Danna Staaf

Drawing of a vampire squid styled to look like the head and shoulders of Batman. The two fins are his pointy bat-ears; the arm web is his cape. The siphon is the beaklike nose of his mask. The blue eyes glare at the viewer intensely. Two thin yellow tendrils writhe into space on either side of the head. These are the feeding tendrils of the vampire squid and have no batman-equivalent.

In Japanese, the common name for vampire squid is koumori-dako, or bat octopus. I illustrated it for this month's OctoPost: Bats and Jellies. 🐙🦑🐡
buttondown.com/dannastaaf/a...

The Moustache Twins are incredible

😁

What If You Drank Embalming Fluid? Feel like drinking a nice, big glass of embalming fluid? We didn't think so. But what would happen if a living person poured into his or her body something meant for the insides of the dead? Nothing g...

oop sorry it took me so long! science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-m...

A beautifully detailed, realistic yet very expressive, color drawing of an octopus sitting on a floor attempting to untangle Christmas lights. One arm is plugging the strand into a wall outlet; another holds an angel-wing mug of tea. The artist's signature and date are in the lower right: Malcolm Simmons 11/20.

Can confirm, octopuses are for ALL holidays.
This is my favorite piece of relevant art, commissioned for me by a dear friend in 2020.

those are on the museum shelves

a man with a horse drawn carriage says tradition Alt: clip from Fiddler on the Roof of Tevye dancing and singing "Tradition!"

OKAY BUT I ALSO WANT TO CHANGE THOSE 🤣
vampire squid ➡️ bat octopus (per its Japanese name)
paper nautilus ➡️ argonaut (per its scientific name)

I understand loving tradition tho

the typo in this is killing me, but on the bright side "gelantious" is fun to say

thank you! :)

WOW! That's stunning!

Reference for the above: www.nature.com/articles/sre... by @stevehaddock.bsky.social and Henk-Jen Hoving, who write "Haliphron may...even use the medusa as a tool to obtain more nutritious prey that are captured by the fringe of tentacles clasped within the octopus arms." 🧪🐙

My new proposed common name for Haliphron atlanticus is the JELLY OCTOPUS (thx to @motthepaladin.bsky.social for asking!) because this species
✅ is very gelantious
✅ eats jellyfish
✅ may even use jellyfish as tools to capture other prey
However, it
❌ does not make tasty preserves

Thanks for asking! I was initially at a loss to think of a good name, and curious to see if other people had suggestions, but upon reflection I'd like to propose "jelly octopus."
They are very gelatinous, AND they eat jellyfish, AND they may even use jellyfish as tools to capture other prey!

a strong contender 😆

The males appear seven-armed becuase one of their arms is modified for mating and hidden in a pouch. Other octopus species, like argonauts, share this trait. So the name a) only describes males, which are seen way less often than females, b) is wrong, and c) isn't even unique to the species.

Mystery as remains of seven-arm deep-sea octopus wash up on beach Arms from the rarely-seen species were discovered at an Aberdeenshire national nature reserve.

One of the least-appreciated giant cephalopods, Haliphron atlanticus, is in the news! (thx @scsmith4.bsky.social for the heads up)
Unfortunately the common name seven-arm octopus
- only describes males
- actually doesn't even describe males
Can we think of a better one??
www.bbc.com/news/article...

A giant deep-sea octopus is a sucker for jellies • MBARI A new paper reveals the first observations of an elusive, giant pelagic octopus with a surprising choice of prey: jellyfish!

oooo! no it's news to me, thank you! I'm so happy to see Haliphron in the news as I think they deserve more attention. I always want to share the gorgeous photos of them eating jellyfish whenever the opportunity arises:
www.mbari.org/news/a-giant...

I'd pay that so fast!

me: I'm so happy about Scrivener's commitment not to include or train AI! I wonder how I can support them
spouse: you could buy their product
me: NOT MY FAULT IT'S FREE ON MY OS

I'm so happy to share the obsession (ob-ceph-ion?)

🦇🦍🦉 Do you root for the weird, wild, under-appreciated species of the world? The slime molds and sunflower stars; the cormorants and caddisflies?

So do we. And we need your help! A donation of any amount goes straight to supporting narrative journalism about biodiversity. Pls spread the word! 🐢🐛🌵

Yay! I hope you get it!!

Pati also made a bunch of bigger and incredibly detailed cephs, but unfortunately I didn't get a photo of them. 🤦 And yes, I'm still slowly unpacking and going through notes a month after the conference. November has been rough. Here's to moving forward, one cute cephalopod at a time!

Photo of three small crocheted octopuses on a desk. The one in the center is beautifull handmade with rainbow yarn and two adorable button eyes, and a little metal link on top connecting it to a hidden keychain. It is flanked by simpler machine-made octopus finger puppets in gray and black.

So many scientists are also fantastic artists! Bertha Patricia Ceballos Vázquez, who studies marine reproduction, gave me this gorgeous handmade rainbow octopus in Okinawa. I assigned my two little octo finger puppets to be its attendants.

Close up of a mixed media artwork featuring three hand sculpted and painted octopuses, depicting the species Caribbean Reef Octopus.

⚠️ 👋 Hey Original Art Collectors and Gift Givers 🐙

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This is a gorgeous, informative, and fun book that I highly highly recommend! The publisher's website has links to buy it in lots of places: www.abramsbooks.com/product/radi...

What about the size? Eleven billion base pairs! That's several times bigger than an octopus genome. If I understand right, it indicates that this group had a huge genome expansion early in its evolution (mammals did something similar!), and octopuses later pared theirs down.

The structure of the bat-octopus genome shares many characteristics with squid, indicating that octopuses and bat-octopuses derived from a squid-like ancestor (not the other way around). This supports fossil evidence that squiddy things evolved first, and then octopoddish things branched off.

An evolutionary tree that splits into two branches. The first, Octopodiformes, further splits into octopuses and vampire squid. The second, Decapodiformes, leads into a cloud full of question marks. Emerging from the cloud are pygmy squid, bobtail squid, rams horn squid + oegopsid squid, myopsid squid, and cuttlefish.

*"Bat octopus" is better than "vampire squid" bc this species is much more closely related to octopuses than to squid, as I illustrated in this handy diagram. Also, the species has nothing in common with vampires, but the webbing between its arms does look like bat wings.

Now on to the paper...

Giant genome of the vampire squid reveals the derived state of modern octopod karyotypes Marine organism; Genetics; Evolutionary mechanisms; Phylogenetics; Genomic analysis

BIG news about vampire squid! I just learned their Japanese name "koumori-dako" means "bat-octopus," which is objectively better* and I'll be using it from now on. 🦇🐙

That's not the news though, the news is that scientists sequenced their genome and it's ENORMOUS 🧪🧵
www.cell.com/iscience/ful...