Little kids don’t quite get why eating ice cream for
breakfast five days a week is not a good idea. They may be confused about why,
exactly, potatoes are food while rocks are, well, not something to put in your
mouth. I mean, take a moment to consider that both come from the ground, both
are covered in dirt, and both have a shape that could rightly be described as
“potato-y.”
Can I Eat That? —
a new children’s book written by independent food critic Joshua David Stein and
illustrated by Julia Rothman — plays with some of these culinary confusions.
We’re geeking out over the newest addition to our Tentacles exhibition: the striped pyjama squid!
These shy cephalopods have never been displayed in the United States before. To make it happen, our aquarists figured out how to rear these little ready-for-bedtime-squid from eggs to hatchlings and finally to adults able to lay viable eggs.
Luckily the Tentacles team has a lot of
experienceraisingcephalopods. According to aquarist
Bret Grasse, they were able to unlock the mysteries of the pyjama squid
lifecycle with “the right combination of genders and some positive vibes. We
also provided a comfortable habitat and good egg-laying medium for them to
deposit eggs on.”
Look closely at the pyjama squid’s stripes and you’ll see that they’re
actually made up of tiny dots. These are chromatophores,
color organs made of nerves and muscles and tiny sacs of pigment that change
an animal’s coloring when they expand or contract. Our aquarists have seen
pyjama squid flashing their stripes when threatened or when they’re trying to
repel fellow pyjama squid from going after a tasty shrimp during feeding time.
“They try to look menacing by making dark stripes on their mantle, but this only
makes them look cuter in my opinion,” notes Bret.
Native to waters around Australia, pyjama squid can grow to about two
inches long. They like to burrow in the sand with only their eyes peeking out to
spot potential predators and prey. Nestled in the substrate with their jammie
stripes, they enjoy an all-day bedtime and emerge at night to hunt.
You can spot the striped pyjama squid in our Tentacles exhibition! Look
for these banded cuties across the way from the nautilus exhibit.
Previous technologies have expanded communication. But the last round may be contracting it. The eloquence of letters has turned into the nuanced spareness of texts; the intimacy of phone conversations has turned into the missed signals of mobile phone chat. I think of that lost world, the way we lived before these new networking technologies, as having two poles: solitude and communion. The new chatter puts us somewhere in between, assuaging fears of being alone without risking real connection. It is a shallow between two deeper zones, a safe spot between the dangers of contact with ourselves, with others.
