Indie Squid Kid

Sepiadarium austrinum

[Image originally published in Cephalopods: A World Guide by Mark Norman.]

PZ Myer’s Pharyngula is a blog about evolution, development, and a myriad other aspects of the biological sciences. Myer is a fellow cephalopod enthusiast, and every Friday he posts an image of a cephalopod (such as the one shown above, from today) as part of a feature called, oddly enough, Friday Cephalopod.

Pharyngula is a member of the ScienceBlogs family, the source of many of the subscriptions in my blog reader.

I was very sad to discover last night (as I was cleaning out the cobwebs around here) that Laughing Squid’s squid.us blog shut its doors for good in January. Squid.us reported on squid sightings from all across the Internet and was the inspiration for Indie Squid Kid. It will be sorely missed, and I guess I’ll just have to step up and try to fill the multi-tentacled void that has been left behind. Fortunately the archives are still available so this important historical record is preserved for future generations.

Giant Squid 1955, originally uploaded by Tom Simpson.

While this has nothing to do with cephalopods depicted in artwork, I thought I should mention that Darren Naish is doing his own theme week over at one of my favorite blogs, Tetrapod Zoology.

It is Sea Monster week at Tet Zoo, and each day Darren explores a lesser-known beastie from the annals of cryptozoology–using his razor-sharp scientific mind to critically analyze the evidence for each case (such as it is). Like the title of his blog suggests, Darren’s focus is on tetrapods (i.e. reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and birds), so don’t expect any Kraken or gigantic octopi. However, sea serpents, giant tadpoles, plesiosaurs and prehistoric whales are all fair game!

Since I have no idea when you are reading this (although I am very glad you are!), here are posts in question:

• The Hook Island sea monster
• The Moore’s Beach monster
• Professor Sharpe’s sea serpent
• Tecolutla monster