Stuff You Should Know - Everything We Know About Squids

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

Squids are very closely related to our old friend the octopus, but there are some key differences. You can learn all of this and more by simply clicking the play button right now. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. That's right. This is our octopus-adjacent continued love for cephalopods episode on one of the weirdest looking creatures on planet Earth, the squid. Not just weird looking, Chuck. Also pretty smart, widely cannibalistic and beaked. Yeah, they're weird looking animals, man. The squid, imagine if a human had its face and its belly button and no arms and that's kind of what a squid is. Right. And also our esophagus went through our brain on the way to our stomach. Imagine that.

That is really weird. They look like they're, they look sort of like an octopus wearing a big papal hat. There you go. Let's just sit here and take weird descriptions of squid for the rest of the episode because I like it. They're very, very strange creatures, but they are awesome. And like you said, possibly as smart as dogs. Yeah, we'll get to that for sure. But squid have been around for a very long time. Exactly when is not quite certain, but at least 100 million years from what I've seen. And since that time, there, there have been either a plethora of species 300 or it's been whittled down to 300 species. I'm not entirely certain, but those 300 species of squid are

basically divided between two suborders of squid. And for my money, Chuck, I love it when suborders are like, these are like this and those are like that and that's that. And this is one of those instances. You've got myopsida and oagopsida. Oagopsida. I practiced too. Oh yeah? Yeah, I did. And it didn't pay off. So that's, that's the lesson here, everybody. Don't practice. Don't even bother. I figured one of those in the second group, one of those first two letters would have been silent, but they're both pronounced, huh?

That's, that's my take of Latin pronunciation. Oagopsida. All right. So we'll talk a little bit about a few examples of the myopsida suborder first. These fellows live in a pretty shallow water compared to their friends. And as you'll see, some, you know, squid, certainly the giant squid live very, very, very, very in very deep waters. But the, that first group has suckers only. And as you will see, that's not unusual, but that's just one thing that they can have on those tentacles. They have a transparent membrane that covers their eyeballs. And here's a few of those dudes. One very common one is the California Market Squid. And they live in very shallow waters and the Eastern Pacific, basically from Mexico

all the way up to Alaska. Yeah. I saw that that Alaska is recent, as recent as 2015 and that they think they're moving northward because of climate change, actually. Tons of these in the Monterey Bay and where they're fished very heavily. And by the way, we should thank oceanbites.org and it's not a seafood website, believe it or not. Okay. The Guardian, the Spruce Eats, which is a food website and our old friends at House Stuff Works for most of this stuff. Yep. There's also the Common European Squid for our listeners in the UK. Hey, everybody, these are the squid that you swim with every day. They're found in the Mediterranean. You could also

find them in the Atlantic, the Eastern Atlantic. And they are a little less shallow than the California Market Squid. They swim anywhere from 20 to 250 meters, which is 65 to 850 feet. And they weigh up to about three pounds on average and they're about 16 inches long. So it's like a good size, decent size squid that you have to hold with like two hands, you know, if you're picking one up out of the water, which you shouldn't do. No, you shouldn't do that. Then you've got your Caribbean Reef Squid. Obviously, it lives in the Caribbean and then off the Florida coast. And these, you know, this is where you'll find the first mention of the Cuttlefish. CUTT, not Cuttle, is in cuddling up with one. They look a little more like a Cuttlefish,

but a Cuttlefish is a cephalopod along with the octopus. And those three, there's a lot of similarities between these three little fishies. And so you're going to hear things about the Cuttlefish and some about the octopus as well. Yeah, you just can't talk about squid and not mention the octopus, which I'm sure just really burns squid's hash, you know? Sure. So then you've got the Oagopsida that are the deep dwelling ones. Like you said, there's the Shortfin Squid, which lives in the Atlantic from Florida and Newfoundland. They have actually a long migration. They go to warmer waters to lay their eggs, which is an unusual characteristic for squid. What else is there for Oagopsida, Chuck? Well, this one's really interesting, the deep-sea luminescent squid.

They live about 3,000 feet down in the North Atlantic. And then you can find them in different parts all over the world, New Zealand on Australia, Japan, also Hawaii and Bermuda. And they live, you know, so deep it's really dark down there. And they actually, you know, we've talked about bioluminescence before, I think a whole episode on bioluminescence. And I don't know if we mentioned this squid, because the deep-sea luminescent squid does practice or is capable of bioluminescence and have these photophore organs that light up the deep darkness of the deep sea. The deep darkness of the deep sea. I like that. Yeah, I do too. I saw somewhere that those squid and other luminescing squids, like they do that to communicate with one another as much as the

hunt prey. But it does make sense that they would have to do this because squid are primarily, their primary sense is eyesight. They have really sharp eyesight, although as we'll see, interestingly, they're colorblind, which is going to make something really snappy eventually. That's right. And what about this Humboldt squid? I like this guy, 7 to 15 feet long, as much as 100 pounds. It's got kind of a reddish skin, so they call him the red devil, because they're also really brutal when they attack their prey. And they'll even go after sharks. I saw that they'll go after whales sometimes too, so they don't mess around. They're in the eastern Pacific, so I guess around Humboldt County, California.

So you know what they're doing? Yeah. You know why they got those red eyes? They're smoking seaweed. Oh, very good. So we want to shout out something else that is not exactly a squid, but we do need to shout out the vampire squid from hell. They do call it a squid, but it's actually, well, what they call it is a vampyromorph from... What is the order? No, that's the order. What's the species? That's the order. Vampyrotuthis infernalis, which means vampire squid from hell. Yeah, very scary-sounding name. And again, it's not exactly a squid, even though it does... It is a cephalopod, but it's sort of like... The way I described it on this video was it's like a representation of a cephalopod before

they split into octopus and squid. So it's a really ancient creature. They're known as living fossils, basically. They live below 600 meters in what's called the oxygen minimum zone, and there's just not a lot of oxygen down there. And so they have a very low metabolic rate, and mainly just sort of... They do have eight arms and not 10, so they have the arms like an octopus instead of a squid. But they mainly just float around, and they don't move much because of the lack of oxygen. And the way they eat is really cool. They are not carnivores. They eat what's called marine snow, which is just sort of the detritus that's floating around, like little bits and pieces of fish skin and fish poop and stuff that kind of looks like snow in

the deep darkness. And they have these little lines that they throw out from their body, sort of like a fishing line, almost, that's several feet long, and the snow just sort of collects on it. It's really sticky. And when they get enough stuff, they put it in their mouth and then just sort of pull it back out again, like a bear chicken bone in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and all that marine snow is now in their body. Really interesting though. I want to give a shout out to the big fin squid too. Did you see that link? Yeah, that thing's all arms. Yeah, because a lot of the squid out there, like especially the myopsida squid, they're fairly evenly proportioned between tentacle and head,

for the most part. Or at the very least, it's not wildly disproportionate. That's not the case with the big fin squid. It's very little head and body, lots and lots of arms up to 21 feet long, arms and tentacles. And they are probably the deepest dwelling squid. They've been recorded up to 20,380 feet down in the Philippine Sea, and only 12 recorded sightings have taken place, which I think is pretty neat. That's pretty amazing. Gotta look up a picture of these. These are cool. Yeah, sure. And the vampire squid too. Yeah, I don't think we said that it looks like a vampire cape too. Yeah, that's where it gets the name, right? And the red eyes.

Yeah, they're very, very creepy looking. All right, so squids are mollusks, but they don't look like other mollusks that you know of, because they don't have an outer shell. What they have is a soft body with a shell on the inside, which is pretty remarkable. And I didn't really see anything evolutionarily that I could point to to sort of explain this. Well, yeah, so the only thing I saw is that it supports the internal organs, and it's called a pen, but why it's on the inside rather than the outside, I don't understand that either. It just makes squid that much more interesting, you know? Well, and that much more vulnerable. They had a big hard outer shell that's obviously like an armor

for a mollusk. So I don't know, maybe they missed the memo. I guess so. So there are also cephalopods too, right? Which includes octopus, cuttlefish, the nautilus, which is a distantly related cephalopod, and then squid. And then you've got the cephalopods that are eight-armed, the octopods, and then you've got the ten-armed decopods, cuttlefish, and squid. And technically, squid have eight tentacles and two arms, but together that's 10. Yeah, and I think those two arms are sort of more like arms than tentacles, right? Aren't they kind of shorter and like function a little more like grabby arms? Yeah, they can deal a deck of cards. You can drive a car. There's a lot of stuff those arms can do,

but they usually have them kind of retracted up. And then the ones that use their arms to catch prey, they shoot them out and grab prey and then bring them back toward them, which is pretty amazing. So their arms are usually much longer than their tentacles in a lot of the species. Yeah, and you mentioned that we don't know exactly when squids came about. We do know that cephalopods came about during what's known as the Cambrian explosion about 500 million years ago, when a lot of new animal groups emerged. But squids, they split off at some point, like you said, between these octopods and decopods, but we're not exactly sure how long ago. A couple 100 million years probably, right? I saw it anywhere from like 200 million to 100 to 160

million. And I saw it placed within the Mesozoic Marine Revolution, which apparently is a time when a lot of different things evolved harder shells and then other predators evolved ways to break through those shells. It was like a real just kind of like an arms race in the ocean during that time for evolution. And that's when squid would have come along from what I saw. I like that, an arms race. Yeah, so we did discuss the fact that some of these, like if you haven't gotten the picture now, they have a very large size range because we did mention the small ones. There are some that are just like an inch long, just a tiny little squid. And then eventually, we're going to get to the Colossus and the giant squids, which these are the stuff of legend of

the deep sea from ancient seafarers of seeing these huge like kraken like beasts. And these are huge. They're like 60 plus feet long. And it's just amazing to me that you can have something that kind of looks the same that's an inch and then 60 feet long. Yeah, it's pretty neat. The 60 feet long, yeah, and they're all like equally interesting too. But the smaller ones are typically going to be coastal ones, right? And the bigger ones are more suited for deep, deep sea, I'm guessing. Oh, absolutely. You're not going to see a 65 foot squid swimming in the ocean very close to you. Thank God. Pretty unnerving. So one of the things that really has always boiled my pot about squids is that they have a parrot shaped beak, a lot of the species do,

in the center where their arms come together. There's a mouth and it often has a beak and then a bony tongue called the radula. And those arms will shoot out, grab some poor unsuspecting fish that goes, help me, help me. As the squid pulls it closer and closer to its mouth and then its beak tears into it and tears it into pieces. Man. It's really important that it tears it into smaller pieces because the radula forces those pieces down the, I guess the squid's gullet. And again, it has to pass through the esophagus that goes through the brain. So you don't want a big old chunk getting lodged in your esophagus in your brain area. God. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty frightening when you see pictures of this beak. I mean, squid or not to be,

is it squids or squid? Sounds like it would be squid, but I think it is squids. No. So I saw squid as plural for squid. Oh, okay. Right? But if you're talking about a bunch of different species of squid, you would probably say squids. Okay. That's a distinction. I don't remember where I saw that though. Or else I'd shout them out. So you mentioned that they're smart. There has been, and I believe this was just in 2020, the year 2020, that is, when they finally put an MRI on a squid because they had pretty good ideas that they were intelligent. But they found that some of these squid have 500 million neurons. And if that sounds like a lot of neurons for an animal like this, you're right. Because like a rat and rats are pretty smart,

they have about 200 million. If you look at a regular ordinary mullocks, they only have about 20,000. So 500 million neurons is more along the lines of what you might find in a dog. Yeah. So that's where I was wondering like, how are they, how are they equating intelligence between a dog and a squid? That makes sense. You know, rather than brain size in relation to body size, which we kind of poo-pooed in the origin of intelligence episode, like the number of neurons is actually a pretty good kind of indicator or for comparison, I would guess. The thing is, I saw this described somewhere I can't remember where, that what is, what squid intelligence or octopus intelligence is, is probably so radically different in alien from what human

intelligence is or even what dog intelligence is. Because dogs, humans, monkeys, rats, we're all distantly related to fish. Whereas squid and octopods, they evolved from like basically sea slugs on a different, totally different family lineage. So their intelligence generated, or evolved differently, independently from human intelligence. And I also saw that possibly the octopus was the first intelligent being on earth. So to compare our intelligence, there is definitely overlap and crossover. But there's just no telling what their experience of life is like. But it's just so fascinating to think that they have their own brand of intelligence and they're experiencing life through that intellect. And we'll just never get it,

just like they could never fully get our intellect either. Yeah, because I think that walking around on earth, we tend to think of intelligence is like, for animals, is like if they're trainable or something. And like, can you teach a squid to sit and say, say, please roll over and play dead? And it's a different kind of intelligence. But why don't we take a break and we'll talk about another part of their weird kind of intelligence right after the break? Yeah. Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised

to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home. Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb to find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca slash host. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh God. Seriously,

I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikar and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India,

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iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So we talked about squid intelligence and how it's a different kind of intelligence, but they're super smart. One thing that we need to mention for like a full, the full lowdown on chromatophores, I think we should just refer people to the great octopus episode. But they do have these chromatophores on their body and they're able to camouflage themselves, they're able to change the size and shape and color of these pigment cells on their skin or just under their skin to where they can, you've seen octopuses do it, to where they camouflage themselves in remarkable ways, to where they even take the shape of something like a reef or something that

they're hiding next to. But squid actually have what they call, or what they refer to, or at least males do, a skin-powered alphabet. And they can literally, well, again, I don't know if it's literally, I don't know if I'm being that guy that uses that word wrong, but they say that squid can do things like say, I love you through those chromatophores to a female squid. And it's not just like, oh, it gives off some mating scent. Like it literally has like a sort of alphabet that it can spell out things. And again, this is squid language, but that's what they equate it to at least. They say... Yeah, exactly. Hey, okay. So I have two questions now that you brought up the octopus episode. Okay. Are octopus still your favorite animal of all time? Because I'm pretty

sure you declared them that in that episode. They're up there. Okay, so they're still up there, but they're not necessarily your favorite. They may be. Let's just say that. Okay, fair enough. The second question I have is, what happened to you in the rope trauma? You should ask that once a year till the end of time. Okay. Maybe in our final episode ever, I'll reveal that. That'll be a nice little teaser. That is great. He'll be like, I mean, tell you about my rope trauma. Oh, it was a day in 1980 and seven. I'd be like, Chuck, you're 55. What happened? All right. So I mean, squids are smart. Can we just put a nail in that one? Yeah, sure. But don't nail a squid to a board. That's an awful thing to do. No, don't do that.

I think it bears saying because I'm going to get up on my soapbox when we talk about eating squid. Okay. Yeah, let's do it. You want to talk about eating squid now? No, no, no. Let's do that. Oh, I see. Okay. I got you. I mistook what you were meaning. I've got squid intellect as best. I think we should talk about squid sex and then squid ink. Okay. Let's talk about squid sex, Chuck, because it gets kind of freaky, gets a little nasty, and they have like sexual reproduction, which means that they go, they get it on. They hug and kiss. Right. Are we adopting that? No, no, no.

Is that the official SYSK terminology? No, we can't steal from Hodgeman. That's his deal. We could, if we give him a shout out and mention like his Twitter handle every time we do, I'm sure he'd appreciate it. No, we can't steal someone else's bet, even though I keep saying it. Yeah. I'm just trying to pave the way to full acceptance one way or the other. All right. Can we talk about squid sex? Yeah, I tried to lay it out there. Well, here's what happens. The male squid has sperm that are produced in testes, or testis, and this sperm is stored in a sack. And when they do mate, the male has the special arm that transfers packets of sperm

to the female's mouth cavity. And that sounds very unusual, but that's where the eggs are, right? Right. That's where it makes sense. That's when it all kind of comes home and everybody can go, oh, okay. All right, cool. And did you make scare quotes when you said arm, special arm? Sure. It kind of sounded like it. Yeah, I think so. So then after the eggs are fertilized, the female squid basically spits them out in what's termed or what's described as a gelatinous mass of fertilized eggs. And I assumed that like she would just kind of let them float away and that was that, because as we'll see, the squid life cycle is really short, especially shallow coastal squid live maybe for a year and the big thing

that they do is reproduce. But it turns out, Chuck, that the female squid actually goes and grabs the fertilized eggs and then sets about hiding them in different places in the little habitat where she just gave birth to them or laid them, I guess is what you'd say. Yeah, and she does this before she dies because I think usually both the male and the female usually die after they mate, right? Yeah. It's very sad. It is kind of sad. That's like the big thing they do. It's weird. Well, one of the big things they do is ink. And I think this is a good time to talk about squid ink because it's great in pasta. I love that squid ink pasta. You know, like squid ink pasta? No, I don't. Is this part of your soapbox?

I'm just, I'm reserving it for now. All right. I love squid ink pasta. So, let me ask you though, does it actually taste like anything or is it like the power of suggestion kind of thing? Like, oh, my pasta's black. Oh, no, no, no. It tastes completely different than regular pasta. What does it taste like? Have you never had squid ink? So, you've never had squid ink pasta? No, I haven't. Oh, okay. Yeah, it tastes completely different. It's very, very rich. It tastes, it's very briny. It has a different consistency. Yeah, yeah. It's not just like they add it and just to say, oh, look, it's black. Like it imparts a taste. I gotta try this stuff. I mean, I think it's delicious. I don't have it a lot because

it's, you don't find it on a ton of menus, but there's one place here in Decatur that has it. I love it. So, that is one use of squid ink, right? Another use is writing. Another use is an anti-cancer, anti-retroviral, and anti-microbial drug. Yeah. It's so funny. We go from like the most basic use of squid ink to some really advanced technology with squid ink because it turns out that there's a lot more to squid ink than just pigment. And the pigment itself is actually one of the reasons why that the ink can be used to produce all these different drugs. It has a bunch of weird stuff in it. That's right. There's this, one of the main things that is in squid ink is, well, there's a couple of things. There's mucus

in there. If you're eating squid ink pasta, you take the ink directly from the sack. So, there's none of the mucus in there. But melanin is one of the main components of cephalopod ink, right? Yeah. There's melanin in there. There's also catecholamines, peptidoglycans. I practiced all these too, Chuck. Free amino acids, or sorry, acids, and metals, right? And you've got all this stuff in there and you're just like, well, why? This is just ink. Why does this stuff matter? We're not entirely certain. We've been talking about squid ink since the time of Aristotle for almost 2,500 years. We don't really understand it much better than Aristotle did. We just kind of know a little more what's in it. We just don't really know all the stuff that it does.

Yeah. And we don't know everything about just exactly why. We know some of the reasons why they squirt ink. One is certainly a defense. They'll shoot out an ink cloud and get away. It's pretty remarkable. Some squid can kind of cast it out in a pattern to look like something else, like sometimes look like another marine life, basically, which is really amazing when you think about it. And we know kind of how it happens, but there's still so much we don't know about the ink. We know it's generated and stored in this ink sack and that there is an ink gland in there and then they almost kind of poop it out. It feeds into the rectum and it's controlled by a sphincter and it basically sort of ejects it with this funnel

organ from the anus and out into this cloud. It's really interesting and they can make it into different shapes. I'm kind of wondering how that's done. I imagine the old Roadrunner cartoons where Roadrunner would take off so fast, there was like a dust version of Roadrunner. That's what I imagine these things doing. The thing is, it's not as straightforward as it sounds where they just shoot some ink and form an ink smoke screen or an ink Roadrunner and confuse their prey. Because of all these different components to squid ink, along with this mucous that they sometimes introduce to varying degrees, it can have all sorts of different effects. And they think that if you add a bunch of mucous, they're trying to affect a fish nearby that's

trying to get them because they've shown that the mucous affects the gills. They also think that dopamine and L-dopa, which are melanin precursors, but also neurotransmitters and humans, actually activate the olfactory receptors on squid's tentacles. And so it's a way of communicating too. They're communicating with other squid by transferring this ink to their tentacles in a way, which is pretty amazing in and of itself. Well, yeah. So what they're able to do, it's amazing, is that they're actually mixing up, for whatever purpose they have, they're mixing up their ink in different proportions with the other stuff to accomplish a different thing. And I guess they're doing this on the fly to a certain degree.

Yeah, probably without even thinking really. And they're just doing it depending on the context in the situation, like adding a little more ink, a little more, maybe a little more melanin, a little more mucous, a little less mucous, whatever it is, whatever the situation calls for. And then the other cool thing about them inking, supposedly they're, they in cuttlefish and octopuses are the only ones that ink. I couldn't find any other animal that inks. And they have different color inks. I think squid is blue-black typically, which, um, yeah, I think it's blue-black. The other thing that they do when they ink is they take off really fast. I mean, some of them can cover 25 body lengths in a second. Like that's how fast

they take off. That's basically like, here I am, now I'm not here anymore. That's, that's pretty amazing stuff. Yeah. And they do that. Don't they kind of make their body into like a jet propulsion system. They suck in water and then contract really quickly and then just shoot it out the other side. Yeah. It's essentially the same principle as a jet engine, except they don't introduce, you know, gasoline or some sort of fuel into it. They just do it strictly with water compression and expulsion, but it is the exact same, the exact same principle and it does get them going really, really fast. So you combine an ink cloud that's in the shape of the road runner and the squid getting out of there at 25 body lengths a second. It's going to make it tough

for a predator to get their hands on that squid. Yeah. Absolutely. One of the kind of frustrating parts of the whole squid ink thing is they're, they don't really know how or why this evolved. And there really aren't even a whole lot of theories, but one of them that sounds pretty promising to me is that you talked about melanin being a really good at dissipating UV radiation was that part of the reason they evolved to be able to shoot this ink is to protect their eyes from light damage. And we know they have those sensitive eyes. So that may, and then they just had like an excess of it. So it eventually evolved to where they could store it in a sack and use it for defense. Yeah. That's very thrifty of them. Should we take our second break?

Sure. All right. Let's take another break and we'll talk about the really interesting squids or the deep sea monster squids right after this. Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca slash host. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking,

this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you,

it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, cancelled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, so it's time. We're talking finally about the giant squid, the colossal squid, the big old squid, and all the huge squids.

We did one on sea monsters before too, didn't we? Yeah, man. I think we might have talked about this back then. There's no way we didn't because they think that the giant squid inspired a lot of stories over the years, right? Oh, absolutely. I mean, you see it all through literature from the Odyssey to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea are these accounts from sailors about these monsters, these huge beasts of the deep sea. And it's one of those things where if we had never seen these, then it'd be real easy to say, oh, yeah, these are just seafaring stories. And this is just lore and folklore. But they are actually real creatures. They just are so rarely seen and live in such

deep waters that it's hard to photograph them. But it finally did happen in 2005, right? Yeah. And I don't really like this story because this is such an example of humans just being like, hey, we want to know. So we're going to kill you to find out. I hate that part about humans, you know? But in 2005, some marine biologists from Japan had been trying to track giant squids for, I think, three years at this point before they finally found one in person. And up to that point, they'd only seen them in the contents of sperm whale stomachs, which they, I guess they killed two to look in to see what was inside. But sperm whales are the only predators of the giant squid. So the first time they finally saw one was in 2005. And they basically baited a line.

And then the giant squid came and really some terrible stuff happened after that. Yeah, the squid got caught up in the line. I think it was about a four hour struggle to get itself free. And it lost one of its tentacles in that struggle that they recovered that was 18 feet long. And they did get photographs. And to me, this is where they should have been like, all right, well, we got the pictures that we wanted. To them, I guess it was a bonus that they got one of these 18 foot tentacles. But they went back and they captured this thing a year later. They couldn't just leave well enough alone. They actually went back and got this thing. Yeah. And they pulled it on the boat and they made all of the, all aboard, beat it to death with

sticks, which didn't make any sense. But that's how they did. Yeah. Just kidding. They didn't actually do that. I don't think. They were tiny sticks too. Right. It took forever. So yeah, that was the first time one was ever caught. And that was 2006. The next year after that. So if you really think about it, 2005, 2006 and 2007 were huge years for giant deep sea squid. Because in 2007, a colossal squid, which is just a little bit smaller than a giant squid, was caught by a New Zealand ship up in, or down in Antarctica, right? Yeah. This one weighed close to a thousand pounds, had an eight foot mantle, which is that Pope hat, and was almost 18 feet total in length. But if this giant squid had an 18 foot tentacle that they got a hold of,

and we don't even know where the tentacle was cut, it could have been longer than that. Then that giant squid was really big. But yeah, I don't, because here's the thing. I mean, this is bad enough, but we don't even know how many there are. I mean, that giant squid could have been one of 50 worldwide, like you don't even know. And even though we said they only live about a year, it seems pretty obvious. And they believe that these giant squid are obviously much, much older. And it's not like they grow to that big in a year. Yeah, for sure. So one thing that's stuck out to me, Chuck, and I'm not sure what your take will be on this, but that colossal squid that was caught in 2007 was reported, if they had cut it up into calamari, which I didn't realize

this, calamari is not the suckers. They're rings because they cut the mantle crossways. Did you know that? Yeah. Okay, I didn't know that. But they said that the calamari would have been the size of tractor tires. What do you think about them? I don't know. If it was an eight foot mantle, a tractor tire seems pretty big, but because squid are kind of, they're not thin, but they're sort of elongated. So I'm just trying to picture something eight feet long. This is big around as a tractor. I guess it depends on what kind of tractor we talk in your, like a lawn tractor, like a John Deere, like a zero turn mower. That's what they were saying. They put in brackets, they put lawn before tractor and it got edited out. All right. So I could buy that, but I don't

know. I'm just trying to picture that and it doesn't seem likely, but who knows. But the upshot of that is they caught the first colossal squid ever and the news reported what the size of the calamari would have been, which really kind of reveals our preoccupation with eating squid, if you ask me. That's right. The word calamari is actually Italian for squid and I quit eating this stuff when I saw my octopus teacher. All this stuff was off the menu for me after that documentary. Yeah. But and I did talk about eating squid ink. So that's probably something I should stop because I don't think you get the squid ink without getting the squid. Yeah. They don't like keep a live squid and squeeze it and then throw it back in the ocean. Really? Are you sure?

They cut the squid up. I'm pretty sure they use the other stuff for calamari too, right? I would guess, but also, you know, have squid ink maybe once a year. So it's not like, not to let myself off the hook entirely, but it's not the kind of thing I'm eating every other day, you know? Yeah, but you make a good point. It's really, it's hard to eat something that you know is intelligent, you know, and can suffer and it is extremely hypocritical of me to even, you know, tout that because I eat chicken and I eat beef jerky all the time, like so much beef jerky, but those are animals too and they can suffer. So I'm kind of hypocritical in that sense, but still for me personally, I'm with you. I don't eat octopus or squid or pigs because of their

intelligence that we're figuring out. Certainly a lot of calamari is served up in a lot of bad sports bars around the country. I think a lot of people may not even understand what they're eating sometimes with calamari. It's pretty clear when you get the little, you know, full bodied, you know, it's not just the ring. Like when you get the full body, like, hey, this looks like a little tiny squid, like it's been battered and fried. It's pretty clear what it is, but you don't, a lot of times you don't even get those. You just get the rings. Can you imagine the indignity of being an intelligent squid and knowing that you're going to eventually be served at a Buffalo Wild Wings concert eaten by somebody wearing a football jersey? Yeah. But has never

played football actually in their life? One day I'm going to, I'm going to be passed through the gullet of a human and a Hooters. Right. And their esophagus actually goes through their brain. Yeah. So maybe, I mean, that's where we should cut it off. I mean, if you're into calamari, that's fine. There are plenty of ways to eat it, but I don't think we need to go into all the detail that the article goes into about all the great ways that you can cook it. No, but I will say, I do have a personal anecdote before when I was eating squid. The only sushi, there's two pieces of sushi that I've ever spit out. One was, had a raw quail egg cracked on it. Okay. And it was just too much. I just couldn't do it. I tried it. I couldn't do it. The other one was a whole

squid, like one of those one-inches that you said. Yeah. And I chewed and chewed and chewed longer than I've ever chewed anything. And I made not even a dent in that thing. So I finally just gave up and spit it out. That actually might be the last, no, it's not. I've had calamari since then. I wonder if that's just like a chewing gum. Maybe that's what it's for. And you're supposed to eat it at the end of your meal and just chew it for the next couple of hours. I got you. But the thing is I eat chewing gum. I couldn't eat the squid. Stays in your stomach for seven years, they say. That's right. What was it? Poor kid? Then we named that kid poor kid. He had to go surgery because he had five pounds of impacted gum. My goodness. Talk about a callback here at

episode 1500 something, right? That's right. Well, Chuck, I don't think has anything else, and I don't have anything else. So go forth and be nice to squid. And since I said that, of course, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this, this kind of a long one, but this is a shorter episode. So this is the perfect time for this Mars rock one. You pick this one out. Hey, guys, I really enjoy your podcast. I thought I'd share some more interesting factoids, which is correct to say, related to the Mars rock that was found in the Antarctic. Just so happens, I was working as a police property and evidence tech about 15 years ago when I was called upon to store a satchel of rocks from NASA containing this Mars rock.

An engineer from NASA was hosting a special class at a local Air Force base in our jurisdiction and came to the police department requesting storage overnight while they were in town. Apparently, if you're, I never really thought about that though, that's kind of kind of cool that if you have something really important and you're in town, I don't think you and I could do it. But if you're NASA, you can go the local cop shop and say, hey, keep an eye on this. Yeah, you got copper protect this with your life. Apparently, if you are authorized to and sign the rocks out of the NASA vault, you're obligated to stow them in a high security area of the local jurisdiction

because they are uninsurable. That's interesting. They're considered priceless. We wound up having to track them via barcode and stow them on our high security vaults with our guns, drugs and cash. When I returned them to the NASA employee the next morning, he was kind enough to show me the Mars rock. It was fairly unremarkable to the naked eye, a low gloss matte finish brown speckled tone. So I would imagine that this would answer Chuck's question of why they don't find these things in Georgia. Well, it's just a brown rock just like most rocks you see in the US. The NASA employee explained that the trigger to the scientist in the Antarctic, Antarctic, excuse me, was that there was a rock at all where they were exploring.

They quickly surmised that it could be extraterrestrial because they couldn't explain how a rock had gotten there in the first place. So they sent an offer testing confirmation. Also in this actually show me a few gray moon rocks of one in which he was particularly giddy over a small white cylindrical container with a gray stone in it, held firmly in place by a three arm claw. A claw. Yeah, it was holding it in its little claw. Right. It had a visible clear dome top. Yeah, you get it? Yeah. Sorry. It had a visible clear dome top so you can inspect the stone without opening it. The dome was screwed down tight. The NASA employee explained that it was a stone handpicked by Buzz Aldrin and secured in the original

container and still filled with a vacuum of space. It had never been open. Oh my gosh. Truly an awe-inspiring experience to participate in my own little way of shepherding these rocks to their next exhibit. And that is from David. David Anonymous. David, that was such a great email. I love that email. I mean, it had moon rocks, the vacuum of space here on Earth, it had the Mars rock. Yeah, Buzz Aldrin made a cameo and it was unstated. But I believe David probably thanked the NASA scientists by giving them a free kilo of cocaine from the evidence room. And it's a stack of money. David, thanks again for writing in. And if you have an awesome story like David did, please get it to us via email at stuffpodcasts at iHeartRadio.com.

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me. And my whole view on astrology changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Introducing The Biz Tape, your all things music business and media podcast. Join me, Joe Wasleski, and my co-host, Colin McKay, every Wednesday, where we discuss the breaking news, changing the music industry, and what your favorite artists and creatives are up to. Listen to new episodes of The Biz Tape every Wednesday on the Nashville Podcast Network, available on iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.