Day forty-whatever of shelter-in-place, I finally got my act together to share squid science with the neighborhood! From each according to her ability . . .

And I got the first questions last night! I WAS SO EXCITED!

More questions this morning!!!

Yayyyyy moar squestions!

Doing my best to answer all your amazing questions! Also, I wrote a whole book about squid and their relatives, MONARCHS OF THE SEA. You can pre-order here: https://theexperimentpublishing.com/catalogs/fall-2020/monarchs-of-the-sea/

I've been asked "What's your favorite squid?" a lot here on Twitter, and today it showed up on the sidewalk too! The other question was "Which end is the front?" and I was so excited I wrote too fast and had to had to rub it out and fix it.

Can't believe I didn't think of doing this until someone asked for it. "If the giant squid's tail is here ->| how far to its head?" Of course, I wasn't going to stop drawing at the head...

Theofintelligence! Squid communication is complex enough that some scientists call it a language. Squid can learn, and remember what they've learned. But we don't have a universally agreed-upon definition of intelligence within humans, let alone across species . . .

More neighborhood questions vibing with twitter questions. It's actually hard to make a mark with chalk as small as a pygmy squid!

Questions about ink and teeth from the sidewalk today! (Although squid don't have baby teeth to lose, one species--vampire squid--lose their "baby fins"!)

Sometimes I wish I could answer with an essay! Fitting answers in sidewalk squares is quite the writing challenge. Some squids engage in mate guarding, which means pairs do stay together for a short time, but they're certainly not exclusive.

"Do some squid look like octopus?" made me think of Octopoteuthis, the squid who loses its tentacles as it grows up. Can anyone think of other squid that look like octos?

Squid: thriving or endangered? I tried to fit a nuanced answer on the sidewalk, but then there are species like Humboldt squid, with such complex responses to changing climate that the fishery for them has essentially collapsed while the species itself is not (yet) threatened...

Today's questions: "Do companies that make pens use squid ink?" (no) and "What is the purpose of the tentacles vs. the arms?" Additional info I couldn't fit: squid do *sometimes* grab prey with arms, instead of tentacles. Bc they won't be constrained by the RULES, man.

I've been trying to avoid sullying the sidewalk with jargon, but I just couldn't help describing tentacles as muscular hydrostats. So many of the best things in biology are! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscular_hydrostat