Squidward!

View Photo – Steven

Comments:

March 17, 2008 10:50 PM
KindaGamey: did you see the documentary about giant squid? it was strangely mesmerizing.

From: Steven
Date: Mar 17, 2008 11:05 PM
Subject: Squids squids squids

Yeah, I have an unhealthy fascination with cephalopods. They’re just so eerie because they are so intelligent for such primordial animals. Most octopus, for example, are as smart as a housecat….a housecat with eight arms that can figure out how to escape their own aquariums and crawl into others looking for food.

I saw the giant squid documentary, which was interesting to see how they finally caught the bugger on tape. The one in my picture is actually a Colossal Squid. A larger species only recently discovered in Antarctic waters. Bigger mantle, shorter arms with large squiveling hooks in the cups (as opposed to a ring of teeth in giant squids).

Anyway, if you want to see some cool shit though, youtube anything on cuttlefish and giant cuttlefish. Those things are the most unique of the squiddie types. I’ve yet to see it on youtube, but there’s a documentary with the giant ones that can animate their skin to resemble open water or sunlight ripples across sand so they are basically invisible to the primitive eyes of their predators and prey.

Also Mimic Octopus are worth a google. They change their form and body language to imitate other animals with absurd quality.

Anywho, there’s my nerd rampage on mollusks : )

—
No, that’s awesome. That documentary floored both L and I and we couldn’t turn away.

It’s funny, the last sentence of my picture comment for you that I deleted before hitting ‘post’ was – “Truly proof of alien DNA on earth.”

Cthulu!
—

Lovecraft did originally base Cuthulu’s image on a cuttlefish I think. Being the most alien-like lifeforms we encounter.

It occurs to me, though, that time is a dividing factor of what we consider alien on this planet. 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs were dominant, it would have been an alien world. The temperature would have been astronomically hot compared to today and probably winterless as we understand it now, allowing normally cold blooded animals to leap and run around like warm blooded ones, without the need to recharge in the sun. There would be no grass, and trees would be primitive ginko and pine type forests. The air would be thick and heavy in our lungs as it would still be saturated with oxygen from when the atmosphere had formed some 70 million years previously.

Cephalopod‘s strange abilities, apperence, and intelligence, is based more on the simple fact that they are one of the oldest surviving species to have evolved. That is, ammonites and other shelled relatives of them could be found some 100 million years ago as some of the first life forms. When fish began to evolve into faster and more agile creatures, to compete, celephods lost their protective shells and instead adapted either better streamlining, schooling instincts, and high powered waterjets (like squids) or intelligence and super adaptive skin (like ocotpus/cuttlefish). Modern octopus show primitive signs of tool use, adaptive learning, forced social hierchy and some teaching occurences in similar forced social situations.

I’m fairly certain, given the amount of time they’ve been on the earth without any mass extinction effecting them, they would be the dominant life form if not for their extremely short natural lifespans, and antisocial instincts.

—
Well if you want to get crazy nerd-ape, I was thinking about how whales can dive 2 miles deep and how they have to slow their blood flow and heart rate to do this. It dovetailed perfectly with this other stuff I had been reading about Tibetan monks who went through some of the same physiological changes when they went into deep meditation. (they could also be wrapped in a cold wet sheet and somehow generate enough heat to dry it better than a Kenmore.)

People always say there is so much emotion in a whale’s eye. Whales are deep, man. They meditate.

Re: Lovecraft. If I’m not mistaken, both HP (Sauce) Lovecraft and Philip K Dick both had serious nightmare problems where they experienced ‘night terror’-like symptoms (or in modern day parlance, abduction-scenario stuff), claimed to have seen creatures not of this earth, and that this influenced their writings greatly.

Another dovetail to that story: a writer has written a book called Alien Rock about how a disproportionate (more than normal chance) number of the rock legends of our time have been influenced by UFO encounters. Almost as if the aliens are seeding different types of genius.

A completely weird story from the book tells how Jimi Hendrix and some folks broke down in a van in nearly freezing weather. Jimi used to always talk about aliens and UFOs and one came right up the highway and stopped near the van. Everyone was freaked out but Jimi and it melted all the snow away and something got out of it and approached and then somehow the van got fixed and they were back on the road.

John Lennon is in the book too.

I’ve gotten way off subject. I knew about squid tool usage too. Incredible. Yep, they are old as dirt. I’d like to know if sharks are older or younger because sharks supposedly have not changed and yet their physiology is vastly different and more streamlined and efficient.

All those squid suckers with their little alien mouths. Does that correspond to our nightmares by coincidence or did we create our nightmares based on them?

—
I imagine many animals are capable of meditation as it’s derived from a form a form of survival pain blocking. Kind of some split between REM sleep and the brains reaction to going into shock. There is a frog that allows itself to be frozen alive in some kind of trance, then it’s body reactivates like a kind of bio-battery that jumpstarts it’s heart and brain from the chemical reactions of it’s body melting. I think I read where honeybee’s supposedly meditate. Or at least stop and think while they are in a resting phase. They have a whole extra lobe for memory that needs to reboot occasionally. Humans kind of take trance mentalities to a whole other level, of course. A good question would be if other primates meditate.

I know sharks came much later after squiddies. Primitive as they are, vertebrates didn’t evolve for a long time after sea scorpions and giant ammonites ruled the sea. Sharks didn’t change much for the same reason much of anything other surviving ancient ancestor hasn’t. Change equals adaptation, adaptation leads to specialization, specialization equals isolation, isolation equals extinction. In other words, they had a good thing going and didn’t expand on it short of trading heavy armor for chainmail in terms of scales to keep up with sea mammals faster speeds as hunting competitors.

The sea itself hasn’t changed much until recent decades allowing things in it to remain the same.

Sea mammals are a whole other can of worms. Something that came out of the sea, ran around on land, then went back into it. That’s a shitload of advanced evolution ya know. Fish=amphibian=reptile=dogthing=hippothing=whale.

In terms of aliens effecting genius, I’ve found geniuses are more prone to their abilities from brain damage. That is, for example, Einstein was born with a lesser developed speech lobe in his brain. He didn’t speak at all until he was something like 5 years old. And then only because he thought he was supposed to start then. It’s thought that since the brain tries to rewire chemicals and neurons to unused areas when damaged, early damage and natural deformities from birth result in higher capacity in other areas as the brain can adapt better as it’s still growing and forming.

To some extent, the use of brain altering drugs may emulate this effect. Damaging one part of the brain while temporarily expanding another. Hence Hendrix’s experience. Then I’d have to get into a whole other theory that altering ones mind either through drugs or deep meditation allows us to see and remember things our normal perception cannot grasp vs altering ones perceived memory. Which I don’t have time to at work here.

I’m guessing writers like Lovecraft (and especially King, if you pay attention to his interviews) take what they consider alien and horrific from what they see as alien and horrific and write it in a way that we can relate to. Making their nightmares our nightmares. Or making their imagination our nightmares. I always thought squiddies were kinda cute myself. Some primordial fears might be left in our subconscious, however, from when we were the prey of the things in scifi/horror.

—

Can I post this conversation in the blog? Including this part where I’m asking you if I can post it in the blog, of course. Rupert alone should not abscond with this deep sea depthed greatness.

—

Sure man, no problem : )

—

Awesome, thanks. Send me any related links you want to pimp and I’ll stick em in there somewhere.

—

Well, we kinda scatter around the subject of squiddies, but here’s a few links….

Mimic Octopus:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8oQBYw6xxc&feature=related

Octopus Intelligence Test
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8cf7tPoN5o&feature=related

Cuttlefish Invisibility
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ujRgSRYE9A&feature=related

Interesting article on cephalopod evolution/intelligence:
http://discovermagazine.com/2003/oct/feateye