The OctoPost: Stinky Ink, Schools, and a Beanie
I’ve been loving World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. It has a wonderfully whimsical description of the octopus’s distributed nervous system (newly discovered to be segmented!) which I just had to doodle.
Cephalopod News
Ink is a superpowered multitool. Cephalopods deploy it as an obscuring smokescreen, a distracting decoy, or even a theatrical backdrop! New research on cuttlefish shows that ink can also gum up a shark’s sense of smell.
[M]elanin, responsible for the dark color of a common cuttlefish’s ink, possesses a molecular structure and other properties that let it strongly stick to all the tested [shark] smell receptors. Melanin’s binding affinity for the receptors surpassed that of the compound responsible for mammal blood’s metallic odor.
At least one scientific database is suffering, not at the hands of the US government, but due to simple deterioration over time: the Tree of Life, long the most reliable online repository of cephalopod information, but increasingly difficult to update and access.
A group of scientists have begun migrating its contents to the new CephRef site, along with “molecular information, live imagery and links to video observations in their natural habitats.” They’ve set up a GoFundMe to build and maintain CephRef, and scientist-artist Meg Mindlin curated a set of cephalopod art cards to raise additional money. I contributed my drawing of the martial artist pygmy squid Kodama jujutsu to this glorious collection!
My News
I had a splendid visit to Battle Creek, Michigan, where I got to talk about octopuses at both Willard Library and Lakeview Middle School. The kids were full of knowledge, questions, and ideas. ("You should draw an octopus as Deadpool because they can both regenerate." Yes, anonymous fifth grader, I should.) Many thanks to librarians Brenna LaForge and Wendy VanderWeele for hosting me! The Willard library talk—complete with a mural backdrop even better than squid ink—can be viewed here.
Closer to home, I got to join a crew of local authors at the California School Library Association meeting in San Jose. It was super enriching for me (and hopefully for the audience) to talk on a nonfiction panel with so many amazing writers. I learned about the five kinds of nonfiction! I also loved meeting myriad magnificent librarians, especially the Oakley Union gang who joined my dinner table en masse—en kind, welcoming, and enthusiastic masse. Gobs of gratitude to heroic organizer and author Virginia Loh-Hagan!
In March, I’ll be part of Los Altos High School Writers’ Week. I adore visiting schools, so please reach out if you’d like to connect me with one!
Funny Pages
Did you know there’s a squid called Brachioteuthis beanii?
I have read the book "World of Wonders..." by Aimee Nezhukumatathil and I enjoyed it very much. I also had the pleasure of attending an interview of her and the book signing event involving "World of Wonders..." that followed. Both events were sponsored by the Indianapolis Public Library. I had previously read a library copy of her book, but I purchased my own copy at the event and she spoke with me briefly as she signed it. She asked me which animals in the book were my favorites. I answered that my favorites were the vampire squid and the cassowary. She asked if I had looked up more information about these animals. I said yes. She asked what I had learned. I responded that I was fascinated to learn that the vampire squid may be the longest lived species among squids or octopuses. She smiled and said that she really loved learning about the vampire squid and that she could write a whole book about it! I thanked her very much for writing the book and for teaching me some new things about some very interesting species. One more anecdote about my experience was the way she wrote my name into the book. Her cursive style is very artistic and my name was beautifully rendered, almost like calligraphy. It was truly a pleasure to meet her!