SEEN 9.12 Species of the week – Guest editor Thomas Land

The Giant Squid (Architeuthis dux):

After finishing up Other Minds (Peter Godfrey-Smith), a book about alien intellect and cognition in cephalopods, as well as taking a tour of the NHM’s spirit collection which houses one of the only caught Giant Squid in the world (affectionately known as “Archie” despite probably being female), I was compelled to put this species on the pedestal. In early tales it was Architeuthis which was dubbed as the Kraken, and even today shows that the deep sea is a mystery to us. If you have the chance to visit the collection of jar-bound organisms beneath the Natural History Museum in London, I highly advise it (they have Darwin’s specimens he collected on the Beagle from the Galapagos, handwriting and all…..just if you needed more convincing).

http://tolweb.org/Architeuthis+dux

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Category: Species of the week

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