
(04:29):
They look a little more like a cuttlefish. But a
cuttlefish is a cephalopod along with the octopus and those
three Um, there's a lot of similarities between these three
um little fishies. And so you're gonna hear things about
the cuttlefish and some about the octopus as well. Yeah,
you just can't talk about squid and not mention the octopus,
which I'm sure just really burns squids hash, you know. Sure.
(04:54):
So then you've got the oopsida that are um, the
deep dwelling ones. Like you said, there's the short finned
squid which lives in the Atlantic from Florida to Newfoundland. UM.
They have actually a long migration. They go to warmer
waters to lay their eggs, which is um an unusual
characteristic for squid. UM. What else is there for ops at?
(05:15):
A chuck? Well, this one's really interesting. The deep sea
luminescence squid. Uh. They live about three thousand feet down
in the North Atlantic and then you can find them
um in different parts all over the world New Zealand
and Australia, Japan, UM, also Hawaii and Bermuda. And they lives,
you know, so deep, it's really dark down there, and
(05:35):
they actually you know, we've talked about bioluminescence before, I
think a whole episode on bioluminescence, and I don't know
if we mentioned this squid, because the deep sea luminescence
squid does practice or is capable of bioluminescence and have
these photophor organs that that light up the deep dark
darkness of the deep sea, the deep darkness of the
(05:58):
deep sea. I like that, I saw, Yeah, I do too.
I saw somewhere that those squid and other luminescing squids
um like they do that to communicate with one another
as much as to hunt and prey. But it does
make sense that they would have to do this because
squid are primarily um. Their primary senses eyesight. They have
really sharp eyesight, although, as we'll see interestingly, their color blind,
(06:21):
which is gonna make something really snappy eventually. Uh. And
what about this Humboldt squid. I like this guy seven
to fifteen feet long, as much as a hundred pounds,
got kind of a it is, and it looks it's
got kind of a reddish skin. So they call them
the red devil because they're also really brutal um when
they attack their prey, and they'll even go after sharks.
(06:43):
I saw that they'll go after whales sometimes too, So
they don't mess around there in the eastern Pacific. So
I guess around Humboldt County, California. So you know what
they're doing. Yeah, you know why they got those red eyes.
They're smoking seaweed. Uh, very good. Uh. So we want
to shout out something else that is not exactly a squidum,
(07:04):
But we do need to shout out the vampire squid
from Hell. Uh. They do call it a squid, but
it's actually a well what they call it is a
vampiromorpha from what is the order? No, that's the order.
What's the speciom vampiro toothis infra analyis, which means vampire
(07:25):
squid from Hell. Yeah, very scary sounding name. And again,
it's not exactly a squid, even though it does um.
It is a cephalopod, but it's sort of like the
way I described it on this video was it's like
the representation of a cephalopod before they split into octopus
and squid. So it's a really ancient creature. Uh. They're
(07:49):
known as living fossils. Basically they live below six meters
and what's called the oxygen minimum zone, and there's just
not a lot of oxygen down there, and so they
have a very low metal ballic rate and mainly just
sort of they do have eight arms and not tin uh,
so they have the arms like an octopus instead of
a squid, but they mainly just float around and they
(08:10):
don't move much because of the so little because of
the lack of oxygen. And the way they eat is
really cool. They have these uh they're not carnivores. They
eat what's called marine snow, which is just sort of
the detritus that's floating around, like little bits and pieces
of fish skin and and fish poop and stuff. Uh
(08:30):
that kind of looks like snow in the deep darkness.
And they have these little lines that they throw out
from their body, uh, sort of like a fishing line
almost that several feet long, and the snow just sort
of collects on it. It's really sticky, and when they
get enough stuff, they put it in their mouth and
then just sort of pull it back out again like
a bare chicken bone and a and a Tom and
(08:51):
Jerry cartoon and all that all that marine snow is
now in their body. Really interesting though. Um, I want
to give a shout out to the fin squid. Two.
Did you see that that link? Yeah? That things that
things all arms. Yeah, because a lot of the the
um the squid out there, like especially the my opposite
of squid, they're fairly evenly proportioned between tentacle and head
(09:14):
for the most part, or at the very least, it's
not wildly disproportionate. That's not the case with the big
finn squid. It's very little head and body, lots and
lots of arms up to twenty one ft long arms
and tentacles and um. They are probably the deepest dwelling squid.
They've been recorded up to twenty three and eighty feet
down in the Philippine Sea and only twelve recorded sightings
(09:36):
have taken place, which I think is pretty neat. That's
pretty amazing. Look at the picture of these, These are cool. Yeah, sure.
And the vampire squid too, Yeah, I don't think we
said that it has It looks like a vampire cape too. Yeah,
that's where it gets the name, right. And the red eyes. Yeah,
they're very very creepy looking. Um. Alright, So squids are mollusks,
(09:58):
but they don't look like other mollusks that you know
of because they don't have an outer shell. What they
have is a soft body with a shell on the inside,
which is pretty remarkable. And I didn't really see anything
evolutionarily that I could point to to sort of explain this. Well, yeah,
so the only thing I saw is that it supports
(10:20):
the internal organs. It's called a pen. But why it's
on the inside rather the outside, I don't understand that either.
It just makes squid that much more interesting, you know, well,
and that much more vulnerable. Uh that they had a
big hard outer shell that's obviously like an armor for
a mollusc. So uh, I don't know. Maybe they missed
the memo, I guess so. So they're also cephalopods too, right,
(10:43):
which um includes octopus, cuttlefish, the nautilus, which is a
distantly related cephalopod, and then squid. Uh. And then you've
got the cephalopods that are eight armed, the octopods, and
then you've got the ten armed decapods, cuttle fish and squid.
And technically squid have eight tentacles in two arms, but
(11:05):
together that's ten. Yeah. And I think those two arms
are sort of more like arms than tentacles, right, don't
They kind of shorter and like function a little more
like grabby arms. Yeah. They can deal a deck of cards,
they can drive a car. There's a lot of stuff
those arms can do, but they usually have them kind
of retracted up and then the ones that use their
(11:27):
arms to catch prey they shoot them out and grab
prey and then bring them back toward them, which is
pretty amazing. So their arms are usually much longer than
their tentacles and a lot of the species. Yeah, and
you mentioned that we don't know exactly when squids came about.
We do know that cephalopods came about during what's known
as the Cambrian Explosion about five million years ago, when
(11:49):
a lot of new animal groups emerged. But squids, uh,
they split off at some point, like you said, between
these octopods and decapods, but we're not exactly sure how
long ago, a couple of hundred million years probably right.
I saw it. I saw anywhere from like two hundred
two hundred and sixty million, and I saw it placed
(12:10):
within the Mesozoic marine revolution, which apparently is a time
when a lot of um different things evolved harder shells,
and then other predators evolved ways to break through those shells.
It was like a real um just kind of like
an arms race in in the ocean um during that
time for evolution, and that's when squid would have come along.
(12:31):
So from what I saw, I like that an arms race. Yeah. So, uh,
we did discuss the fact that some of these like
if you haven't gotten the picture now. They have a
very large size range. Because we did mention the small ones.
There are some that are just like an inch long,
just a tiny little squid. Uh. And then eventually we're
(12:52):
going to get to the colossus and the giant squids,
which these are the you know, the stuff of legend
of the deep sea from like you know, ancient sea
farers of seeing these huge like cracking like beasts, and
these are huge. They're like sixty plus feet long. And uh,
it's just amazing to me that you can have something
that kind of looks the same that's an inch and
(13:14):
then sixty ft long. Yeah, it's pretty neat. Um the
sixty ft long. Yeah, and they're all like equally interesting too.
But the um, the smaller ones are typically going to
be coastal ones, right, and the bigger ones are more
suited for deep deep sea. I'm guessing, oh absolutely, you're
not gonna see a sixty squid swing swimming in the
ocean very close to you, thank god. Pretty unnerving. So
(13:38):
one of the things that really has always like um
boiled my pot about squids is that they have a
parrot shaped beak. A lot of the species do in
the center where their arms come together. There's a mouth
and it often has a beak and then a bony
tongue called the radula, and those arms will shoot out
(13:59):
grab some poor unsuspecting fish that goes help me, help me,
as the squid pulls it closer and closer to its mouth,
and then it's beak tears into it and tears it
into pieces. It's really important that it tears it into
smaller pieces because the ragula forces those pieces down the
I guess the squid's gullet, and again it has to
(14:21):
pass through the esophagus that goes through the brain. So
you don't want a big old chunk getting lodged in
your esophagus in your brain area. God uh yeah. I
mean it's pretty frightening when you see pictures of this beak.
I mean squid or not to be Is it squids
or squid? Sounds like it would be squid, but I
think it is squids. No, So I saw squid as
(14:43):
plural for squid, okay, right, but if you're talking about
a bunch of different species of squid, you would probably
say squids. Okay, that's a distinction. I don't remember where
I saw that the word else i'd shout him out.
So you mentioned that they're smart. Uh, there has been
in a and I believe this was just in the
(15:03):
year is when they finally put an m R. I
on a squid because they had pretty good ideas that
they were intelligent. Um, but they found that some of
these squid have five hundred million neurons. And if that
sounds like a lot of neurons for an animal like this,
you're right, because like a rat, and rats are pretty smart,
(15:26):
they have about two hundred million. If you look at
a regular ordinary maluks, they only have about twenty. So
five hundred million neurons is more along the lines of
what you might find in a dog. Yeah. So that's
where I was wondering, like, how do they how are
they equating intelligence between a dog and a squid? That
makes sense, you know, rather than brain size and relation
(15:47):
to body size, which we kind of pooh pooed in
the Origin of Intelligence episode, Like the number of neurons
is actually a pretty good kind of indicator or for comparison.
I would guess the thing is I saw this describe
somewhere I can't remember where that What is what squid
intelligence or octopus intelligence is is probably so radically different
(16:12):
and alien from what human intelligences or even what dog
intelligence is, because dogs, humans, monkeys, rats were all distantly
related to fish, whereas squid and octopods they evolved from
like basically sea slugs on a different, totally different family lineage,
So their intelligence generated or evolved differently independently from human intelligence.
(16:37):
And I also saw that possibly the octopus was the
first intelligent being on Earth, so to compare our intelligence,
there is definitely overlapping crossover. Um, but there it's there's
just no telling what their experience of life is like.
But it's just so fascinating to think that they have
their own brand of intelligence and their experiencing life through
that intellect, and we'll just never get it, just like
(16:59):
they could never fully get our intellect either. Yeah, because
I think that walking around on Earth, we tend to
think of intelligence is like for animals is like if
they're trainable or something, and like can you teach a
squid to sit and say, uh, say please roll over?
Play dead? And it's a different kind of intelligence. But um,
(17:22):
why don't we take a break and we'll talk about
another part of their weird kind of intelligence right after
the break. Yeah, all right, so we talked about squid
(17:56):
intelligence and how it's a different kind of intelligence, but
they're super smart. UM. One thing that we need to
mention and uh for like a full the full low
down on chromatophores. I think we should just refer people
to the Great Octopus episode. Um. But they do have these, um,
these chromatophores on their body, and they're able to um
(18:17):
camouflage themselves, are able to change the the size and
shape and color of these pigment cells on their skin
or you know, just under their skin to where they
can you know, you've seen octopuses do it to where
they camouflage themselves in remarkable ways, to where they even
take the shape of something like a reef or something
that they're hiding next do. But squid actually have what
(18:39):
they called or what they refer to, or at least
males do, a skin powered alphabet, and they can literally
uh well again, I don't know if it's literally. I
don't know if I'm being that guy that's a set
word wrong. But they say that squid can do things
like say I love you through their through those chromatophor
(19:00):
words to a female squid. And it's not just like, oh,
it gives off a mating cent like it literally has
like a sort of alphabet that it can spell out things.
And again it's this is squid language, but that's what
they equate it to. At least they say exactly. Hey,
(19:20):
it's okay. So I have two questions now that you
brought up the octopus episode, our octopus still your favorite
animal of all time? Because I'm pretty sure you declared
them that in that episode. There might say they're up there. Okay,
so they're still up there, but they're not necessarily your
favorite there there they Maybe let's just say that, okay,
(19:41):
fair enough. The second question I have is what happened
to you in the rope trauma? You should ask that
once a year till the end of time. Maybe in
our final episode ever, I'll reveal that. It would be
a nice little He'll be like, let me tell you
about trauma. Oh it was a day and seven. I'd
(20:03):
be like, chuck your fifty five? What happened? Um? Alright?
So I mean squids are smart. Can we just put
a nail on that one? Yeah? Sure, But don't nail
a squid to a board. That's an awful thing to do. No,
don't do that. I think it bears saying, because I'm
gonna get up on my soapbox when we talk about
eating squid. Okay, yeah, let's do it. You want to
(20:25):
talk about eating squid now? No, no, no, let's do that. Okay,
I got you. I mistook what you were meaning. I've
got squid intellect as best. I think we should talk
about squid sex and then squid inc Okay, let's talk
about squid sex chuck, because it gets kind of freaky,
gets a little nasty um and they have like, uh
(20:47):
like sexual reproduction, which means that they they go, they
get it on, they hugging kids. Right, are we adopting
that the official s y s K terminology can't steal
it from unchman? That's that's his steal. We could if
we give him a shout out and mentioned like his
Twitter handle every time we do. I'm sure he'd appreciate that. Yeah,
(21:09):
we can't steal someone else's bet, even though I keep
saying it. Yeah, I'm just trying to pave the way
to full acceptance one where or the other. Right, can
we talk about squid sex? Yeah? I tried to. I
tried to lay it out there. Well, here's what happens.
The male squid has sperm that are produced in testes
(21:30):
or test us and uh, they this this sperm is
stored in a sack, and when they do mate, the
male has this special arm that transfers packets of sperm
to the female's mouth cavity. And that's because very unusual,
but that's where the eggs are, right right, that's where
it makes sense. That's when it all kind of comes
(21:51):
home and everybody can go, oh, okay, alright, cool, And
did you make scare quotes when you said arms special arm? Uh?
Within kind of sounded like yeah, I think so. So
then after the eggs are fertilized, the female um squid
basically spits them out and what's termed or what's described
(22:12):
as a gelatinous mass of fertilized eggs. And I assumed
that like she would just kind of let them float away.
And that was that because, as we'll see, the squid
life cycles really short, especially shallow coastal squid live maybe
for a year, and the big thing that they do
is reproduce. But it turns out, Chuck, that the female
squid actually goes and grabs the fertilized eggs and then
(22:35):
sets about hiding them in different places in the in
the little habitat where she um just gave birth to
them or laid them, I guess is what you'd say. Yeah,
and she does this before she dies, because I think
usually both the male and the female usually die after
they mate. Right, Yeah, it's very sad, that's the It
is kind of sad. That's like the big thing they do.
(22:56):
It's weird. Well, one of the big things they do
is inc. And I think this is a good time
to talk about squid inc because, um, it's great in pasta.
I love that squitting pasta. M hm, you know, like
squitting pasta. No, this is this part of your soapbox.
I'm just I'm reserving it for now, all right. I
(23:19):
love squitting pasta. So let me ask you, though, does
it actually taste like anything? Or is it like the
power of suggestion kind of thing like all my pasta's black?
Oh no, no, no, it tastes completely different than regular pasta.
What does it taste like? Have you never had squitting
So you've never had squitting pasta? No? I haven't. Okay, Yeah,
it tastes completely different. It's very very rich. Um. It
(23:41):
tastes it's very briny um. It has a different consistency.
Uh yeah, yeah, it's not just like they add it
than just to say, oh, look it's black like it
imparts a taste. I gotta try this stuff. I mean,
I think it's delicious. I don't have it a lot
because it's you don't find it on its own a menus,
but uh is one place here indicator that that has it,
(24:01):
and I love it. So that is one use of
squid inc. Right. Another use is writing. Another use is
that anti cancer, anti retroviral um and anti microbial drug. Yeah,
it's so funny we go from like the most basic
use of squid inc to some really advanced technology with
squid inc because it turns out that there's a lot
(24:23):
more to squid ink than just pigment, and the pigment
itself is actually one of the reasons why that the
ink can be used to produce all these different drugs.
That has a bunch of weird stuff in it, that's right. Um,
there's this one of the main things that is in
squid inc. As well. There's a couple of things. There's
mucus in there um. If you're eating squid ink pasta, Uh,
(24:45):
you take the inc directly from the sack. So there's
none of the mucus in there. But melanin is one
of the main components of cephalopod inc. Right, Yeah, there's
melanin in there. There's also um, catecholamines, peptod peptidal glycans.
I practiced all these two chuck um free amino acids
(25:07):
or sorry acids, uh, and metals. Right, and you've got
all this stuff in there, and you're just like, well,
why this is just ink? Why does this stuff matter?
We're not entirely certain Like we've we've been talking about
squid inc since the time of Aristotle for you know,
almost years, and we don't really understand it much better
than Aristotle did. We just kind of know a little
(25:28):
more what's in it. We just don't really know all
the stuff that it does. Yeah, and we don't know
everything about just exactly why. We know some of the
reasons why they squirt inc. One is certainly a defense. Uh,
they'll shoot out an ink cloud and get away. Uh.
It's pretty remarkable. Some squid can um kind of cast
(25:48):
it out in a pattern to look like something else
like sometimes look like another uh marine life basically, which
is really amazing when you think about it. Um, and
we know kind of how it happens, but we we
there's still so much we don't know about the ink um.
We know it's generated and stored in this ink sack
(26:10):
and that there is an ink gland in there, and
then they almost kind of poop it out. It feeds
into the rectum and it's controlled by a sphincter and
it basically sort of ejects it with this funnel organ
um from the anus and out into this cloud into
it's really interesting and they can make it into different shapes.
(26:30):
I'm kind of wondering, like how that's done right, you know,
Like I I imagine you know the old road Runner
cartoons where Roadrunner would take off so fast there was
like a dust version of Roadrunner. That's kind of what
I imagine these things doing, right. Yeah. Um, The thing
is is it's not it's it's not as straightforward as
it sounds where they just shoot some ink and form
(26:51):
an ink smoke screen or an ink road Runner and
confuse their prey um because of all these different you know,
components to squid inc. Along with this muc that they
sometimes introduced to varying degrees, it can have all sorts
of different effects, and they think that like you know,
if you add a bunch of mucus they're trying to
affect like a fish nearby that's trying to get them,
(27:11):
because they've they've shown that like the mucus affects the gills.
They also think that um dopamine and al dopa, which
are melani precursors but also neurotransmitters and humans, actually activate
the old factory receptors on squids tentacles, and so it's
a way of communicating too, Like they're they're communicating with
other squid by transferring this ink to their tentacles in
(27:35):
a way, which is pretty amazing in and of itself. Well, yeah,
so they're what they're able to do. It's amazing is
that they're actually mixing up for whatever purpose they have.
They're mixing up their ink in different proportions with the
other stuff to accomplish a different thing. And I guess
they're they're doing this on the fly to a certain degree. Yeah,
(27:55):
probably without even thinking really, um, they're they're yeah, and
they're just doing it depending on the context in the situation,
like adding a little more ink, a little more maybe
a little more melanie, a little more mucus, a little
less mucus, whatever it is, whatever the situation calls for.
And then the other cool thing about them inking supposedly
they're they and cuddle fish and octopuses are the only
(28:16):
ones that ink. I couldn't find any other animal that inks.
And they have different color inks. And I think squid
is blue black typically, which um, yeah, I think it's
blue black. Uh. The other thing that they do when
they ink is they take off really fast. I mean,
some of them can cover twenty five body links in
a second. Like that's how fast they take off. That's
(28:38):
basically like here I am, now, I'm not here anymore.
That's that's pretty amazing stuff. Yeah, and they do that,
don't They kind of make their body into like a
jet propulsion system. They suck in water and then contract
really quickly and then just shoot it out the other side. Yeah,
it's essentially the same principle as a jet engine, except
they don't introduce, you know, gasoline or some sort of
(29:01):
fuel into it. They just do it strictly with water
compression and expulsion. But it is the exact same the
exact same principle, and it does get them going really
really fast. So you combine ink cloud that's in the
shape of the road runner and the squid getting out
of their twenti body links a second, Um, it's gonna
make it tough for a predator to get their hands
(29:22):
on that squid. Yeah. Absolutely. UM. One of the kind
of uh frustrating parts of the whole squid in thing
is there they don't really know how or why this evolved. Um.
And there really aren't even a whole lot of theories,
but one of them that sounds pretty promising to me
is that, Um, you talked about melanin being h really
good at dissipating UV radiation. Was that part of the
(29:46):
reason they evolved to have to be able to shoot
this inc is to protect their eyes from light damage.
And we know they have those sensitive eyes, so that
may um. And then they just had like an excess
of it, so it eventually evolved where they could store
it in a sack, can use it for defense. Yeah,
that's very thrifty of them. Should we take in our
second break? Sure? All right, let's take another break and
(30:09):
we'll talk about the really interesting squids are the deep
sea monster squids. Right after this, Okay, chuck, so it's
(30:42):
time we're talking finally about the giant squid, the colossal squid,
the big old squid, h and all the all the
huge squids. We did one on sea monsters before, too,
didn't we. Yeah, man, uh, there's no way we didn't.
Because the they think that the giant squid inspired a
lot of stories over the years, right, Oh absolutely, I
(31:06):
mean you see it all through literature, from the Odyssey
to Twenty Leagues under the Sea. Are these accounts from
uh sailors about these monsters, these huge beasts of the
deep sea. And um, it's one of those things where
like if we had never seen these then would be
really easy to say, oh, yeah, you know these these
(31:27):
are the seafaring stories and this is just lore and folklore,
but it's it's they are actually real creatures. They just
are so rarely seen and live in such deep waters
that it's hard to photograph them. But it finally did
happen in two thousand five, right yeah. And I don't
really like this story because this is such an example
(31:47):
of humans as being like, hey, we want to know,
so we're gonna kill you to find out. I hate
that part about humans, you know. Um, But in in
two thousand five, some marine biologists in from Japan have
been have been trying to track giant squids um for
I think three years at this point before they finally
found one in person. And up to that point they'd
(32:08):
only seen them in the contents of sperm whale stomachs,
which they I guess they killed two to look into
to see what was inside. But sperm whales are the
only predators of the giant squid. So the first time
they finally saw one was in two thousand five, and um,
they basically baited a line and then the giant squid
came and really some terrible stuff happened after that. Yeah,
(32:31):
the squid got caught up in the line. Um. I
think that was about a four hour hour struggle to
get itself free, and it lost one of its cynicals
in that struggle that they recovered there was eighteen ft long.
And uh, they did get photographs, and to me, this
is where they should have been like, all right, well
we got the pictures that we wanted. Uh. To them,
(32:53):
I guess it was a bonus that they got one
of these eighteen foot tentacles. But they went back and
they captured this thing a year later. Uh, they couldn't
just leave well enough alone. They actually went back and
got this thing. Yeah, and they pulled it on the boat,
and they made all of the all aboard um beat
it to death with sticks. It didn't make any sense,
(33:13):
but that's how they did. Just kidding, they didn't actually
do that. I don't think there were tiny sticks too, right.
It took forever um, So that yeah, that was that
was the first time ever and one was ever caught
um and that was two thousand six the next year
after that. So if you really think about it, two thousands, five,
six and seven were huge years for giant deep sea
(33:36):
squid because in two thousand and seven a colossal squid,
which is just a little bit smaller than a giant squid,
was caught um by a New Zealand ship up in
or down in Antarctica. Right. Yeah, this one weighed close
to a thousand pounds, had an eight foot mantle which
is that pope hat, and was seventy almost eighteen feet
(33:57):
total in length. But at this giant squid had an
eighteen foot tentacle that they got ahold of and we
don't even know where the tentacle was cut. It could
have been longer than that. Uh. Then that giant squid
was really big, But um, yeah, I don't because here's
the thing. I mean, this is bad enough, but we
don't even know how many there are. I mean that
that giant squid could have been one of fifty worldwide,
(34:20):
Like you don't even know. And even though he said
they only live about a year, it's it seems pretty obvious.
And they believe that these giants wid are obviously much
much older and it's not like they grow to that
big in a year. Yeah, for sure. So one thing
that stuck out to me, chuck, And I'm not sure
how what your take will be on this, but um,
that colossal squid that was caught in two thousand seven
(34:43):
was reported if they had cut it up into calamari,
which I didn't realize. This calamari is not the suckers
their rings because they cut the mantle cross ways. Did
you know that? Yeah, okay, I didn't know that. But
they said that the calamari would have been the size
of tractor tires. What do you think about that? I
don't know if it was an eight footmantle attractor tire
(35:04):
seems pretty big, but because squid or kind of they're
not thin, but they're sort of elongated. So I'm just
trying to picture something eight feet long that's a big
around as a tractor. I guess it depends what kind
of tractor we talk in your like a lawn tractor,
like a John Dear, that's what they were saying. They
let they put in in brackets. They put lawn before
(35:26):
a tractor, and I got edited out, all right, so
I could I could buy that, but I don't know.
That's I'm just trying to picture that, and it doesn't
seem likely, but who knows. But the off shot of
that is is they caught the first colossal squid ever
and the news reported that what the size of the
calamari would have been, which really kind of reveals our
preoccupation with eating squid if you ask me. That's right.
(35:47):
The word calamari is actually Italian for squid um. And
I quit eating this stuff when I saw my octopus teacher. Uh,
all this stuff was off the mini for me after
that documentary. Yeah, but and I did talk about eating
squid ink, so that's probably something I should stop because
I don't think you get the squid inc Without getting
(36:08):
the squid. Yeah, they don't like keep a live squid
and squeeze it and then throw it back in the ocean.
They they cut the squid up. I'm pretty sure they
used the other stuff for calamari too, right, I would guess.
But also, you know, have squid inc Maybe once a year,
so it's not like not to let myself off the
hook entirely, But it's not the kind of thing I'm
eating every other day, you know. Yeah, But you make
(36:29):
a good point. It's really it's it's hard to eat
something that you know is intelligent, you know, and can suffer.
And it is extremely hypocritical of me to even, you know,
tout that because I eat chicken, and I eat um
beef jerky all the time, like so much beef jerky.
But um, those are animals too, and they can suffer.
(36:49):
So I'm kind of hypocritical in that sense. But still
for me personally, I'm with you. I don't eat octopus
or squid or pigs because of their intelligence that we're
figuring out. Certainly, the lot of calamari has served up
in a lot of bad sports bars around the country. Um,
I think a lot of people may not even understand
what they're eating. Sometimes with calamari. Uh, it's pretty clear
(37:10):
when you get the little you know, full bodied, you
know it's not just the ring. Like when you get
the full body, like, hey, this looks like a little
tiny squid like that's been battered and fried, it's pretty
clear what it is. But you don't a lot of
times you don't even get those, You just get the rings.
Can you imagine the indignity of being an intelligent squid
(37:31):
and knowing that you're going to eventually be served at
a buffalo wild wings eaten by somebody wearing a football
jersey but has never played football actually in their life.
One day, I'm going to I'm going to be passed
through the gullet of a human and a Hooters, right,
(37:52):
and the asophagus actually goes through their brain. Yeah, So maybe,
I mean that's where we should cut it off. I mean,
and if you're into calumari, that's fine. There are plenty
of ways to eat it, But I don't think we
need to go into all the detail that the article
goes into about all the great ways that you can
cook it. No, but I will say I do have
a personal anecdote before when I was eating squid the
(38:13):
only sushi. There's two pieces of sushi that I've ever
spit out. One was um had a raw quail egg
cracked on it, and it was just too much. I
just couldn't do it. I tried it, I couldn't do it.
The other one was a whole squid, like one of
those one inters that you said um, And I chewed
(38:34):
and chewed and chewed longer than I've ever chewed anything,
and I made not even a dent in that thing.
So I finally just gave up and spit it out.
That actually might be the lass, Now it's not. I've
had calumari since then. I wonder if that's just like
a like chewing gum. Maybe that's what it's for, and
you're supposed to eat it at the end of your
meal and just chew it for the next couple of hours.
(38:56):
I got to. But the thing is I eat chewing gum.
I couldn't eat the squid stacy in your stomach for
seven years, that's right. Poor What was that? Poor kid?
Did we name that kid? Poor kid who go surgery
because he had five pounds of impacted. My goodness, talk
about a call back here at episode something right? That's right? Um, well, Chuck,
(39:20):
I don't think has anything else, and I don't have
anything else, so go forth and be nice to squid. Uh.
And since I said that, of course it's time for
listener mail. I'm gonna call this. It's kind of a
long one, but this is a shorter episode, so this
is the perfect time for this Mars rock. When you
picked this one out, Hey guys, I really enjoy your podcast.
I thought i'd share some more interesting factoids, which is
(39:42):
correct to say, related to the Mars rock that was
found in the Antarctic. Just so happens. I was working
as a police property and evidence tech about fifteen years
ago when I was called upon to store a satchel
of rocks from NASA containing this Mars rock. An engineer
from NASA was hosting a special class at a local
Air Force base in our jurisdiction and came to the
(40:04):
police department requesting storage overnight while they were in town. Apparently,
if you're I never really thought about that though. That's
kind of kind of cool, But if you have something
really important in you're in town, I don't think you
and I could do it, But if you're NASA, you
can go to the local cop shop and say, hey,
keep an eye on this. Yeah, you got right, protect
(40:25):
this with your life. Apparently, if you are authorized and
sign the rocks out of the NASA vault, you are
obligated to stow them in a high security area of
the local jurisdiction because they are unensurable. It's interesting they're
considered priceless. We wound up having to track them via
barcode and stow them in our high security vaults with
(40:47):
our guns, drugs, and cash. When I returned them to
the NASA employee the next morning, he was kind enough
to show me the Mars rock. It was fairly unremarkable
to the naked eye, a low gloss matt finished brown
on speckled tone. So I would imagine that this would
answer Chuck's question of why they don't find these things
in Georgia. It's just a brown rock, just like most
(41:09):
rocks you see in the US. Then that's The employee
explained that the trigger to the scientist and the Antarctic
Antarctic excuse me, was that there was a rock at
all where they were exploring. They quickly surmised that it
could be extraterrestrial because they couldn't explain how a rock
had gotten there in the first place, so they sent
an off for testing and confirmation. Also when this actually
(41:31):
showed me a few gray moon rocks, of one of
which he was particularly giddy over. A small white cylindrical
container with a gray stone, and it held firmly in
place by a three arm claw. I was holding it
in its little claw. It had a visible clear dome top. Yeah,
you get it at a visible clear dome top, so
(41:52):
you can inspect the stone without opening it. The dome
screwed down tight. The NASA employee explained that it was
a stone handpicked by buzz Aldrin and secured in the
original container and still filled with the vacuum of space
that had never been opened. Oh my god, truly an
all expre awe inspiring experience to participate in my own
little way of shepherding these rocks to their next exhibit.
(42:15):
And that is from David. David, David, that was such
a great email. I'd love that email. I mean, it
had moon rocks, the vacuum of space here on Earth.
The Mars rock Yo buzz Aldrin made a cameo and
it was unstated, but I believe David probably thanked the
NASA scientists by giving them a free kilo of cocaine
(42:36):
from the evidence room and a stack of money. David,
thanks again for writing in, and if you have an
awesome story like David did, please get it to us
via email at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
(42:58):
Radio app, Apple pod Tests, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. H m hm
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and this is Stuff you Should Know
the podcast. That's right, this is our octopus adjacent uh.
(00:23):
Continued love for cephalopods episode on one of the weirdest
looking creatures on planet Earth, the squid. Not just weird looking, Chuck,
also pretty smart, widely cannibalistic, and beaked. Yeah, they're weird
looking animals, man, the squid. Imagine if a human had
(00:44):
its face in its belly button and no arms, and
that's kind of what a squid is, right, And also
our esophagus went through our brain on the way to
our stomach. Imagine that that is really weird. They look
like they're uh, they look sort of like an octopus
wearing a big papal hat. Yeah, let's just sit here
(01:07):
and take weird descriptions of of squid for the rest
of the episode because I like it. They're very very
strange creatures, but they are awesome and like you said,
possibly as smartest dogs. Yeah, we'll get to that for sure.
But um, squid have been around for a very long time.
Exactly when is not quite certain. But at least a
(01:27):
hundred million years from what I've seen, and um, since
that time, there there have been either a plethora of
species three hundred or it's been whittled down to three
hundred species. I'm not entirely certain, but those three hundred
species of squid are basically divided between two suborders of squid.
And for my money, Chuck, I love it when suborders
(01:49):
are like these are like this, and those are like that,
and that's that. And this is one of those instances.
You've got my opposida and oisida. I pro this too.
Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't, and I didn't pay off.
So that's that's the lesson here. Everybody, don't practice. Don't
even bother. I figured one of those in the second group,
(02:10):
one of those first two letters would have been silent,
but they're both pronounced. That's that's my take of um
Latin pronunciation. Oh we gaps that. Uh, all right, So
we'll talk a little bit about a few examples of
the my opposite a sub order. First, Uh, these fellows
live in a pretty shallow water compared to their friends.
(02:31):
And as you'll see, some you know squid, uh, certainly
the giant squid live very very very very in very
deep waters. Um. But the that first group has uh
suckers only, and as you will see, that's uh not unusual.
But that's just one thing that they can have on
those tentacles. They have a transparent membrane that covers their eyeballs.
(02:55):
And here's a few of those dudes. One very common
one is the California gets squid and they live in
very shallow waters and the eastern Pacific basically from Mexico
all the way up to Alaska. Yeah. I saw that
that Alaska as recent as as recent as two thousand fifteen,
and that they think they're moving northward because of climate change. Actually,
(03:17):
tons of these in the Monterey Bay and where they're
fished very heavily. And by the way, we should thank
Ocean Bites dot org. Uh. And it's not a seafood website,
believe or not. H The Guardian, the Spruce Eats, which
is a food website, and our old friends at house
Stuff works for most of the stuff. Yep. Um. There's
also the common European squid for our listeners in the UK. Hey, everybody,
(03:42):
these are the squid that you swim with every day.
They're found in the Mediterranean. You could also find them
in the Atlantic, the Eastern Atlantic, and they are a
little less shallow than the California market squid. They swim
anywhere from twenty which is undred and fifty feet, and
they weigh up to about three pounds on average, and
they're about sixteen inches long. UM. So it's like a
(04:05):
good sized, decent sized squid that you have to hold
with like two hands. You know, if you're picking one
up out of the water, which you shouldn't do, No,
you shouldn't do that. Then you've got your Caribbean reef
squid obviously lives in the Caribbean and then off the
Florida coasts and these you know, this is where you're
find the first mention of the cuttle fish. Um see
you t t not cuddles and cuddling up with one.
(04:29):
They look a little more like a cuttlefish. But a
cuttlefish is a cephalopod along with the octopus and those
three Um, there's a lot of similarities between these three
um little fishies. And so you're gonna hear things about
the cuttlefish and some about the octopus as well. Yeah,
you just can't talk about squid and not mention the octopus,
which I'm sure just really burns squids hash, you know. Sure.
(04:54):
So then you've got the oopsida that are um, the
deep dwelling ones. Like you said, there's the short finned
squid which lives in the Atlantic from Florida to Newfoundland. UM.
They have actually a long migration. They go to warmer
waters to lay their eggs, which is um an unusual
characteristic for squid. UM. What else is there for ops at?
(05:15):
A chuck? Well, this one's really interesting. The deep sea
luminescence squid. Uh. They live about three thousand feet down
in the North Atlantic and then you can find them
um in different parts all over the world New Zealand
and Australia, Japan, UM, also Hawaii and Bermuda. And they lives,
you know, so deep, it's really dark down there, and
(05:35):
they actually you know, we've talked about bioluminescence before, I
think a whole episode on bioluminescence, and I don't know
if we mentioned this squid, because the deep sea luminescence
squid does practice or is capable of bioluminescence and have
these photophor organs that that light up the deep dark
darkness of the deep sea, the deep darkness of the
(05:58):
deep sea. I like that, I saw, Yeah, I do too.
I saw somewhere that those squid and other luminescing squids
um like they do that to communicate with one another
as much as to hunt and prey. But it does
make sense that they would have to do this because
squid are primarily um. Their primary senses eyesight. They have
really sharp eyesight, although, as we'll see interestingly, their color blind,
(06:21):
which is gonna make something really snappy eventually. Uh. And
what about this Humboldt squid. I like this guy seven
to fifteen feet long, as much as a hundred pounds,
got kind of a it is, and it looks it's
got kind of a reddish skin. So they call them
the red devil because they're also really brutal um when
they attack their prey, and they'll even go after sharks.
(06:43):
I saw that they'll go after whales sometimes too, So
they don't mess around there in the eastern Pacific. So
I guess around Humboldt County, California. So you know what
they're doing. Yeah, you know why they got those red eyes.
They're smoking seaweed. Uh, very good. Uh. So we want
to shout out something else that is not exactly a squidum,
(07:04):
But we do need to shout out the vampire squid
from Hell. Uh. They do call it a squid, but
it's actually a well what they call it is a
vampiromorpha from what is the order? No, that's the order.
What's the speciom vampiro toothis infra analyis, which means vampire
(07:25):
squid from Hell. Yeah, very scary sounding name. And again,
it's not exactly a squid, even though it does um.
It is a cephalopod, but it's sort of like the
way I described it on this video was it's like
the representation of a cephalopod before they split into octopus
and squid. So it's a really ancient creature. Uh. They're
(07:49):
known as living fossils. Basically they live below six meters
and what's called the oxygen minimum zone, and there's just
not a lot of oxygen down there, and so they
have a very low metal ballic rate and mainly just
sort of they do have eight arms and not tin uh,
so they have the arms like an octopus instead of
a squid, but they mainly just float around and they
(08:10):
don't move much because of the so little because of
the lack of oxygen. And the way they eat is
really cool. They have these uh they're not carnivores. They
eat what's called marine snow, which is just sort of
the detritus that's floating around, like little bits and pieces
of fish skin and and fish poop and stuff. Uh
(08:30):
that kind of looks like snow in the deep darkness.
And they have these little lines that they throw out
from their body, uh, sort of like a fishing line
almost that several feet long, and the snow just sort
of collects on it. It's really sticky, and when they
get enough stuff, they put it in their mouth and
then just sort of pull it back out again like
a bare chicken bone and a and a Tom and
(08:51):
Jerry cartoon and all that all that marine snow is
now in their body. Really interesting though. Um, I want
to give a shout out to the fin squid. Two.
Did you see that that link? Yeah? That things that
things all arms. Yeah, because a lot of the the
um the squid out there, like especially the my opposite
of squid, they're fairly evenly proportioned between tentacle and head
(09:14):
for the most part, or at the very least, it's
not wildly disproportionate. That's not the case with the big
finn squid. It's very little head and body, lots and
lots of arms up to twenty one ft long arms
and tentacles and um. They are probably the deepest dwelling squid.
They've been recorded up to twenty three and eighty feet
down in the Philippine Sea and only twelve recorded sightings
(09:36):
have taken place, which I think is pretty neat. That's
pretty amazing. Look at the picture of these, These are cool. Yeah, sure.
And the vampire squid too, Yeah, I don't think we
said that it has It looks like a vampire cape too. Yeah,
that's where it gets the name, right. And the red eyes. Yeah,
they're very very creepy looking. Um. Alright, So squids are mollusks,
(09:58):
but they don't look like other mollusks that you know
of because they don't have an outer shell. What they
have is a soft body with a shell on the inside,
which is pretty remarkable. And I didn't really see anything
evolutionarily that I could point to to sort of explain this. Well, yeah,
so the only thing I saw is that it supports
(10:20):
the internal organs. It's called a pen. But why it's
on the inside rather the outside, I don't understand that either.
It just makes squid that much more interesting, you know, well,
and that much more vulnerable. Uh that they had a
big hard outer shell that's obviously like an armor for
a mollusc. So uh, I don't know. Maybe they missed
the memo, I guess so. So they're also cephalopods too, right,
(10:43):
which um includes octopus, cuttlefish, the nautilus, which is a
distantly related cephalopod, and then squid. Uh. And then you've
got the cephalopods that are eight armed, the octopods, and
then you've got the ten armed decapods, cuttle fish and squid.
And technically squid have eight tentacles in two arms, but
(11:05):
together that's ten. Yeah. And I think those two arms
are sort of more like arms than tentacles, right, don't
They kind of shorter and like function a little more
like grabby arms. Yeah. They can deal a deck of cards,
they can drive a car. There's a lot of stuff
those arms can do, but they usually have them kind
of retracted up and then the ones that use their
(11:27):
arms to catch prey they shoot them out and grab
prey and then bring them back toward them, which is
pretty amazing. So their arms are usually much longer than
their tentacles and a lot of the species. Yeah, and
you mentioned that we don't know exactly when squids came about.
We do know that cephalopods came about during what's known
as the Cambrian Explosion about five million years ago, when
(11:49):
a lot of new animal groups emerged. But squids, uh,
they split off at some point, like you said, between
these octopods and decapods, but we're not exactly sure how
long ago, a couple of hundred million years probably right.
I saw it. I saw anywhere from like two hundred
two hundred and sixty million, and I saw it placed
(12:10):
within the Mesozoic marine revolution, which apparently is a time
when a lot of um different things evolved harder shells,
and then other predators evolved ways to break through those shells.
It was like a real um just kind of like
an arms race in in the ocean um during that
time for evolution, and that's when squid would have come along.
(12:31):
So from what I saw, I like that an arms race. Yeah. So, uh,
we did discuss the fact that some of these like
if you haven't gotten the picture now. They have a
very large size range. Because we did mention the small ones.
There are some that are just like an inch long,
just a tiny little squid. Uh. And then eventually we're
(12:52):
going to get to the colossus and the giant squids,
which these are the you know, the stuff of legend
of the deep sea from like you know, ancient sea
farers of seeing these huge like cracking like beasts, and
these are huge. They're like sixty plus feet long. And uh,
it's just amazing to me that you can have something
that kind of looks the same that's an inch and
(13:14):
then sixty ft long. Yeah, it's pretty neat. Um the
sixty ft long. Yeah, and they're all like equally interesting too.
But the um, the smaller ones are typically going to
be coastal ones, right, and the bigger ones are more
suited for deep deep sea. I'm guessing, oh absolutely, you're
not gonna see a sixty squid swing swimming in the
ocean very close to you, thank god. Pretty unnerving. So
(13:38):
one of the things that really has always like um
boiled my pot about squids is that they have a
parrot shaped beak. A lot of the species do in
the center where their arms come together. There's a mouth
and it often has a beak and then a bony
tongue called the radula, and those arms will shoot out
(13:59):
grab some poor unsuspecting fish that goes help me, help me,
as the squid pulls it closer and closer to its mouth,
and then it's beak tears into it and tears it
into pieces. It's really important that it tears it into
smaller pieces because the ragula forces those pieces down the
I guess the squid's gullet, and again it has to
(14:21):
pass through the esophagus that goes through the brain. So
you don't want a big old chunk getting lodged in
your esophagus in your brain area. God uh yeah. I
mean it's pretty frightening when you see pictures of this beak.
I mean squid or not to be Is it squids
or squid? Sounds like it would be squid, but I
think it is squids. No, So I saw squid as
(14:43):
plural for squid, okay, right, but if you're talking about
a bunch of different species of squid, you would probably
say squids. Okay, that's a distinction. I don't remember where
I saw that the word else i'd shout him out.
So you mentioned that they're smart. Uh, there has been
in a and I believe this was just in the
(15:03):
year is when they finally put an m R. I
on a squid because they had pretty good ideas that
they were intelligent. Um, but they found that some of
these squid have five hundred million neurons. And if that
sounds like a lot of neurons for an animal like this,
you're right, because like a rat, and rats are pretty smart,
(15:26):
they have about two hundred million. If you look at
a regular ordinary maluks, they only have about twenty. So
five hundred million neurons is more along the lines of
what you might find in a dog. Yeah. So that's
where I was wondering, like, how do they how are
they equating intelligence between a dog and a squid? That
makes sense, you know, rather than brain size and relation
(15:47):
to body size, which we kind of pooh pooed in
the Origin of Intelligence episode, Like the number of neurons
is actually a pretty good kind of indicator or for comparison.
I would guess the thing is I saw this describe
somewhere I can't remember where that What is what squid
intelligence or octopus intelligence is is probably so radically different
(16:12):
and alien from what human intelligences or even what dog
intelligence is, because dogs, humans, monkeys, rats were all distantly
related to fish, whereas squid and octopods they evolved from
like basically sea slugs on a different, totally different family lineage,
So their intelligence generated or evolved differently independently from human intelligence.
(16:37):
And I also saw that possibly the octopus was the
first intelligent being on Earth, so to compare our intelligence,
there is definitely overlapping crossover. Um, but there it's there's
just no telling what their experience of life is like.
But it's just so fascinating to think that they have
their own brand of intelligence and their experiencing life through
that intellect, and we'll just never get it, just like
(16:59):
they could never fully get our intellect either. Yeah, because
I think that walking around on Earth, we tend to
think of intelligence is like for animals is like if
they're trainable or something, and like can you teach a
squid to sit and say, uh, say please roll over?
Play dead? And it's a different kind of intelligence. But um,
(17:22):
why don't we take a break and we'll talk about
another part of their weird kind of intelligence right after
the break. Yeah, all right, so we talked about squid
(17:56):
intelligence and how it's a different kind of intelligence, but
they're super smart. UM. One thing that we need to
mention and uh for like a full the full low
down on chromatophores. I think we should just refer people
to the Great Octopus episode. Um. But they do have these, um,
these chromatophores on their body, and they're able to um
(18:17):
camouflage themselves, are able to change the the size and
shape and color of these pigment cells on their skin
or you know, just under their skin to where they
can you know, you've seen octopuses do it to where
they camouflage themselves in remarkable ways, to where they even
take the shape of something like a reef or something
that they're hiding next do. But squid actually have what
(18:39):
they called or what they refer to, or at least
males do, a skin powered alphabet, and they can literally
uh well again, I don't know if it's literally. I
don't know if I'm being that guy that's a set
word wrong. But they say that squid can do things
like say I love you through their through those chromatophor
(19:00):
words to a female squid. And it's not just like, oh,
it gives off a mating cent like it literally has
like a sort of alphabet that it can spell out things.
And again it's this is squid language, but that's what
they equate it to. At least they say exactly. Hey,
(19:20):
it's okay. So I have two questions now that you
brought up the octopus episode, our octopus still your favorite
animal of all time? Because I'm pretty sure you declared
them that in that episode. There might say they're up there. Okay,
so they're still up there, but they're not necessarily your
favorite there there they Maybe let's just say that, okay,
(19:41):
fair enough. The second question I have is what happened
to you in the rope trauma? You should ask that
once a year till the end of time. Maybe in
our final episode ever, I'll reveal that. It would be
a nice little He'll be like, let me tell you
about trauma. Oh it was a day and seven. I'd
(20:03):
be like, chuck your fifty five? What happened? Um? Alright?
So I mean squids are smart. Can we just put
a nail on that one? Yeah? Sure, But don't nail
a squid to a board. That's an awful thing to do. No,
don't do that. I think it bears saying, because I'm
gonna get up on my soapbox when we talk about
eating squid. Okay, yeah, let's do it. You want to
(20:25):
talk about eating squid now? No, no, no, let's do that. Okay,
I got you. I mistook what you were meaning. I've
got squid intellect as best. I think we should talk
about squid sex and then squid inc Okay, let's talk
about squid sex chuck, because it gets kind of freaky,
gets a little nasty um and they have like, uh
(20:47):
like sexual reproduction, which means that they they go, they
get it on, they hugging kids. Right, are we adopting
that the official s y s K terminology can't steal
it from unchman? That's that's his steal. We could if
we give him a shout out and mentioned like his
Twitter handle every time we do. I'm sure he'd appreciate that. Yeah,
(21:09):
we can't steal someone else's bet, even though I keep
saying it. Yeah, I'm just trying to pave the way
to full acceptance one where or the other. Right, can
we talk about squid sex? Yeah? I tried to. I
tried to lay it out there. Well, here's what happens.
The male squid has sperm that are produced in testes
(21:30):
or test us and uh, they this this sperm is
stored in a sack, and when they do mate, the
male has this special arm that transfers packets of sperm
to the female's mouth cavity. And that's because very unusual,
but that's where the eggs are, right right, that's where
it makes sense. That's when it all kind of comes
(21:51):
home and everybody can go, oh, okay, alright, cool, And
did you make scare quotes when you said arms special arm? Uh?
Within kind of sounded like yeah, I think so. So
then after the eggs are fertilized, the female um squid
basically spits them out and what's termed or what's described
(22:12):
as a gelatinous mass of fertilized eggs. And I assumed
that like she would just kind of let them float away.
And that was that because, as we'll see, the squid
life cycles really short, especially shallow coastal squid live maybe
for a year, and the big thing that they do
is reproduce. But it turns out, Chuck, that the female
squid actually goes and grabs the fertilized eggs and then
(22:35):
sets about hiding them in different places in the in
the little habitat where she um just gave birth to
them or laid them, I guess is what you'd say. Yeah,
and she does this before she dies, because I think
usually both the male and the female usually die after
they mate. Right, Yeah, it's very sad, that's the It
is kind of sad. That's like the big thing they do.
(22:56):
It's weird. Well, one of the big things they do
is inc. And I think this is a good time
to talk about squid inc because, um, it's great in pasta.
I love that squitting pasta. M hm, you know, like
squitting pasta. No, this is this part of your soapbox.
I'm just I'm reserving it for now, all right. I
(23:19):
love squitting pasta. So let me ask you, though, does
it actually taste like anything? Or is it like the
power of suggestion kind of thing like all my pasta's black?
Oh no, no, no, it tastes completely different than regular pasta.
What does it taste like? Have you never had squitting
So you've never had squitting pasta? No? I haven't. Okay, Yeah,
it tastes completely different. It's very very rich. Um. It
(23:41):
tastes it's very briny um. It has a different consistency.
Uh yeah, yeah, it's not just like they add it
than just to say, oh, look it's black like it
imparts a taste. I gotta try this stuff. I mean,
I think it's delicious. I don't have it a lot
because it's you don't find it on its own a menus,
but uh is one place here indicator that that has it,
(24:01):
and I love it. So that is one use of
squid inc. Right. Another use is writing. Another use is
that anti cancer, anti retroviral um and anti microbial drug. Yeah,
it's so funny we go from like the most basic
use of squid inc to some really advanced technology with
squid inc because it turns out that there's a lot
(24:23):
more to squid ink than just pigment, and the pigment
itself is actually one of the reasons why that the
ink can be used to produce all these different drugs.
That has a bunch of weird stuff in it, that's right. Um,
there's this one of the main things that is in
squid inc. As well. There's a couple of things. There's
mucus in there um. If you're eating squid ink pasta, Uh,
(24:45):
you take the inc directly from the sack. So there's
none of the mucus in there. But melanin is one
of the main components of cephalopod inc. Right, Yeah, there's
melanin in there. There's also um, catecholamines, peptod peptidal glycans.
I practiced all these two chuck um free amino acids
(25:07):
or sorry acids, uh, and metals. Right, and you've got
all this stuff in there, and you're just like, well,
why this is just ink? Why does this stuff matter?
We're not entirely certain Like we've we've been talking about
squid inc since the time of Aristotle for you know,
almost years, and we don't really understand it much better
than Aristotle did. We just kind of know a little
(25:28):
more what's in it. We just don't really know all
the stuff that it does. Yeah, and we don't know
everything about just exactly why. We know some of the
reasons why they squirt inc. One is certainly a defense. Uh,
they'll shoot out an ink cloud and get away. Uh.
It's pretty remarkable. Some squid can um kind of cast
(25:48):
it out in a pattern to look like something else
like sometimes look like another uh marine life basically, which
is really amazing when you think about it. Um, and
we know kind of how it happens, but we we
there's still so much we don't know about the ink um.
We know it's generated and stored in this ink sack
(26:10):
and that there is an ink gland in there, and
then they almost kind of poop it out. It feeds
into the rectum and it's controlled by a sphincter and
it basically sort of ejects it with this funnel organ
um from the anus and out into this cloud into
it's really interesting and they can make it into different shapes.
(26:30):
I'm kind of wondering, like how that's done right, you know,
Like I I imagine you know the old road Runner
cartoons where Roadrunner would take off so fast there was
like a dust version of Roadrunner. That's kind of what
I imagine these things doing, right. Yeah. Um, The thing
is is it's not it's it's not as straightforward as
it sounds where they just shoot some ink and form
(26:51):
an ink smoke screen or an ink road Runner and
confuse their prey um because of all these different you know,
components to squid inc. Along with this muc that they
sometimes introduced to varying degrees, it can have all sorts
of different effects, and they think that like you know,
if you add a bunch of mucus they're trying to
affect like a fish nearby that's trying to get them,
(27:11):
because they've they've shown that like the mucus affects the gills.
They also think that um dopamine and al dopa, which
are melani precursors but also neurotransmitters and humans, actually activate
the old factory receptors on squids tentacles, and so it's
a way of communicating too, Like they're they're communicating with
other squid by transferring this ink to their tentacles in
(27:35):
a way, which is pretty amazing in and of itself. Well, yeah,
so they're what they're able to do. It's amazing is
that they're actually mixing up for whatever purpose they have.
They're mixing up their ink in different proportions with the
other stuff to accomplish a different thing. And I guess
they're they're doing this on the fly to a certain degree. Yeah,
(27:55):
probably without even thinking really, um, they're they're yeah, and
they're just doing it depending on the context in the situation,
like adding a little more ink, a little more maybe
a little more melanie, a little more mucus, a little
less mucus, whatever it is, whatever the situation calls for.
And then the other cool thing about them inking supposedly
they're they and cuddle fish and octopuses are the only
(28:16):
ones that ink. I couldn't find any other animal that inks.
And they have different color inks. And I think squid
is blue black typically, which um, yeah, I think it's
blue black. Uh. The other thing that they do when
they ink is they take off really fast. I mean,
some of them can cover twenty five body links in
a second. Like that's how fast they take off. That's
(28:38):
basically like here I am, now, I'm not here anymore.
That's that's pretty amazing stuff. Yeah, and they do that,
don't They kind of make their body into like a
jet propulsion system. They suck in water and then contract
really quickly and then just shoot it out the other side. Yeah,
it's essentially the same principle as a jet engine, except
they don't introduce, you know, gasoline or some sort of
(29:01):
fuel into it. They just do it strictly with water
compression and expulsion. But it is the exact same the
exact same principle, and it does get them going really
really fast. So you combine ink cloud that's in the
shape of the road runner and the squid getting out
of their twenti body links a second, Um, it's gonna
make it tough for a predator to get their hands
(29:22):
on that squid. Yeah. Absolutely. UM. One of the kind
of uh frustrating parts of the whole squid in thing
is there they don't really know how or why this evolved. Um.
And there really aren't even a whole lot of theories,
but one of them that sounds pretty promising to me
is that, Um, you talked about melanin being h really
good at dissipating UV radiation. Was that part of the
(29:46):
reason they evolved to have to be able to shoot
this inc is to protect their eyes from light damage.
And we know they have those sensitive eyes, so that
may um. And then they just had like an excess
of it, so it eventually evolved where they could store
it in a sack, can use it for defense. Yeah,
that's very thrifty of them. Should we take in our
second break? Sure? All right, let's take another break and
(30:09):
we'll talk about the really interesting squids are the deep
sea monster squids. Right after this, Okay, chuck, so it's
(30:42):
time we're talking finally about the giant squid, the colossal squid,
the big old squid, h and all the all the
huge squids. We did one on sea monsters before, too,
didn't we. Yeah, man, uh, there's no way we didn't.
Because the they think that the giant squid inspired a
lot of stories over the years, right, Oh absolutely, I
(31:06):
mean you see it all through literature, from the Odyssey
to Twenty Leagues under the Sea. Are these accounts from
uh sailors about these monsters, these huge beasts of the
deep sea. And um, it's one of those things where
like if we had never seen these then would be
really easy to say, oh, yeah, you know these these
(31:27):
are the seafaring stories and this is just lore and folklore,
but it's it's they are actually real creatures. They just
are so rarely seen and live in such deep waters
that it's hard to photograph them. But it finally did
happen in two thousand five, right yeah. And I don't
really like this story because this is such an example
(31:47):
of humans as being like, hey, we want to know,
so we're gonna kill you to find out. I hate
that part about humans, you know. Um, But in in
two thousand five, some marine biologists in from Japan have
been have been trying to track giant squids um for
I think three years at this point before they finally
found one in person. And up to that point they'd
(32:08):
only seen them in the contents of sperm whale stomachs,
which they I guess they killed two to look into
to see what was inside. But sperm whales are the
only predators of the giant squid. So the first time
they finally saw one was in two thousand five, and um,
they basically baited a line and then the giant squid
came and really some terrible stuff happened after that. Yeah,
(32:31):
the squid got caught up in the line. Um. I
think that was about a four hour hour struggle to
get itself free, and it lost one of its cynicals
in that struggle that they recovered there was eighteen ft long.
And uh, they did get photographs, and to me, this
is where they should have been like, all right, well
we got the pictures that we wanted. Uh. To them,
(32:53):
I guess it was a bonus that they got one
of these eighteen foot tentacles. But they went back and
they captured this thing a year later. Uh, they couldn't
just leave well enough alone. They actually went back and
got this thing. Yeah, and they pulled it on the boat,
and they made all of the all aboard um beat
it to death with sticks. It didn't make any sense,
(33:13):
but that's how they did. Just kidding, they didn't actually
do that. I don't think there were tiny sticks too, right.
It took forever um, So that yeah, that was that
was the first time ever and one was ever caught
um and that was two thousand six the next year
after that. So if you really think about it, two thousands, five,
six and seven were huge years for giant deep sea
(33:36):
squid because in two thousand and seven a colossal squid,
which is just a little bit smaller than a giant squid,
was caught um by a New Zealand ship up in
or down in Antarctica. Right. Yeah, this one weighed close
to a thousand pounds, had an eight foot mantle which
is that pope hat, and was seventy almost eighteen feet
(33:57):
total in length. But at this giant squid had an
eighteen foot tentacle that they got ahold of and we
don't even know where the tentacle was cut. It could
have been longer than that. Uh. Then that giant squid
was really big, But um, yeah, I don't because here's
the thing. I mean, this is bad enough, but we
don't even know how many there are. I mean that
that giant squid could have been one of fifty worldwide,
(34:20):
Like you don't even know. And even though he said
they only live about a year, it's it seems pretty obvious.
And they believe that these giants wid are obviously much
much older and it's not like they grow to that
big in a year. Yeah, for sure. So one thing
that stuck out to me, chuck, And I'm not sure
how what your take will be on this, but um,
that colossal squid that was caught in two thousand seven
(34:43):
was reported if they had cut it up into calamari,
which I didn't realize. This calamari is not the suckers
their rings because they cut the mantle cross ways. Did
you know that? Yeah, okay, I didn't know that. But
they said that the calamari would have been the size
of tractor tires. What do you think about that? I
don't know if it was an eight footmantle attractor tire
(35:04):
seems pretty big, but because squid or kind of they're
not thin, but they're sort of elongated. So I'm just
trying to picture something eight feet long that's a big
around as a tractor. I guess it depends what kind
of tractor we talk in your like a lawn tractor,
like a John Dear, that's what they were saying. They
let they put in in brackets. They put lawn before
(35:26):
a tractor, and I got edited out, all right, so
I could I could buy that, but I don't know.
That's I'm just trying to picture that, and it doesn't
seem likely, but who knows. But the off shot of
that is is they caught the first colossal squid ever
and the news reported that what the size of the
calamari would have been, which really kind of reveals our
preoccupation with eating squid if you ask me. That's right.
(35:47):
The word calamari is actually Italian for squid um. And
I quit eating this stuff when I saw my octopus teacher. Uh,
all this stuff was off the mini for me after
that documentary. Yeah, but and I did talk about eating
squid ink, so that's probably something I should stop because
I don't think you get the squid inc Without getting
(36:08):
the squid. Yeah, they don't like keep a live squid
and squeeze it and then throw it back in the ocean.
They they cut the squid up. I'm pretty sure they
used the other stuff for calamari too, right, I would guess.
But also, you know, have squid inc Maybe once a year,
so it's not like not to let myself off the
hook entirely, But it's not the kind of thing I'm
eating every other day, you know. Yeah, But you make
(36:29):
a good point. It's really it's it's hard to eat
something that you know is intelligent, you know, and can suffer.
And it is extremely hypocritical of me to even, you know,
tout that because I eat chicken, and I eat um
beef jerky all the time, like so much beef jerky.
But um, those are animals too, and they can suffer.
(36:49):
So I'm kind of hypocritical in that sense. But still
for me personally, I'm with you. I don't eat octopus
or squid or pigs because of their intelligence that we're
figuring out. Certainly, the lot of calamari has served up
in a lot of bad sports bars around the country. Um,
I think a lot of people may not even understand
what they're eating. Sometimes with calamari. Uh, it's pretty clear
(37:10):
when you get the little you know, full bodied, you
know it's not just the ring. Like when you get
the full body, like, hey, this looks like a little
tiny squid like that's been battered and fried, it's pretty
clear what it is. But you don't a lot of
times you don't even get those, You just get the rings.
Can you imagine the indignity of being an intelligent squid
(37:31):
and knowing that you're going to eventually be served at
a buffalo wild wings eaten by somebody wearing a football
jersey but has never played football actually in their life.
One day, I'm going to I'm going to be passed
through the gullet of a human and a Hooters, right,
(37:52):
and the asophagus actually goes through their brain. Yeah, So maybe,
I mean that's where we should cut it off. I mean,
and if you're into calumari, that's fine. There are plenty
of ways to eat it, But I don't think we
need to go into all the detail that the article
goes into about all the great ways that you can
cook it. No, but I will say I do have
a personal anecdote before when I was eating squid the
(38:13):
only sushi. There's two pieces of sushi that I've ever
spit out. One was um had a raw quail egg
cracked on it, and it was just too much. I
just couldn't do it. I tried it, I couldn't do it.
The other one was a whole squid, like one of
those one inters that you said um, And I chewed
(38:34):
and chewed and chewed longer than I've ever chewed anything,
and I made not even a dent in that thing.
So I finally just gave up and spit it out.
That actually might be the lass, Now it's not. I've
had calumari since then. I wonder if that's just like
a like chewing gum. Maybe that's what it's for, and
you're supposed to eat it at the end of your
meal and just chew it for the next couple of hours.
(38:56):
I got to. But the thing is I eat chewing gum.
I couldn't eat the squid stacy in your stomach for
seven years, that's right. Poor What was that? Poor kid?
Did we name that kid? Poor kid who go surgery
because he had five pounds of impacted. My goodness, talk
about a call back here at episode something right? That's right? Um, well, Chuck,
(39:20):
I don't think has anything else, and I don't have
anything else, so go forth and be nice to squid. Uh.
And since I said that, of course it's time for
listener mail. I'm gonna call this. It's kind of a
long one, but this is a shorter episode, so this
is the perfect time for this Mars rock. When you
picked this one out, Hey guys, I really enjoy your podcast.
I thought i'd share some more interesting factoids, which is
(39:42):
correct to say, related to the Mars rock that was
found in the Antarctic. Just so happens. I was working
as a police property and evidence tech about fifteen years
ago when I was called upon to store a satchel
of rocks from NASA containing this Mars rock. An engineer
from NASA was hosting a special class at a local
Air Force base in our jurisdiction and came to the
(40:04):
police department requesting storage overnight while they were in town. Apparently,
if you're I never really thought about that though. That's
kind of kind of cool, But if you have something
really important in you're in town, I don't think you
and I could do it, But if you're NASA, you
can go to the local cop shop and say, hey,
keep an eye on this. Yeah, you got right, protect
(40:25):
this with your life. Apparently, if you are authorized and
sign the rocks out of the NASA vault, you are
obligated to stow them in a high security area of
the local jurisdiction because they are unensurable. It's interesting they're
considered priceless. We wound up having to track them via
barcode and stow them in our high security vaults with
(40:47):
our guns, drugs, and cash. When I returned them to
the NASA employee the next morning, he was kind enough
to show me the Mars rock. It was fairly unremarkable
to the naked eye, a low gloss matt finished brown
on speckled tone. So I would imagine that this would
answer Chuck's question of why they don't find these things
in Georgia. It's just a brown rock, just like most
(41:09):
rocks you see in the US. Then that's The employee
explained that the trigger to the scientist and the Antarctic
Antarctic excuse me, was that there was a rock at
all where they were exploring. They quickly surmised that it
could be extraterrestrial because they couldn't explain how a rock
had gotten there in the first place, so they sent
an off for testing and confirmation. Also when this actually
(41:31):
showed me a few gray moon rocks, of one of
which he was particularly giddy over. A small white cylindrical
container with a gray stone, and it held firmly in
place by a three arm claw. I was holding it
in its little claw. It had a visible clear dome top. Yeah,
you get it at a visible clear dome top, so
(41:52):
you can inspect the stone without opening it. The dome
screwed down tight. The NASA employee explained that it was
a stone handpicked by buzz Aldrin and secured in the
original container and still filled with the vacuum of space
that had never been opened. Oh my god, truly an
all expre awe inspiring experience to participate in my own
little way of shepherding these rocks to their next exhibit.
(42:15):
And that is from David. David, David, that was such
a great email. I'd love that email. I mean, it
had moon rocks, the vacuum of space here on Earth.
The Mars rock Yo buzz Aldrin made a cameo and
it was unstated, but I believe David probably thanked the
NASA scientists by giving them a free kilo of cocaine
(42:36):
from the evidence room and a stack of money. David,
thanks again for writing in, and if you have an
awesome story like David did, please get it to us
via email at stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
(42:58):
Radio app, Apple pod Tests, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. H m hm
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Josh Clark
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