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