Squid and Polar Bears
They both like water.
As if I haven’t had far more specious links between things I wanted to talk about. These two are both animals and, as previously stated, enjoy a dip.
First up! Time to look at the colossal squid found last year!!! [Ed. note - people totally jones for squid. Not a day goes by that someone doesn't come by my blog looking for large squids.]
Paul Brewer from the museum said there were some fears the huge animal would collapse when it finally thawed, because it lack of a backbone.
To try to unfreeze the specimen successfully, it will be removed from its freezer and placed in a specially-designed tank filled with salty water.
Because salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water, it is hoped the squid can be kept at or below zero degrees celsius while the fresh water block of ice surrounding it is melted.
It is expected the thawing process will begin the night before scientists want to examine the animal, but the defrosting could take three to four days to complete.
This AAP writer is clearly missing the excitement of day; the audacious boringness of this prose is completely inappropriate. Curse the writer that does not appreciate the squid beat.
(Actually, the entire story reads like, “Um, I am just writing down what they told me because I don’t know the first thing about squid defrosting’).
Secondly, poor Knut! He really likes people and he cries because he’s too big to play with and no one likes him because he’s not a baby anymore.
And his handler doesn’t want to hug him anymore because he’s enormous and potentially deadly in his love.
He needs to learn a party trick like Mike, the polar bear at Lincoln Park Zoo when I was growing up. He used to bounce off the walls. It was charming at the time, though now I realize it was a repetitive coping behavior caused by crushing boredom.
A different LPZ polar bear seems to have kids on the menu. Maybe Knut should try rage… He is a teen, after all.
I went looking for a cougar update, but got bored with the Trib’s foolish website. It’s at the Field Museum and various people are poking at it. The story I read the other day only had two authors and not nearly enough breathless wonder for my cougar-article-tastes.
Links:
Scientists finally get close squiz at colossal squid [The Age]
Grown Knut ‘cries out’ [Chicago Tribune]
