Essential reading for conference organizers » « Where a rational conversation about guns ought to start

Turning the tables

Oh, yeah, we’re always hearing about sperm whales and how they just chow down on the grandest cephalopods in the sea, but we never hear enough about how squid eat vertebrates. The answer is: horribly, slowly, agonizingly.

Am I a traitor to my phylum that I was cheering for the squid?

Essential reading for conference organizers » « Where a rational conversation about guns ought to start

Comments

  1. says

    Ooohh! Vertebrate murder. Nasty, nasty squid.

    PZ, you should be shamed by your species.

    Perhaps a good shunning would teach you a lesson.

    I may even write a letter and complain!

    Your friend,

    Janice in Toronto

  4. badgersdaughter says

    As far as I know, there are no phylum police to haul you in for violating the nonexistent phylum law of treason. Carry on. :)

  6. marcus says

    I watched an octopus try to do the same thing to a moray eel. Unfortunately for the octopus xe didn’t get a good grip on the moray. In the end it was just disembodied tentacles stuck to the moray’s head.

  7. tbp1 says

    Dunno if this is really on topic, but stuff like this is part of the reason I’m an atheist.

    There is so much cruelty in nature that I just can’t imagine anyone actually designing things to be this way. In the most beautiful sylvan setting, the woods are just full of critters eating each other alive—they’re just too small for us to see and have our idyllic view of Mother Nature ruined. And those of us in the first world are even sheltered from the cruel realities of our food chain. Virtually no one slaughters their own cow or pig. Most people don’t hunt or even fish, so we see very little of this cruelty in our daily lives.

    What kind of sadistic monster would consciously, deliberately invent the loa loa worm, ichneumon wasps or the ebola virus?

    Every time some creationist blathers on about the supposed “perfect design” of nature, I point these things out, along with my eyeglasses, missing wisdom teeth, missing tonsils, high blood pressure, severe allergies and occasional gout, or my mother’s rheumatic heart disease. Perfect design, indeed.

    The creator, if he exists, is either grotesquely incompetent or evil.

  8. Artor says

    Treason implies the breaking of some oath or loyalty. Everyone who reads this site knows where your loyalties lie, PZ. We’d all pretty much expect you to cheer for the squid, just about any squid for that matter. If you had footage of a human being ganked gruesomely by a pack of Monterey squid, you’d be right there cheering, “Go Team Cephalopod!!!”
    That would be awesome to see, actually. As long as I’m not the one getting ganked.

  10. Ichthyic says

    Treason implies the breaking of some oath or loyalty. Everyone who reads this site knows where your loyalties lie, PZ.

    but PZ does his research on zebra fish… which to succeed he has to keep happy and alive.

    oh, the conflict!

  11. Thumper: Token Breeder says

    Grim.

    Am I a traitor to my phylum that I was cheering for the squid?

    Yes.