Speaker 1: Hey, you Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, so we
Speaker 2: are heading down into the vault for an older episode
Speaker 2: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one originally published
Speaker 2: on June twenty first, twenty twenty two, and this was
Speaker 2: an interview you did Rob with an author named Martin
Speaker 2: Wallin about the book Squid, which is I suppose about squid?
Speaker 1: Right? Oh yes, yes, this is a fantastic little book.
Speaker 1: I had a terrific time reading it and then just
Speaker 1: talking with Martin about all manner of squid content from
Speaker 1: his booking, including what Aristotle understood about the squid?
Speaker 2: Oh yes, was squid of the being essence or the
Speaker 2: doing essence.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of talking this about of the not
Speaker 1: eating or the eating essence as well. So I hope
Speaker 1: everyone enjoys the chat. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind production of iHeartRadio. Hi, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and it's just
Speaker 1: me today. Joe is away from work, so I reached
Speaker 1: out to Martin Wallin, professor emeritus at Oklahoma State University
Speaker 1: and author of numerous books, including the twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: book Squid, part of the Reaction Animal series that we'll
Speaker 1: be discussing here today. The book is out in both
Speaker 1: digital and physical forms, and I highly recommend it as
Speaker 1: it dives into not only science and natural history, but
Speaker 1: also mythology, folklore, and literature. So without further ado, let's
Speaker 1: jump right into the interview and discuss all of this
Speaker 1: with Martin. Hi, Martin, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Your book Squid, part of Reactions Animal series, came out
Speaker 1: last year, and as I started reading it earlier, this
Speaker 1: was exactly the sort of book that we'd love to
Speaker 1: discuss on the show. So if I may cobble together
Speaker 1: a couple of questions here, where did your interest in
Speaker 1: cephalopods come from? And how did this book come together?
Speaker 3: Right? Well, that's that's a nice question to figure in with.
Speaker 3: I had written two other books about animals, one about foxes,
Speaker 3: which is also part of the Reaction Animal series, and
Speaker 3: I've written the book about dogs. The book but dogs
Speaker 3: I actually started before the fox book, and that really
Speaker 3: arose out of relationships I've had with horses. Oddly enough,
Speaker 3: but because I've been around horses for a long time,
Speaker 3: I've increasingly begun to wonder how to engage with or
Speaker 3: how to write about, an animal with whom we half
Speaker 3: engage in a completely nonverbal way and most effectively through
Speaker 3: touch and other forms of sensory perception. And there's a
Speaker 3: mode of being on horses that's done as being quiet,
Speaker 3: but I could never quite work out a way to
Speaker 3: deal with that. So I began thinking more pointedly about
Speaker 3: my relationship with dogs and how we interact with dogs generally,
Speaker 3: which led me then to think about relationships with non
Speaker 3: domestic animals like foxes and so on. And then I
Speaker 3: began to think, well, what about creatures that are even
Speaker 3: more alien to us, creatures we probably don't interact with
Speaker 3: on a daily level the way we interact with domestic animals,
Speaker 3: or even the wild animals that might be passing through
Speaker 3: our neighborhood. And I really began to question what animal
Speaker 3: might I explore just in a perhaps a theoretical way
Speaker 3: that would enable me to tackle questions like what is
Speaker 3: it like to be in a world with unknown, unknowable creatures,
Speaker 3: not only ones we have to remain quiet about, but
Speaker 3: once we can barely even begin speaking about, And so
Speaker 3: I sort of exploring squids and found them enticingly bizarre,
Speaker 3: uh and enticingly weird, and really just took up a
Speaker 3: series of questions about about those strange, odd animals and
Speaker 3: how human cultures have over the millennia tried to describe them,
Speaker 3: or account for them, or express their anxieties about them
Speaker 3: and so on. And that's where I ended up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really love the way that you tackle the
Speaker 1: subject of this of the animal of the squid in
Speaker 1: this book, because you, you know, you approach it from
Speaker 1: the you know, the philosophical and the naturalist viewpoint. You
Speaker 1: get into the scientific research, both current and the end
Speaker 1: of the previous century and so forth, and then then
Speaker 1: you get into this idea of literary treatment, mythological treatment,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So it's as I love the net that
Speaker 1: you cast in this But you begin with Aristotle in
Speaker 1: the fourth century BC, philosopher's attempts to understand and chronicle cephalopods.
Speaker 1: What did Aristotle get right and what did he get wrong?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I my push someone an ancient
Speaker 3: writer like Aristotle is that he's really working within his
Speaker 3: cultural contexts. So in his view and in the view
Speaker 3: of let's say, the classical Greek world. He got virtually
Speaker 3: everything right. What we would see that he got wrong
Speaker 3: in that regard is when he describes the semplepads as bloodless,
Speaker 3: because of course they're not bloodless. They simply have a
Speaker 3: different color of blood than most of those terrestrial animals.
Speaker 3: And when he makes references to certain qualities, like the
Speaker 3: fact that they lay imperfect eggs, because we think, well,
Speaker 3: those are squid eggs and they're appropriate to squids, and
Speaker 3: they're like squids, and that they're aqueous. But if I imperfect,
Speaker 3: he means that's the term he uses in reference to
Speaker 3: other animals as well. By perfect, he really means that, uh,
Speaker 3: the eggs don't remain, don't stay keep the same appearance
Speaker 3: that they have when they're first laid by the mother squid.
Speaker 3: By the way, I say, chicken eggs or lizard eggs
Speaker 3: basically are laid as hard shelled eggs and say that
Speaker 3: way until they're hatched. So that seemed like something incorrect
Speaker 3: in our thinking, but it's actually appropriate to Aristotle's uh
Speaker 3: conceptual view of the world. Well, we generally say that
Speaker 3: Aristotle got right, of course, uh is his physical descriptions
Speaker 3: of of really all the animals and and everything he
Speaker 3: he writes about UH. And that's that's what that's really
Speaker 3: what puts him at the very foundation of modern natural
Speaker 3: philosophy and ultimately modern science, because he he does pay
Speaker 3: a lot of attention and great care to the physical
Speaker 3: appearance of squids UH, and and that enables him to
Speaker 3: make certain rudimentary UH classifications among the different kinds of squids.
Speaker 3: It's also important to bear in mind, and maybe this
Speaker 3: is on the wrong side, but it's more of a
Speaker 3: qualification that Aristotle, being a Greek and a Greek of
Speaker 3: the fourth century BCE, really stayed pretty close to shore.
Speaker 3: He most of his observations of squids were done on
Speaker 3: the island of Lesbos in the Gulf of Colony, rather
Speaker 3: than out in the deeper waters. So that means that
Speaker 3: the squids he saw were the smaller inshore varieties of squids,
Speaker 3: and possibly some of the some of the larger varieties
Speaker 3: which he probably would have seen on fishermen's boats or
Speaker 3: as dead specimens that floated ashore, and those would have
Speaker 3: been less common to him. And so he doesn't offer
Speaker 3: that many accounts of those squids, and nor does he
Speaker 3: really dealt into the differences between inshore and the offshore squids.
Speaker 3: So no, that's that's what I would say, is let's
Speaker 3: say right and wrong gish about ariostoles accounts.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned the fishermen, of course, and that leads
Speaker 1: to the question, what was the culinary view of of
Speaker 1: of squids and their relatives during Aristotle's time?
Speaker 3: Well, that's that's an intriguing view. I think almost everyone
Speaker 3: who isn't a vegan has had calamari on our different
Speaker 3: kinds of squid. Squids are nice to eat, and they
Speaker 3: were nice to eat then, except that the ancient Greeks
Speaker 3: had a much more ambivalent view of of what we
Speaker 3: call seafood than then we do. And that ambulance comes
Speaker 3: from a general general revolsion toward the sea, which was
Speaker 3: commonly referred to as being simply perfidious because it was
Speaker 3: a dangerous place. Uh. And uh you could sink, You,
Speaker 3: being a human, could sink down below the surface and
Speaker 3: never be seen again. Uh. And fish, including squids, were
Speaker 3: known to eat humans. And so the idea of eating
Speaker 3: an animal that eats humans uh just tends to stir
Speaker 3: the stomach, but also tends to rub against the philosophical
Speaker 3: view of medicine medame psychosis, which would suggest that if
Speaker 3: squids are eating humans, then we are essentially eating humans
Speaker 3: that have been transformed into squids by the digestive tract. Uh.
Speaker 3: And that's something that that seemed to be immoral and
Speaker 3: and culpable. So that people who did eat squids, and
Speaker 3: there are numerous references to to this ethical view, people
Speaker 3: who did eat squids were somehow morally suspect uh and
Speaker 3: somehow we're either indulgent or not to be frosted. Part
Speaker 3: of that view. I think it's gets exacerbated later on
Speaker 3: by the high morality of someone like Plato who really
Speaker 3: lived sort of puritanical or had a puritanical uh view
Speaker 3: of the world. Uh. And so he he really condemned uh,
Speaker 3: some of the writers who focused on their their diets
Speaker 3: and what they enjoyed eating like squids. So oh it
Speaker 3: was it was people. People ate them, almost certainly, but
Speaker 3: they were unhappy about eating them, at least in the
Speaker 3: Greek world. Uh. And notably, there are very few visual
Speaker 3: depictions of squids or even marine life, apart from the
Speaker 3: Saint dolphins until pretty late in the Greek world.
Speaker 1: Now, why is there so much terminological confusion concerning squids, octopuses,
Speaker 1: and cuttlefish in classical literature. This is something you discussed
Speaker 1: in the book right right.
Speaker 3: Well again that that largely comes from Aristotle and who
Speaker 3: Marisotols when he was describing the cephalopods really grouped them
Speaker 3: all under the general general heading of malachoy, which basically
Speaker 3: means soft bodied creatures or as I like to think, squishy,
Speaker 3: squishy creatures. And he didn't go into that much detail
Speaker 3: and distinguishing, as I said earlier, UH, the in store
Speaker 3: from the offshore UH squids. He distinguishes squids from cuddlefishes
Speaker 3: and octopuses, but even there he refers to the polypods UH.
Speaker 3: And then he'll refer to the cuttle fishes, sometimes using
Speaker 3: the term sepia UH and other times as polypoose and
Speaker 3: other times as tooth is or other times still as
Speaker 3: truth oaths UH. And as later commentators and translators UH
Speaker 3: are obviously confused about exactly which creature he was referring to.
Speaker 3: The confusion has us to do with octopuses, that does
Speaker 3: with the two decapods, cuttle fishes and squids, And there
Speaker 3: Ariostolic say that he does he does allow for a
Speaker 3: certain distinction, and that is based on the quality of
Speaker 3: their flesh. So tuttle fishes, which swim closer to shore,
Speaker 3: he says, absorb more of the heart surface hard substances
Speaker 3: of the earth, so they have a bone running through
Speaker 3: their bodies, with the cuddle bone, and that he referred
Speaker 3: to as the both c B I the CBA bone,
Speaker 3: and then uh, the squids he then just referred to
Speaker 3: as the tooth and tooth olls. And it's hard really
Speaker 3: to know again what he meant by the tooth is
Speaker 3: which has the ending I s, and tooth oath, which
Speaker 3: has the ending O S. But it does seem that
Speaker 3: that that's largely my deduction as based on lexicons and
Speaker 3: uh simply the fact they gave more attention to the
Speaker 3: truth is that that one tooth is refers to the insure,
Speaker 3: Chris refers to the upsur. So it's really a confusion
Speaker 3: of what he The confusion is partly due to his
Speaker 3: his vagueness and his accounts, and to the later confusion
Speaker 3: of uh uh of commentators and translators, largely again because
Speaker 3: those commentators would themselves not have ventured out into the
Speaker 3: sea to look at squids or for that matter, of
Speaker 3: cold fishes or octopuses. But we're probably writing and nlocked libraries,
Speaker 3: uh uh, copying or summarizing Aristotle's texts. So uh, that's
Speaker 3: that confusion does become pretty much a quality of squid
Speaker 3: or even squishy natural history for the next many years,
Speaker 3: let's say, next thousand or so years.
Speaker 1: And as as you later discussed in the book, I mean,
Speaker 1: we still have what what what encountercase is where something
Speaker 1: we're calling a squid is actually not technically a squid.
Speaker 3: Right do you mean the coldfish.
Speaker 1: Wasn't there when when you start talking about the the
Speaker 1: vampire squid.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, vampire squid, Yes, yes, of course, right, technically
Speaker 3: that that is not a squid's actually more of an
Speaker 3: octopi because it doesn't it doesn't really have the same
Speaker 3: layout of arms and tentacles that squids do. Uh. So, yes,
Speaker 3: you're right, that's one of the strangest creatures and also
Speaker 3: a creature. Was one of the most delightful names of
Speaker 3: the vampire squid from Hell. Uh. Yes, but almost certainly is,
Speaker 3: or let's say, at least possibly it's not actually a
Speaker 3: squid as a cbo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love the illustrations we see of this particular
Speaker 1: cephalod in the book, one of them I was really
Speaker 1: taken with. I hadn't seen the seen this particular illustration before,
Speaker 1: but the artist almost it seemed like they were trying
Speaker 1: to make the squid appear like a skull. Am I
Speaker 1: alone in interpreting it this way?
Speaker 3: Sure? Yes, I think that's that's sortainly appropriate. That's that's
Speaker 3: I believe Carl Chuns illustration. Oh no, I have it
Speaker 3: right here. It does look like a skull because it's
Speaker 3: it's black, and it's in this particular station. It's upside down,
Speaker 3: so it has the sort of dulish mouth. It seems
Speaker 3: to be sort of a hideous grin underneath two eyes,
Speaker 3: and then there's a nose socket. Right. That's sort of
Speaker 3: a fanciful rendition of vampire squid.
Speaker 1: Now, going back to the two ancient writings here Plenty
Speaker 1: of the Elder. Of course, his accounts inevitably come up
Speaker 1: when anytime we're discussing Western understandings of the natural world.
Speaker 1: And I was really taken by a bit from Plenty
Speaker 1: that you discussed in the book. Can you explain the
Speaker 1: proposed connection between the quote lavish nature of liquid and
Speaker 1: large marine animal sizes.
Speaker 3: Well, very much an air of Aristotle describing the world
Speaker 3: as he thought uh and describing the world very much
Speaker 3: as Roman Uh. So when he looked out on to
Speaker 3: buy the water, lakes, rivers and the sea, he saw
Speaker 3: that there there there was a large form that was
Speaker 3: basically being fed continually by rainfall and other forms of precipitation.
Speaker 3: So that's that's the nourishments that he sees taking place.
Speaker 3: And then he draws a basic analogy between the two
Speaker 3: different realms of the world. On the one hand, there's
Speaker 3: the terrestrial realm populated by humans and land animals, and
Speaker 3: then the ocuous world UH. And she says every form
Speaker 3: of of of uh life that exists on land must
Speaker 3: also have its counterpart in uh the sea uh and
Speaker 3: the off realm. But because the oqueous realm is more
Speaker 3: obviously nourished by precipitation, is by precipitation, which is like
Speaker 3: the ocious realm than land is like precipitation. UH. That
Speaker 3: means then that the animals are nourished themselves more than
Speaker 3: land animals are, so they grow to greater size it
Speaker 3: is even monst sizes. And because water is more fluid.
Speaker 3: They also are liable to take more varied shapes. UH
Speaker 3: and Eveven diverged into a completely different animals that do
Speaker 3: not exist on land. So that analogy is central to
Speaker 3: Plenty's kind of thinking about natural history. And it's also
Speaker 3: a clear indication that he's thinking specilatively, since of course
Speaker 3: you didn't have a baptosphere UH and couldn't see below
Speaker 3: the surface of the dark sea. And but it's also
Speaker 3: on the basis of that that UH that later accounts
Speaker 3: of thee monsters UH claimed to have some basis in
Speaker 3: natural history.
Speaker 1: In fact, I also love a bit that you from
Speaker 1: Plenty that you share, because this is one of those
Speaker 1: quotes that I guess when you're when you're looking at
Speaker 1: things Plenty shared, I guess sometimes you know second or
Speaker 1: third hand about things in the world. Sometimes they they
Speaker 1: may feel a bit detached from the actual reality. But
Speaker 1: this is one of those quotes that that I feel
Speaker 1: like actually just speaks across the ages and and matches
Speaker 1: up with like my experience of seeing octopi in the
Speaker 1: wilder or anycephalopods in an aquarium. And that is quote
Speaker 1: that squids are virtually incomprehensible to those who have never
Speaker 1: seen one, because they continually shift their appearance by moving
Speaker 1: their arms and changing colors. I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but I thought that really had a real ring of
Speaker 1: solid truth to it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And as I mentioned at the very beginning, what
Speaker 3: my interests in squids is just that, incomprehensibility, how can
Speaker 3: there be such an animal? The simple the basic word cephalopod,
Speaker 3: the official term for those whole group of animals, really
Speaker 3: means the head of feet, right cephalo and then pod
Speaker 3: for feet. That makes no sense, and that name encapsulates
Speaker 3: the oddness and strangeness, the alien quality of these creatures.
Speaker 3: And they really do challenge our basic sense so what
Speaker 3: an animal should be like or act like, because indeed
Speaker 3: they do change shape continually, they change colors continually, and
Speaker 3: they in many ways they should not exist. Uh. There
Speaker 3: are even questions that at various times in history about
Speaker 3: whether they should be categorized as animals or instead as
Speaker 3: at plants. Uh. And so they've always been a real mystery, UH,
Speaker 3: and a real challenge to our ability to create taxonomies
Speaker 3: and explanations and based on categories of animals and their
Speaker 3: relations to one another, because there's always the troublic question
Speaker 3: of how do we dot this head of feet in
Speaker 3: relation to ourselves? Whose backwards are we built backwards? Or
Speaker 3: are they?
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned the mysterious, and of course you spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time in the book discussing mythologies and
Speaker 1: folklore concerning various cephalopods, and of course you get into
Speaker 1: the into the giant squid quite a bit as well.
Speaker 1: So so getting more into the scientific realm here, can
Speaker 1: you tell us what role Japaness Steamstrup played in bridging
Speaker 1: squid myth and squid science of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's that's a great question for lots of reasons.
Speaker 3: Stage Shop is really the turning point from the tradition
Speaker 3: of let's say, squid lore based on legends and uncertainty.
Speaker 3: Uh and uh, the terminological vagueness that we were talking about,
Speaker 3: to modern classifications that made possible scientific studies about squid
Speaker 3: since cephalopods. So for a number of years, especially in
Speaker 3: the North Atlantic area, Uh, there had been of course,
Speaker 3: there were the legends of the krake and the big
Speaker 3: monsters that swallowed up ships or that people would mistake
Speaker 3: as islands and land on and perform religious rituals and
Speaker 3: and then be swallowed up and dragged down to the sea.
Speaker 3: And those legends were intermixed with a number of beachings
Speaker 3: of giant squids uh, the archituccus ducks and other sightings
Speaker 3: of squids uh, and there were recorded as historically events
Speaker 3: uh really starting uh in let's say the sixteenth century
Speaker 3: by who uh described uh uh uh strange creatures that
Speaker 3: he referred to as monks fish are episcopal fish, and
Speaker 3: he uh illustrated his rod delay, if that is, illustrated
Speaker 3: his accounts with drawings of creatures that had fins instead
Speaker 3: of feet and hands. But we're wearing a monk's habit
Speaker 3: or a cardinal's miter, and that those sorts of accounts
Speaker 3: really very gong on uh myths and uh fabulous accounts.
Speaker 3: But there was still an effort to provide some kind
Speaker 3: of empirical credence to uh the existence of these unbelievable monsters.
Speaker 3: So as a number of sightings and beats things occurred.
Speaker 3: By the middle of the nineteenth century, Staintstruck came along
Speaker 3: and fortuitously no one gave him a beak from one
Speaker 3: of the giant squids that had beached, and he delivered
Speaker 3: a lecture in eighteen fifty four where he went through
Speaker 3: all the different accounts of sea monsters by Rondelays Uh
Speaker 3: and others, and he performed a kind of literary analysis
Speaker 3: of all the descriptions which had probably been gathered by
Speaker 3: Rondelay and others from from fisherman's accounts who tried to
Speaker 3: describe these bizarre creatures they had seen. And on the
Speaker 3: same Struck then concluded that all these accounts were referred
Speaker 3: to one very real creature uh. And so, after a
Speaker 3: lengthy series of exegesis of these various accounts, he quite
Speaker 3: dramatically presented to his audience this beak he had been given,
Speaker 3: a very imposing uh beak. A squid's beak is like
Speaker 3: a hawk's beak or a parent's beak, so it's really
Speaker 3: sharp and curved and midst to tear flesh. So this
Speaker 3: is a good sized beak. Uh. And he with that
Speaker 3: sort of dramatic flourish of showing his audience to speak,
Speaker 3: he was really to to change the accounts of seafarers
Speaker 3: and and let's say, the legends of monsters into a
Speaker 3: verifiable uh animal that could be given a scientific name.
Speaker 3: And Uh, he's the one who then gave it the
Speaker 3: name Arctuthu's Ducks UH. And with that name UH, he
Speaker 3: basically cleared up the ambiguity that existenence Aristotle, and he
Speaker 3: UH allowed for a focused and discipline study of of
Speaker 3: squids based on a real taxonomy, and a taxonomy that
Speaker 3: lays out different uh genera of squids, different species of squids,
Speaker 3: and is able to map their locations around the world. So,
Speaker 3: in short, Saints really marks the transition from the world
Speaker 3: of myth and uncertainty and ambiguity to the world of
Speaker 3: modern empirical study.
Speaker 1: Now, speaking of modern study, one of the big topics
Speaker 1: that comes up in all this thing you discussed in
Speaker 1: the book of course is the is the our attempts
Speaker 1: to understand cephalopod intelligence. And you bring up some of
Speaker 1: our responses to cephalopod intelligence and and even the idea
Speaker 1: that they could be quote the primates of the sea.
Speaker 1: What are what are the challenges and limits in play
Speaker 1: when it comes to understanding the mind of the squid?
Speaker 3: Well, the telegon player or or are great. Even even
Speaker 3: though there is such thing as scientific study of squids,
Speaker 3: and the science and squids is growing. The taxonomy of
Speaker 3: squids is expanding xconentually as more and more species in
Speaker 3: general are being discovered continually. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: exactly what these creatures are still remains cheezing, because there
Speaker 3: are these strange creatures whose heads consist of feet, but
Speaker 3: they also have sizeable brains and they show a real intelligence.
Speaker 3: The marine biologist Jeffer Mather has pointed out, I think
Speaker 3: most valuable, valuably that squids exist in I'm courting her
Speaker 3: hair worlds away from us. And even though she says,
Speaker 3: even though their their brains may not have quite the
Speaker 3: same structure as ours, they can still be seen to
Speaker 3: work in analogous ways to our brains, and therefore their
Speaker 3: intelligence can be seen to be somewhat analogous, albeit bizarre.
Speaker 3: It's worth noting that the squid brains regulate movement through
Speaker 3: visual cues. That makes their perception and their movement their
Speaker 3: response to that perception almost simultaneous, in fact, so simultaneous
Speaker 3: that would be virtually the same event. Whereas let's say,
Speaker 3: in humans most land creatures, we perceived something and it
Speaker 3: might take a second or two to to respond, UH,
Speaker 3: squids perceive and respond instantaneously. UH. Scientists have focused particularly
Speaker 3: on what they call it the giant axon, a very
Speaker 3: large nerve fiber that radiates throughout the wall of the
Speaker 3: mantle the long tubular part of the squid. UH. This
Speaker 3: this nerve is about a millimeter in diameter UH and
Speaker 3: really the largest nerve of of of any any animal
Speaker 3: in the world. And it's the size of the nerves
Speaker 3: that is able to enable the squid to transmit its
Speaker 3: perceptions from its eyes and and other receptors around its
Speaker 3: body instantaneously into its musculature to move UH, so that
Speaker 3: they can they can propel themselves by by shooting out
Speaker 3: streams of water within milliseconds of of perceiving something that
Speaker 3: they want to attack. UH. And their intelligencens really is
Speaker 3: I think can can should be described as a movement
Speaker 3: on the one hand and predation on the other hand,
Speaker 3: or really that's that's the same as well, because they
Speaker 3: really are predators UH, and they are hyper sensitive to
Speaker 3: the their environment. They have a number of organs and
Speaker 3: mechanisms for perception, not just their eyes but along their
Speaker 3: their entire bodies that they have a little to perceive
Speaker 3: well beyond our five sentences. They don't have hearing, almost certainly,
Speaker 3: but they are able to perceive motion uh and emotions
Speaker 3: and a very very fine degree. And they also then
Speaker 3: can uh famously change colors, flash colors brilliantly illuminate themselves
Speaker 3: through chromatophores, which are essentially facts of pigments that cover
Speaker 3: their entire body uh and that can be contracted and
Speaker 3: opened will to change the color of the skin. And
Speaker 3: as these sacs open and shut, expand and contract, they
Speaker 3: reveal some erutifores underneath. The ritifores reflect light back as
Speaker 3: a kind of iridescence, but it's a different kind of light,
Speaker 3: is more of a polarized light, which we humans aren't
Speaker 3: really geared to perceive that we can see a kind
Speaker 3: of sheen the way you would see on a soap bubble.
Speaker 3: And these changes, these chromatophors are really controlled again by
Speaker 3: the squid eyes. So movement color changes are all instantaneous
Speaker 3: and very much part of squid intelligence, governed by astaushing
Speaker 3: powers of perception, uh very dominant and and uh impressive
Speaker 3: nervous system uh and a brain. So to think them
Speaker 3: as primates of to see, they are against predators and
Speaker 3: they pretty much live not at the top of the
Speaker 3: food chain, because of course they're eaten by many other creatures,
Speaker 3: but their intelligence and their athleticism certainly makes them formidable.
Speaker 3: Uh so uh definitely puts them at the top of
Speaker 3: many people's hierarchy.
Speaker 1: Now, one of the one of the things you mentioned
Speaker 1: here that really blew me away. You discuss handling and
Speaker 1: messengers research into quote unquote squid talk and touch on
Speaker 1: their idea that that the squid in particular may engage
Speaker 1: in not only play but dishonesty and communication. What are
Speaker 1: we to make of this?
Speaker 3: Right? Right? That's that is that's a delightful discovery by
Speaker 3: the scientists. First of all, zipp Mather again has studied
Speaker 3: what she refers to as squiddish uh, the language of squids.
Speaker 3: She categorized it through studying various postures and light flashes
Speaker 3: uh that squids make, so that she's able to come
Speaker 3: up with something approaching a lexicon, and for the most part, uh,
Speaker 3: scientists and and others uh looking at lexicon as as
Speaker 3: simply being informational the way we usually think of animal
Speaker 3: communication being informational. Birds uh squawk and chirp perhaps to
Speaker 3: say good morning, or you and I are boyfriend and girlfriend,
Speaker 3: or there's a predator close by. Or something like that.
Speaker 3: And if if we think of if we start to
Speaker 3: think as Roger Hanlon and John Messenger suggests that perhaps
Speaker 3: squids are not simply communicating information, but they're creating misinformation disinformation. Uh.
Speaker 3: That that suggests that there's something else going on a
Speaker 3: higher level of communication. And then it suggests that there
Speaker 3: might even be a let's say, a performative quality too
Speaker 3: uh squiddish uh to squid communication, which is, say, it's
Speaker 3: it's not literal, it's not simply informational, but it's something else.
Speaker 3: And that dishonesty play the big role. And let's say
Speaker 3: literary allusions, so that very very much of literature does
Speaker 3: not simply consist of information relayed about something. It's not
Speaker 3: simply uh the empirical descriptions of Aristotle, uh, but it's suggestive,
Speaker 3: it's allusive. It relies on puns, and it can rely
Speaker 3: on jokes. Uh. So that suggestion that squids are not
Speaker 3: simply let's say, unimaginative animals who are merely saying food here, uh,
Speaker 3: pred uture there, but perhaps have the capacity for joking
Speaker 3: or imagination. But then, since qu squids are undeniably major
Speaker 3: predators and even cannibals, we have to ask, uh, what
Speaker 3: are their jokes or what are they imagining? Are they
Speaker 3: making jokes about us which is discomforting, or are they
Speaker 3: making jokes with a punchline I will eat you. Or
Speaker 3: if their jokes are not found funny by other squids,
Speaker 3: will they be eaten? That's a funny room for jokes
Speaker 3: of our own.
Speaker 1: And also worry, that's that's amazing. Uh, Now a lot
Speaker 1: of that, I guess we're talking about information, you know,
Speaker 1: bi cephalopods for cephalopods. But but coming back to the
Speaker 1: topic of what cephalopods can do for us, say something
Speaker 1: that certainly drives a lot of the research, as you
Speaker 1: point out, what are the brightest possibilities here and and
Speaker 1: what are the arguments for for eating cephalopods even if
Speaker 1: they might be primates of the sea, Because I know
Speaker 1: that I know people who, for instance, are pescatarians but
Speaker 1: don't eat cephalopods or make a distinct choice not to
Speaker 1: eat them based on some of the intelligence research out there.
Speaker 3: Well, the argument for eating self pods is simply they're
Speaker 3: enormous numbers. They they they swarm throughout visually all oceans,
Speaker 3: and these except for the Black Sea and and high quantities,
Speaker 3: and they are highly are the fisheries UH yeared around
Speaker 3: squids are very successful in catching large quantities of them.
Speaker 3: And that's important in this time of industrial UH fishing,
Speaker 3: when many species of aquatic life are being simply wiped
Speaker 3: out uh through the drag netting and and other forms
Speaker 3: of industrial fishing, so that it really has become a
Speaker 3: mass produced kind of of food which have depleted partially everything.
Speaker 3: Squids seems to be impervious to that, or at least
Speaker 3: so far. And that's that's really the argument. I'm I'm
Speaker 3: gonna hold off on on what it means to be
Speaker 3: something of UH intelligence for just a second, because there
Speaker 3: are other possibilities for ways humans have sought to use
Speaker 3: to exploit UH squid. UH. One of course, is there
Speaker 3: the giant axon. So the scientists have begun to to
Speaker 3: harvest UH squid just for that nerve in the hopes
Speaker 3: of using them to UH re juvenate humans who have
Speaker 3: become paralyzed, who have lost neurological functions UH. And that's
Speaker 3: that's a big hope for the pharmaceutical industry. Or even
Speaker 3: suggestions that because of the squids capacity to change colors
Speaker 3: that maybe some genius will find a way of transferring
Speaker 3: that into use by the military industrial complex to allow
Speaker 3: let's say, camouflage and the battlefield so that just and
Speaker 3: UH filter k Dick's novels scanner darkly, where the UH
Speaker 3: policemen wear these UH scanner suits that change their uh
Speaker 3: physical configuration completely. Uh. So let's say warriors could change
Speaker 3: themselves completely so that nobody could see it. So that
Speaker 3: sounds pretty far fetched, but it's it's perhaps on the
Speaker 3: at least the table as for eating them or let's say,
Speaker 3: lloyding them in any sense for the military or for
Speaker 3: uh medical uses. I think those arguments really wrestle during
Speaker 3: them as resources overlooking that intelligence or best as or
Speaker 3: at least disqualifying squid intelligence as being less than human intelligence.
Speaker 3: It's long been our tendency to say, uh, whatever is
Speaker 3: alien to us, whatever is different from me, Uh, it
Speaker 3: cannot be as good as I am, and it can
Speaker 3: even be real because it's not human. It's not really intelligence. UH.
Speaker 3: And I might I might even mention that I submitted
Speaker 3: my books to the press. One of the editors took
Speaker 3: a real issue with my res to squid humor. She said,
Speaker 3: that's impossible. There's no such thing as humor in the
Speaker 3: animal world has never been documented. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I disagree. As I said, I spent plenty of time
Speaker 3: around forces, and I know that they can be real jokesters,
Speaker 3: and I know dogs can be jokesers, and fox hunters
Speaker 3: around the world will tell you about foxes playing real tricks,
Speaker 3: and so there is such thing as humor. But it's
Speaker 3: hard to fathom what uh, several pod humor or selphal
Speaker 3: pod intelligence would be. But I think it's also important
Speaker 3: to recognize that. I'll just challenge your fish eating friends
Speaker 3: further and say, well, certainly all kinds of fish, all
Speaker 3: creatures have intelligence, and we have to ask ourselves if
Speaker 3: it's just different from ours or if it really truly
Speaker 3: is lesser than ours, which would justify as eating a
Speaker 3: lesser being. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Now, you of course get into cephalopod evolution, taking us
Speaker 1: back five hundred to six hundred million years. But then
Speaker 1: something special seems to have occurred during the struggle with
Speaker 1: fish and marine reptiles. Can you describe what we think
Speaker 1: happened here?
Speaker 3: Well, of course it's all highly speciative, but around four
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million years ago. I believe this is
Speaker 3: what you're referring to, what is always been called as
Speaker 3: the Devonian extinsion, when pretty much all almost all life disappeared,
Speaker 3: and slowly animals began to reappear in in various parts
Speaker 3: of the world, but decidedly not in the deepest oceans
Speaker 3: because oxygen levels there are are low. But stuffle pods
Speaker 3: seem to do okay. Uh, they moved. Offshore squids in particular,
Speaker 3: moved into the deeper water. So that uh, there we
Speaker 3: again have look back to Aristotle's to accounts of the
Speaker 3: inshore and the offshore squids. Uh, the offshore squids grew
Speaker 3: bigger because squids generally lost their shells or Moluskian shells,
Speaker 3: they were able to move faster, and they didn't have
Speaker 3: the bones that fishes had, so that they were able
Speaker 3: to prey upon the fish that previously preyed upon them.
Speaker 3: Because boneless squids were able to move much faster and
Speaker 3: react more quickly than bony fishes could. So that was
Speaker 3: that was one of the theoretically one of the key
Speaker 3: steps in the development of or squids to somewhat modern
Speaker 3: squids that we see fairly recently relatively speaking.
Speaker 1: And I've already alluded to changes going on in the
Speaker 1: oceans today. Is there a cephalopod explosion happening in the
Speaker 1: world today? Are we seeing changes in cephalopod populations?
Speaker 3: Well, it certainly seems so. In many ways. Popular presses
Speaker 3: around the world have referred to squid blooms or squid invasions,
Speaker 3: where large populations of cephalopods show up in a particular area.
Speaker 3: And it seems that that could be happening because of
Speaker 3: of climate change, uh so that the occurrence are shifting. Uh.
Speaker 3: That that's one explanation for why Humboldt squids have shown
Speaker 3: up in large numbers in certain years around Monterey Bay, California.
Speaker 3: Uh and have uh such large numbers that they have
Speaker 3: washed ashore uh and and and and you know, along
Speaker 3: by the by the millions, causing course serious tygetic issues.
Speaker 3: And it's also possible because of which you say that
Speaker 3: the explosion of squids is also possible because of the
Speaker 3: depletion of other fish, of fish that might be eating
Speaker 3: squids or competing with squids for other food. Maybe whales
Speaker 3: uh have been uh depopulated enough to allow for explosions
Speaker 3: of squids. But it's also possible that people are starting
Speaker 3: to pay more attention to squids. UH. When there are
Speaker 3: computative squid blooms somewhere, then fishing fleets will swarm to
Speaker 3: a particular area, and I've fished that area heavily. And
Speaker 3: since squids have a fairly short life of very short
Speaker 3: life generally about a year, they can disappear and then
Speaker 3: reappear again uh later on, And as they move through
Speaker 3: the current, they can appear in a different place uh
Speaker 3: and again in large numbers. And I just mentioned UH
Speaker 3: squid breed insects large numbers that scientists have referred to
Speaker 3: them as the protein pump of the sea, so that
Speaker 3: as they uh breed in one part of the sea
Speaker 3: and then move to another part of the sea die
Speaker 3: and decompose, uh, they provide nutrients for other fish other
Speaker 3: aquatic life forms, so that they they've moved around in
Speaker 3: that way as well. So at any rate, it seems
Speaker 3: that squids are highly adaptable. It's as climate change happens, squids,
Speaker 3: more than bony fish and other aquatic creatures, are very
Speaker 3: willing to change. They're very willing to move into areas
Speaker 3: that had previously been thought to be incompatible with squids
Speaker 3: or cephalopods or really any form of life. And I
Speaker 3: think that the bottom line there is we see that
Speaker 3: almost certainly squids will endure.
Speaker 1: Now, obviously I love the section in the book on
Speaker 1: folkloric squids and how interconnected the folklore is with our
Speaker 1: just basic understanding of the various species, and I think
Speaker 1: our listeners will particularly enjoy this section of the book
Speaker 1: as well. And I can't possibly ask you about all
Speaker 1: of it, but one example I wanted to bring up.
Speaker 1: It was the idea you share of the Norse sea reek,
Speaker 1: and the idea that the sea reek might be linked
Speaker 1: to ammonia in the giant squid body. Can you describe?
Speaker 3: That's a slight connection that I hope I'm not making
Speaker 3: too much of, But it is the case that the
Speaker 3: giant squid archituc of ducks made famous by stains rope
Speaker 3: and others. But this is ammonia chloride and it's in
Speaker 3: it's flesh. Uh. And the reason for that is that
Speaker 3: these are animals that live very deep in the ocean,
Speaker 3: and the ammonia chloride provides buoyancy so that they don't
Speaker 3: float to the surface where they wouldn't want to be
Speaker 3: because they beaten by birds or whatever, and also prevents
Speaker 3: them from sinking down to the bottom. All squids have
Speaker 3: ammonia chloride, just a giant squid and and a few
Speaker 3: other species and general. But in much of the folklore
Speaker 3: of squid uh, folklore extending up into the novels of
Speaker 3: the modern era, UH, the reek of ammonia is very
Speaker 3: much an aspect of an encounter worth a kraken or
Speaker 3: half a goufa or one of these monsters of the
Speaker 3: seas that would supposedly UH wrapped their arms around the
Speaker 3: entire ship and dragon to the to the bottom of
Speaker 3: the ocean. So I think that the sea reek and
Speaker 3: is a possible literal account of UH, this this feared,
Speaker 3: mythic and yet real monster that everyone dreaded and always
Speaker 3: left kind of of tell tale odor and it's wake.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Throughout this section, I was just you know, trying
Speaker 1: to you know, to put myself in the mindset, possible
Speaker 1: mindset of of say, you know, a Norse seaman, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, witnessing this and smelling these creatures you know,
Speaker 1: and encountering you know, firsthand and then secondhand knowledge of them.
Speaker 1: It's really remarkable, well.
Speaker 3: And frightening yes, of course, mean the city is frightening enough.
Speaker 3: Since we all know that humans aren't meant to be
Speaker 3: able to see in a natural sense, we can to
Speaker 3: sink uh, and we else know that way down deep
Speaker 3: there are monsters like the vampire squids from Hell and
Speaker 3: giant squids Googled attack our ships.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love how this is a recurring theme
Speaker 1: in the book, talking about our relationship with to see
Speaker 1: our relationship then with squid and the idea of the squid,
Speaker 1: and of course that leads us to the squid gods.
Speaker 1: So when when, even when I say squid gods, I
Speaker 1: know many listeners are probably thinking of a certain fictional
Speaker 1: deity that we'll mention in a moment here. But there
Speaker 1: is a squid deity in Polynesian traditions.
Speaker 3: Right well. I hesitate to speak authoritatively about another culture,
Speaker 3: but Polynesian culture is very close to the ocean. And
Speaker 3: from what I was able to understand from my own
Speaker 3: very amateurish investigations, is that there are prayers to Analola
Speaker 3: who described as God of the squid. Does not theme
Speaker 3: that that god is actually a squid, but is perhaps
Speaker 3: represented by a squid uh, since it would be inappropriate
Speaker 3: to say uh the god's name directly literally uh. But
Speaker 3: it is the case that also that as in many
Speaker 3: UH cultures, there are certain beings that serve as family
Speaker 3: guardians uh, which can ward off threats and bring good
Speaker 3: fortune uh to a particular family. These these, of course,
Speaker 3: these guardians uh would be revered. Among those would be
Speaker 3: uh the squid. And in that regard, one of my
Speaker 3: happiest discoveries when I was researching for the book uh well,
Speaker 3: the modern New Zealand poet Darren Kamali, who invokes ancient
Speaker 3: Polynesian traditions in his poetry, he he called upon uh
Speaker 3: guardian squids to rejuvenate his culture uh that has been
Speaker 3: subsumed by the Western views by commercial exploitation of non
Speaker 3: human life. And so his his songs about uh squids,
Speaker 3: about a squid becoming a man whose tentacles uh then
Speaker 3: become dreadlocks. Uh who then chants these these rejuvenating songs,
Speaker 3: they become chants calling up this this, this ancient UH life,
Speaker 3: this ancient uh familiarity. UH. And let's say companionship or
Speaker 3: guardianship among animals, or let's just put this way, an
Speaker 3: ancient community among humans and other creatures that perhaps can
Speaker 3: rectify some of the ills caused by Western exploitation and
Speaker 3: Western views that that squid intelligence cannot be compared to
Speaker 3: human intelligence. That has to be less than intelligence to
Speaker 3: enable us uh to exploit them just for their nerve
Speaker 3: fibers or for their flesh.
Speaker 1: Wow, I feel like that that would that would almost
Speaker 1: be a fitting into the interview right there. But but
Speaker 1: I have to of course ask you about about the
Speaker 1: squid in literature and particular and some of the weirder
Speaker 1: weird fiction of the twentieth and the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: And again there's a lot in the book. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to ask you about everything. I encourage our listeners
Speaker 1: to pick up a copy and dive in themselves. But
Speaker 1: one of the big ones you of course discuss is
Speaker 1: Jules Verne's treatment of the Giant Squid and twenty thousand
Speaker 1: Leagues under the Sea. How essential is this novel to
Speaker 1: pop culture visions of the giant squid?
Speaker 3: Oh well, it's enormously important. In any ways, Vern does
Speaker 3: just the reverse of what Stains Group did, so that
Speaker 3: in the narrative, the main character, Professor Aronnax, who is
Speaker 3: a natural historian, gives an account of the giant squids
Speaker 3: that she sees from inside the submarine that's led by
Speaker 3: the evil cap and Nemo, and he gives aaron axis descriptions,
Speaker 3: very accurate, empirical, uh, dispassionate description. But then almost immediately
Speaker 3: that scene turns into uh a very exciting dramatic account
Speaker 3: where the squids are attacking the novelists and uh they
Speaker 3: become the repellent embodiments of the old myths and who
Speaker 3: who are trying to pull on Aeronax's companion, the harpoonist
Speaker 3: ned Land from the from the strip until Captain Nemo
Speaker 3: hacks off the tentacle of the squid and so on. Uh,
Speaker 3: ned Land is almost chopped into by the the beak,
Speaker 3: the giant beak of the monsters squid. So really, what
Speaker 3: Verne is able to accomplish there is making something seem
Speaker 3: something that seems scientific uh into a uh a rejuvenation
Speaker 3: of the old myths of the kraaken of the sea monsters. Uh.
Speaker 3: So we end up with a decidedly modern empirical kind
Speaker 3: of dread, a modern kind of anxiety. Uh. That so
Speaker 3: that we can name what these creatures are uh and
Speaker 3: still feel uh that that oh, yike, if I've been
Speaker 3: throught into the sea, they'll definitely wrap hold of me
Speaker 3: and chop me in half with their tyant beak. So
Speaker 3: that that really laid the groad work. As as you
Speaker 3: yourself said, for much of the later kinds of stories,
Speaker 3: uh that uh described space aliens coming to the world
Speaker 3: and destroying the world, and of course those aliens all
Speaker 3: are squits.
Speaker 1: Yeah that you of course you bring up HP Lovecraft's
Speaker 1: Cthulhu and The Call of Cthulhu, which I think most
Speaker 1: of our listeners are probably familiar with. But then you
Speaker 1: also touched on a work by William Hope Hodgson, The
Speaker 1: Boats of Glenn Carrigg. And I've read Hodgson's The Night Land,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't familiar with this one. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us a little about it? And it's rolled in squid
Speaker 1: related weird fiction.
Speaker 3: First of all, I really have to give a shout
Speaker 3: out to my great friend Tim Murphy, who is not
Speaker 3: only a lover of squid Affect almost as much as
Speaker 3: I am, but also an expert on Hodgson's book and
Speaker 3: weird fiction fiction generally, and he's he's just finishing a
Speaker 3: book on Hodgson and in short, the story of the
Speaker 3: books of Glenn Carrig uh from the the voice of
Speaker 3: John Winterstraw, who's the narrator, who's basically telling a kind
Speaker 3: of sailor's story of having once uh encounters strange monsters
Speaker 3: at sea. Basically, what happens in in his strange his
Speaker 3: sailor's story is that his ship, the the Glenn Carrick,
Speaker 3: gets caught in a big field of seaweed, let's say,
Speaker 3: probably something like the Sargasso Sea. And it's worth noting
Speaker 3: parenthetically that Hodgson uh did spend quite a bit of
Speaker 3: time in the merchant marine, so he was familiar with ships.
Speaker 3: He was worried, familiar with ship war uh, and with
Speaker 3: these kinds of tales uh that sailors tell them one another.
Speaker 3: But you know, also was interested in that category of
Speaker 3: of fiction. Uh, it's called weird weird fiction. So while
Speaker 3: the game Carrig is caught in uh this Sargasso Sea
Speaker 3: or just a field of seaweed, the sailors begin to
Speaker 3: to spread because they encounter other ships that have been
Speaker 3: trapped obviously trapped there so long they've just become skeleton
Speaker 3: ships uh, until finally they drift towards of what seems
Speaker 3: to be an island uh, and they try to set
Speaker 3: up a residence on the island. And then UH Winterstrong
Speaker 3: notices a few times he looks over the side of
Speaker 3: a boat. And the title of the h of novel
Speaker 3: comes from the fact that the sailors escape from the
Speaker 3: ship from the Glynn Carrick and the ship's boats which
Speaker 3: they rowed towards the island. Uh. So while he's in
Speaker 3: one of these boats, Winterstral looks over the side and
Speaker 3: he sees a white human like face staring back up
Speaker 3: at him. The horse scares the Bejesus out of him. Uh.
Speaker 3: And then once they get on the island, the sailors
Speaker 3: begin to encounter other beings. Uh. There seems to be
Speaker 3: encampments of squid like characters. It seems that perhaps these
Speaker 3: squid monsters are traveling underneath the island and and subterranean
Speaker 3: caverns and showing up on land uh and attacking uh
Speaker 3: the fortified of the sailors UH. And the the attacks
Speaker 3: happened uh nightly over a span of time, UH, even
Speaker 3: to the point that that the sailors become exhausted UH,
Speaker 3: and they said look out, hoping to war off more attacks.
Speaker 3: Winterslaw at numerous points looks out to sea and he
Speaker 3: can see the squid monsters swarming into the island and
Speaker 3: what he describes as discipline formations. So it's the squid
Speaker 3: army coming to attack the marooned sailors, uh, and the
Speaker 3: disturbing policy there, and they're really intriguing polity. And I
Speaker 3: think this is what Hodgson, what makes Hodgson such an
Speaker 3: interesting writer and much of his work, UH, is that
Speaker 3: he we really probes the question of alien intelligence. What
Speaker 3: a lot of what you and I have been talking
Speaker 3: about in the past few minutes in this regard, we
Speaker 3: could even think back, perhaps to the squid jokes that
Speaker 3: might not be funny to us, because these disciplined military
Speaker 3: formations of squids what seemed to demonstrate a high intelligence,
Speaker 3: a very sophisticated intelligence, and an intelligence that's directed at
Speaker 3: us humans in a way that is about as discomforting
Speaker 3: as I think is possible, and that is thinking of
Speaker 3: us humans as the resources for the squid economy. So
Speaker 3: the question would be what use would humans be to
Speaker 3: a squid civilization? How can humans be exploited by squid intelligence?
Speaker 3: And that really goes against everything that we want to
Speaker 3: say about ourselves and relation to our fellow creatures, and
Speaker 3: about our view of ourselves as the only dominant intelligent
Speaker 3: force on the planet. And I think it's it's as
Speaker 3: much Tim Murphy suggests and throughout his discussion of weird fiction,
Speaker 3: since weird fiction is pretty far removed from le say,
Speaker 3: mainstream fiction, that's the kind of question that weird fiction
Speaker 3: can ask that other forms of literary inquiry, or other
Speaker 3: forms of scientific or just oracle inquiry really cannot venture into.
Speaker 3: And that's I think the value of weird fiction and
Speaker 3: the value of learning how to read the myths and
Speaker 3: legends of ancient times and the theological accounts of other
Speaker 3: cultures in a less skeptical way, perhaps in a more
Speaker 3: open minded sense of seeing that maybe we're not the
Speaker 3: only intelligence and maybe there are other ways of engaging
Speaker 3: intelligently with the world.
Speaker 1: Excellent. Well, you know, finally, one last question here after
Speaker 1: reading the book, I have a couple of guesses about
Speaker 1: what your answer might be. But do you have a
Speaker 1: favorite squid species?
Speaker 3: Oh? Absolutely, I don't even have to hesitate. My favorite
Speaker 3: squid is a little apart from the traditional favorite squid.
Speaker 3: The favorite squid. I think it generally is the giant
Speaker 3: squid because of all the lore uh that's growing up
Speaker 3: around the millennia. But I really became fascinated by the
Speaker 3: Humboldt squid, the the Cica gigas right, which is about
Speaker 3: five feet long. It's also referred to as the red
Speaker 3: devil because it has plenty of lore of its own.
Speaker 3: So that we hear over and over again that sailors
Speaker 3: fall from the boats they're fishing boats, and they're immediately
Speaker 3: devoured by swarms of of Humboldt squids who chump them
Speaker 3: to pieces.
Speaker 1: And uh.
Speaker 3: There there are videos on YouTube of of underwater cameramen
Speaker 3: being attacked by uh one of these five foot long
Speaker 3: UH squids coming after him and ripping his oxygen hose
Speaker 3: and and so on. And of course, these these are
Speaker 3: the squids that defy explanation and their ability to to
Speaker 3: pass through areas of the ocean where there's there is
Speaker 3: no oxygen uh and and where they're not supposed to
Speaker 3: be able to go, and yet they do. And they're
Speaker 3: also hunted in large numbers for their uh giant axons
Speaker 3: uh and and their flesh and their fears and and
Speaker 3: I think because of their adaptability, uh, their voraciousness. And
Speaker 3: I'll just add this one detail. There's one weird, weird
Speaker 3: lead the delightful video of some scientists putting a camera
Speaker 3: on a humble squid to see see how it interacts
Speaker 3: with other humbold squids or what it does weigh down
Speaker 3: and the ocean depth. But the video will only lasts
Speaker 3: a few seconds because you can tell the squid is
Speaker 3: descending and then immediately another squid approaches in Egypt, so
Speaker 3: the free just goes blank. So that that aggression, even
Speaker 3: to cannibalism of one's schoolmates, of maybe one even one's family,
Speaker 3: that's consumable. All that is alien and it's right to
Speaker 3: the heart of why I wanted to write the book.
Speaker 1: Excellent. Well again for everyone out there that the book
Speaker 1: is Squid. It is part of Reactions Animal series. It's
Speaker 1: available in physical and digital formats. And now that I
Speaker 1: know that you also have one on the Fox, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to pick that up as well. I'm instantly
Speaker 1: thinking of all the various folkloresounding the fox and the
Speaker 1: secretive nature.
Speaker 3: Oh great, great, just just put a plug out. Let
Speaker 3: me say that. Uh, there are hundreds different Animals Covered
Speaker 3: and Reactions series, and really all those books have a
Speaker 3: great deal to offer. They all all the different authors
Speaker 3: have their own approaches to particular animals. Not everyone as
Speaker 3: training in literature as I am. They're scientists, sociologists, historians, journalists,
Speaker 3: you name it. Uh, so many people have been intrigued
Speaker 3: by how to how to talk about an animals and
Speaker 3: what it means to try to understand, uh, the relevance
Speaker 3: of one animal to human life and culture.
Speaker 1: Thanks allent well, thanks for being on the show, Martin.
Speaker 3: Sure Rob, thank you for inviting me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: All right. Thanks again to Martin Wallin for taking time
Speaker 1: out of his day to chat with me again. The
Speaker 1: book is Squid from twenty twenty one, part of the
Speaker 1: Reaction Animal series, which also includes Wallin's book on the Fox.
Speaker 1: Walin's other works include Whose Dog Are You? The Technology
Speaker 1: of Dog Breeds and The Aesthetics of Modern Human Canine
Speaker 1: Relations and A City of Health, Fields of Disease, Revolutions
Speaker 1: in the Poetry, Medicine and Philosophy of Romanticism. As always,
Speaker 1: if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your mind, you can find them in the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed, which you'll get
Speaker 1: wherever you find your podcast. Core science and culture episodes
Speaker 1: published on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener mail on Monday's short
Speaker 1: form Artifact or Monster Fact on Wednesdays, and on Friday,
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns and just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to reach out to me or Joe or any of
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