Today's soundtrack is KIDS SEE GHOSTS: KIDS SEE GHOSTS.
This afternoon, I'm reading the first chapter of Wendy Williams' Kraken: The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid, "A Wonderful Fish."
Up until 1873, there was no physical evidence that there was such a thing as a giant squid, though many anecdotes and legends said that there was something out there in the deep sea. But in 1973, some sailors chopped off a tentacle of a giant squid that was attacking their boat. It was "19 feet and tangible beyond dispute" (p. 17), and put the debate to rest once and for all. There was some kind of huge cephalopod out there.
There are many kinds of cephalopods, and they have the following in common: "highly developed senses, like sight and scent[; ... they all] live in salt water[, and a]ll cephalopods are predators" (p. 23). Most cephalopods can change their colouration, and most of them "have a brain-to-body-weight ratio that places them above fish and reptiles and just below most birds and mammals" (p. 23). Cephalopods are made up of three parts: a mantle, a head, and the tentacles.
Squid have "eight arms and two much longer feeding tentacles" (p. 24); thus, they "are called decapods" (p. 24). Because octopuses and cuttlefish "have only eight arms" (p. 24), they "are called octopods" (p. 24). Most cephalopods use ink to hide from predators. They use their funnel to move through the water like an underwater jetski.
