Nature Blog Network

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Squid Sex at Slate

Tentacular "high fives" are in order for Miriam Goldstein of the Oyster's Garter! Besides being one of our favorite invert bloggers and shanty singers, she is now a Slate author.

On Friday Slate posted a brilliant article by Miriam in their XX Factor section detailing The six secrets of squid sex - advice to a young Loligo opalescens on how to successfully complete the mating imperative and pass on it's genes to the next generation without being caught by the ultimate hectocotylized fourth blockers, human fishermen. In wonderful prose she describes all the beauty of squid orgies, but just to make sure there is no confusion (and to satisfy our voyeuristic desires) she includes an awesome video segment, from one of my favorite underwater filmakers and videographers – Howard Hall Productions, of male consort mating and a sneak attack attempt by a smaller male - simply beautiful!!

And just to keep the science cred's super high, she has a companion post up at the Garter with all the research citations, lab links and name drops of squidly delight!

Purely for your voyeuristic entertainment, here is another nice video from some scuba divers of the massive squid orgy off La Jolla from last year. Thousands of squid in flagrante delicto.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.