Penmachine

For my degree in Marine Biology (UBC 1990), I specialized in marine invertebrates, and wrote one pretty good paper on giant squid. Most of my studies actually involved echinoderms and cnidarians, but today I'll indulge in my soft spot for squids, octopuses, cuttlefish, and others honoured on International Cephalopod Awareness Day.

Oh, and it's also Canadian Thanksgiving: we're having a big family party tonight. No cephalopods will be served. We're just doing the usual turkey thing.

However, let's be thankful for the cephalopods. Like us, they are big-brained, smart, agile, and dextrous. In so many other ways, though, they are so unlike us that if they didn't exist, we might not be able to imagine them.

UPDATE: PZ Myers posts lots of links about the day at his blog.

Labels: family, food, holiday, invertebrates, marine, science