January 31, 2005

A splendidly baroque little carnivore

The indispensable squidblog points to this post at professor Paul Z. Myers's pharyngul.org, which references this analysis of rapid tentacular strike in the squid Loligo peali(PDF). I've taken the liberty of crudely animating the images below.

squidani.gif


That shrimp is totally busted.

Here’s professor Myers on the images.

“... as the squid slides forward, the two tentacles race forward with impressive speed... and the eight surrounding arms peel back and form a lovely writhing flower of suction cups and waving hydrostatic grasping organs. Oh, this is such a splendidly baroque little carnivore.”

And how.

Posted by Alex at 11:53 AM permalink