Breaking the Squid Barrier 126
An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Steve O'Shea of Auckland, New Zealand is attempting to break the record for keeping deep sea squid alive in captivity, with the goal of being able to raise a giant squid one day. Right now, he's raising the broad squid, sepioteuthis australis, from egg masses found in seaweed. This is a lot harder than it sounds, because the squid he's studying grow rapidly and eat only live prey, making it hard for them to keep the squid from becoming prey themselves. If his research works out, you might one day be able to visit an aquarium and see giant squid."
Re:Ob-Titans (Score:2, Interesting)
Since the movie has now been referenced (I swear I did not set this up) how many are annoyed that they are remaking this movie?
It is not the same blasephemy as when they remade Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or The Day the Earth Stood Still, but it feels close.
Re:Ob-Titans (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry to reply to myself, but I would have been ok with it if they had kept the mechanical owl :)
Re:Easy headline to misread (Score:5, Interesting)
Silly me thought someone was going to attempt to learn their language--many species of squid use bio-luminescence to signal to each other in the depths, and the variety of patterns seen leads some scientists to believe that they have developed a rich visual language.
Re:A simple plan (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Raise giant squid
2. ???
3. Profit!
I think #2 could easily be "open chain of squid restaurants" or "conquer the world"
You could also sell them as exotic pets to rich, stupid people.
A more legitimate use would be to prevent them from going extinct. They don't seem to be classified as endangered, but I'd guess that might have more to do with our ability to observe and count them than their actual likelyhood of going extinct.
What came to my mind first though was that giant squids might then be useful as model organisms for various studies. The giant axons of squids (regular sized squids, giant axons) were useful for first identifying the motor protein kinesin [nih.gov], and I've heard were also useful for early studies on neurons. Different animals may be particularly useful for doing research on, but if you can't keep them in a lab setting or catch many fresh, that really prevents that. Maybe the giant squid has some really interesting cellular process, we could study it, and learn something that will eventually cure cancer. Maybe not.
Re:Why does the caged squid sing? (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, further to my other response to you, thinking about this, is it actually a problem? They're talking about raising from eggs I believe, so would an egg born squid suffer the problem if brought up entirely in a much lower pressure body of water?
Is the ability to only be able to cope with high pressure genetic, or is it merely a result of natural growth at that pressure?