a thaumaturgical compendium

You know how to get my attention:

encephalopod robot dirigibles

Those three keywords are enough to get me excited. But who wouldn’t get excited by this:

OK, this is just too cool. Sharkrunners is a game set up by the Discovery Channel for people to learn more about sharks. Human players take on the role of captains of virtual research ships, tooling around coastal waters looking to collect data on sharks. The sharks are controlled by—sharks! Yeah, the wii controller is so yesterday, so species-centric. Sharks have been tagged with GPS devices and control their position in the game by, you know, swimming around the ocean. The game is played in persistent real-time, with updates sent to you via email or SMS. (via infoaesth)

Found a video on YouTube of my little sister Megan telling the story of her shark attack a last year.

When I was a grad student, a group of faculty and grads talked about doing an animal communication class. Despite none of us knowing anything about the subjects, we figured we would each take a week and present some of the research and ideas relating to communication within the species. There were some obvious choices: bird calls, orangutans, dolphins. My choice was the cuttlefish. It amazes me that more people are not as fascinated by cuttlefish as I am: not as lunch or as a beak sharpening implement, but as a highly communicative and equally unusual creature. So, I was pleased to see that Google Video has this Nova special on cuttlefish available on the web.

Looks like a Japanese team has filmed a live, tiny (24 foot) giant squid on the surface near Ogasawara. Well, live until they caught it, that is. So, they’re on the side of the boat saying how pretty it is—why not cut it free. I guess I know why not, because we don’t usually find these things live, and being able to dissect it while it is newly killed probably provides a lot of insights that the ones washed up on the beach do not. Nonetheless, it seems a bit of a shame.

On the plus side, they suggest that they may be able to find more now that they know somewhere they hang out. (They took still images of a giant squid in this area two years ago.) It would be great to get film of these giant creatures in their native habitat. Of course, the idea that giant sea creatures live near a secret nuclear weapons site in the ocean off the shore of Japan hints at a particular brand of B-movie.

I dig encephalopods. As one of the brightest creatures, I sometimes wonder why they didn’t develop an advanced society.

At one point faculty at one of my former schools had considered teaching a course in animal communication (well outside any of our areas of expertise) in which each faculty member would come in and talk about one animal. My animal would have been cuddlefish cuttlefish, because they use their own bodies as display devices. Yes, we all do, but they do so in very unusual ways. Like many other encephalopods, they can change the pattern of their skin at will. Check out the mad camouflage skills on the octopus:

There are a few magazines that are iconic enough that we would all probably want to be interviewed for them. Rolling Stone comes to mind. My little sister Megan recently was interviewed by the online version of another: Surfer. Here’s a section:

SURFERMag.com: In one of your interviews you said you were hitting the shark and were afraid to hurt it.

MEGAN: Everyone got the idea that I was pounding on it. I definitely wasn’t. I wasn’t really thinking about not hurting it, just getting away from its mouth. It didn’t really occur to me that anything I could do would hurt it. It felt so much stronger and powerful than me – obviously, because it was.

SURFERMag.com: Good thing you didn’t damage that shark, young lady. Carcharadon carcharias are a Federally protected species. Want to go to jail for shark endangerment?

MEGAN: I wasn’t punching it, I was pushing on it. I don’t really know what I was trying to achieve, but I just remember looking at my hands and they were shoulder-width apart. I was pressing on it with my elbows locked straight.

SURFERMag.com: Think the shark knew you were there?

MEGAN: I think it felt me on its back because it started to thrash more. Johnny explained it as: “It looked like it was starting to frenzy.” Like it got freaked out a bit.

SURFERMag.com: Were you freaked out a bit?

MEGAN: I remember feeling extremely calm, considering the position I was in. I just went into survival mode. I didn’t think about what I was doing, my body just did it.