Friday Squid Blogging: A Squid that Fishes

The Grimalditeuthis bonplandi is the only known squid to use its tenticles to fish:

Its tentacles are thin and fragile, and almost always break off when it's captured. For ages, people thought it lacked tentacles altogether until a full specimen was found in the stomach of a fish. Weirder still, its clubs have neither suckers nor hooks. Instead, they are flanked by a pair of leaf-shaped membranes. Why?

Now, after observing a live individual off the coast of California, Hendrik-Jan Hoving from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in California thinks he knows what how the squid uses its feeble tentacles. They're not grasping limbs, but fishing lures. By waving the membranes, the squid uses its clubs to mimic the movements small animals and attract its prey.

Academic paper.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.