HELLO

squidboymom

Blue Ring
Registered
Joined
Apr 1, 2011
Messages
48
Hi everyone. I'd like to shed "lurker" status and introduce myself. I'm the mother of an 8 year old who wants to grow up to be a marine biologist and study giant squid! He is very serious about his goals, so I thought I'd better start learning all I can just to keep up with him. When most families are watching sitcoms, we are usually watching squid or sperm whale documentaries. Our next foray will be into octopus. Life is never boring here! So, that's why I'm here. Nice to meet you all.
 
Roy loves to draw. Sometimes he finishes his homework before he leaves school, just so he can draw more at home. He's really happy to have more people to share his drawings with.
 
:welcome:Roy and Mom! Roy's drawings are great, my favorite is "Battle of the Abyss," there is real motion and depth, the composition is excellent, I am very impressed! :cool2: You probably have already realized you're in the right place to learn about cephalopods here, check out the fossil forum too, tell Roy he can see fossils
of cephs dating back millions of years!:smile:
 
Roy has company! Let me introduce you two to Garret and Dylan. If you click on their mom's ID you can send them a PM and ask for suggestions :biggrin2:

I don't have a squid handy but I do have an ocotpus I could send to Roy if a preserved specimen interests him (as you may have noted my links are references to the two boys examining and doing reports on octos I have kept and after natural death, preserved for their use). If this is something he would like, PM me with a mailing address.

Something else Roy is likely to enjoy is an adultish coloring book that has had very good reviews.
 
I'm so glad that someone liked "Battle of the abyss". I was afraid it didn't come out very well. I was thinking I might check out the fossil group today, so I'll have stuff for Roy to look at after school today. He'll be especially interested in giant squid fossils.
 
Oh man, I have a story to tell everybody.

So I was working with Dr. Gilly - yes, that Dr. Gilly of Humboldt Squid fame - and Dr. Ken Baltz (a NOAA researcher whose project du jour was inventorying the stomach contents of Humboldts) and one of Dr. Gilly's grad students at the National Science and Engineering Festival, and Dr. Gilly says that he's reserving one of the squid until 2:00 or something because it's some kid's birthday.

I learn later that the kid and his family flew ALL THE WAY FROM MICHIGAN to the National Science and Engineering Festival because Dr. Gilly is his personal hero.

The kid - probably a 10- to 11-year-old boy comes to the booth and I swear he reminds me of me when I was his age (though I'm female). Precocious little bugger, obviously very bright. And I tell his mom that he reminds me of me when I was his age and that she's doing a good job, and she looks fairly pleased 'cause I tell her I'm now in school as a biology major and well on track to study cephalopods in grad school.

I excise the animal's brain (which apparently his grad student learned how to do from me, and I admit to feeling rather smug - it actually required decapitating the animal just to be able to get at the cartilage cleanly, and the rest of the brain - minus the optic lobes, which have the consistency of wet yarn except are significantly more delicate and mushy and composed of tissue - is the size of an individual nut of a peanut), and it, including both optic lobes, gets weighed on a luggage scale Dr. Gilly brought, and we compare it with the animal's body mass, which I think is awesome. Dr. Gilly said, I quote, that it was somewhere between "a frog and a dog".

I managed to quietly hand the kid one of the Humboldt squid's marbly lenses as a birthday gift from everybody.
 

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