Greetings from TV land!

" I sight-aquired- fired. Caught him midreach with three of my frangible 147-grain no-name high shock coprolites right in the head"
D. Marcinko
 
Nik, don't be put off by the silliness around here...it's all good natured and we all know each other quite well (as much as a bunch of people who practically have never met, bar one or two exceptions).

Is there anything specifically you are interested in or would like pointers to? I'm guessing Architeuthis/Sperm Whale is high on your agenda but what else can we help you with?
 
Since I found tonmo it's not escaped my notice that alongside all the discussion of squid and octos there's a large amount of extreme silliness and a frankly worrying tendency for discussions to revert to the subject of Neil Diamond. :goofysca: Each to his/her own I guess.

The species list for the series hasn’t been finalised as yet but you would be right to assume there’ll be at least one or two of the ‘large’ varieties of squid in there, maybe interacting with a certain cetacean, alongside some other natural history type of observation.

Just to clear up a little more, this is a drama/documentary rather than a straight doco so we’ll be making a lot of it in graphics (must contact CarlS) and I doubt much, if any, actual film of cephs will appear in the film, this is the reason I’m here, at some point I’m going to need help speculating (that’s maybe the wrong word, how about ‘making a best-guess’) as to how various species would behave in certain situations, hunting, mating, danger etc so we can recreate this behaviour in CG. And it goes without saying that if we want to get our cephs to behave the way they really would (as far as we know) Tonmo is the place to find that out. :notworth:

As the production moves on certain questions will arise, so as and when this happens I’ll jump in and get some considered opinions from you if that sounds ok? As a start (and please feel free to move this question if it should be in another forum) is there anything in particular you’d like to witness first hand in terms of archi or messie behaviour? We have a rough outline of what scenes we want, but we could be missing something great so any suggestions are more than welcome.

Thanks all,

Nik

Jean – sorry, I’ve never worked on Horizon so I’ve not met Penny Palmer, but if our paths cross I’ll be sure to say hi from you!
 
Yeah, we do tend to wax idiotic now and again...please put it down to toooooooo many hours bent over a microscope, or dealing with the public!!
The show sounds awesome...I think it is also fantastic that the writers are interested in talking to the people in the field...makes for a much better show!
Once again, glad to have you here!
greg

p.s. tony did warn me about ceasing to throw coprolites... :biggrin2:
 
Nik said:
As a start (and please feel free to move this question if it should be in another forum) is there anything in particular you’d like to witness first hand in terms of archi or messie behaviour?

1) We often talk about the oesophagus of the squid passing straight through its brain. There's a 'pill' out there that docs use, you swallow, about the size of a vitamin pill; there's a camera inside that pill. What I'd dearly love to see is a reconstructed CG sequence of prey being dismembered by the beaks, passed over and manipulated by teeth on the palatine palps (see images in a thread on Phys & Bio titled 'research opportunity: comparative study of palatine palps ...' [or something to this effect]), down the oesophagus (and constriction around the brain), crop, stomach .... until finally you reach the anus. What a sequence that might be!! One day when technology has improved, and we can fit a video inside this 'pill', I'd like to do this on the real thing; right now we're limited to stills.

2) ditto, inside the whale (from the squid being caught [without the whale using its teeth], swallowed, down the whale's throat and into the first stomach; totally darkness; pill-light goes on to reveal cavern inside whale, a few glowing/expiring photophores of earlier-ingested squid, and many thousands of squid beaks). The undigested squid beaks inside the stomach supposedly assist with the mastication of fresh squid. Have the squid being tumbled around, dismembered, abraded, shredded ... and after a couple of days (and 2000-3000 squid later) the whale regurgitates the beaks back up (rather than passing them through the intestine and out the anus (sharp beaks ... ouch)). One day, with a REAL (albeit dead) Architeuthis (and I've got one lined up for the task - just need to seek permission to do something like this ....), I'd like to attach a tiny video camera (tiny being the operative word) to this floating carcass, in a place frequented by sperm whales, and hopefully have the thing swallowed!!! Then you could get the actual footage of what goes on inside the whale ... and have the 'video pill' either regurgitated or passed out the back end, with a transmitter on it to pick it up once 'set free'. Wouldn't that be cool!

3) Most people consider the tentacles of Archi are propelled out to restrain prey, but this isn't the case. The tentacles suspend near-vertically below the squid, and like a pair of pincers their expanded distal clubs pluck unsuspecting prey from the water column. The entire animal (squid) then lunges forward to restrain the prey many metres below (in the pincer-like distal tentacle clubs), restraining it with the arms before dispatching it with the beak. This hasn't been recreated in CG, even on my own docos, because this isn't how people expect the squid to behave (it's supposed to be a monster, rather than an animal with table manners).

4) What could that buccal membrane (see images in Phys & Bio in the thread started by CarlS, 'scale ref drawings of Archi' [or some such title]) be used for? You could have a lot of fun with this!! Does it serve to create some vacuum, or act as a pump, to smother prey, or as some big muscular hand to hold prey whilst the beaks are dispatching it??? To date only a vestige of the membrane has appeared on any squid, because the structure of it is so complicated and animators have had a terrible time getting their head around it.

Extreme silliness? Neil??? Noooooooooo, not here, surely! :heee:
 
Interesting thought, that pillcam Steve. I've seen a portion of a DVD where a camera was inserted into a mussel so the digestive process of a starfish could be observed. The stomach entering was gruesome stuff :goofysca:

I'll try and find out what it was if anyone is interested!

J
 
Seems like a great idea...! Probably just a mass of quivering guts and such...but, it would still be neat to see.
 
Thanks for that, Steve, some interesting stuff there. I'd only imagined we'd see Archi from the outside but perhaps we'll have to consider how we can get a camera inside one...hmm, lots to think about.

Nik
 
Hi nik

Is this going to be one of the documentaries when you have real people in the CG animal's environment?

C
 
Hi Colin,

well, certainly there are going to be people in the series 'observing' the CG animals in their natural habitat though since we're going to be at depth most of the time they'll be on the other side of a submersible port. Exactly how we're going to do it is still to be determined but there should be at least some interaction I would have thought. Lots to work out as you can imagine!

Nik
 

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