Morbid squid sex story

You’re reading this over breakfast, right? Just want to be sure I’ve caught you at an appropriate moment.

The story is simple: scientists have figured out how deep sea squid, which lack a modified arm for sex, copulate. It’s obvious now — the males have an enormous penis, as long as their whole body. It just hasn’t been easy to notice in the typically dead, flaccid, often somewhat decomposed state of many deep sea squid specimens.

The morbid part is that scientists caught a live specimen of Onykia ingens — well, dying specimen, actually — and they started cutting open the mantle, which prompted a surprising response from the animal. It got an erection and started ejaculating on the table. A two-foot long erection. I’m impressed at both its endowment and the remarkably inappropriate timing of its deployment.

Some of you really want to see this, and others are already planning to run away screaming. I’ll be nice and put the photo below the fold.

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Octopuses do not have psychic powers

A “psychic” octopus named Paul is predicting the outcome of World Cup games, some Germans claim. I don’t believe it. Why would an octopus be at all interested in a game where you can’t use your arms?

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I don’t believe in precognition, but I do think octopuses are smart. It’s more likely that Paul is sneaking out of his tank at night to read the sports magazines, and then makes informed decisions about likely results of the matches.

Talking about monsters

I make an appearance on Monster Talk, a podcast about monsters, with Robert Price, who in addition to being an excellent critic of religion, is also an authority on HP Lovecraft. So of course we talk about the Cthuloid Menace. The download is supposed to be here, but for some reason I can’t find it — if anyone else puzzles it out, leave a comment.

Kraken dismantled

Warning: this anatomy lesson is completely bogus.

I have tried the rum this is advertising — how could I not? Cephalopods and pirate drink, you know — and it’s not bad. But then, it is rum, and there isn’t all that much art to it.