Woods Hole

No problems here - but let's call it nociception rather than pain. I'll try to post where appropriate here but I'll leave the main story telling to Katherine.
Additional thanks (outside of Tonmo, though) should also go to Roger Hanlon's lab and Terry Walters' lab, whose joint project grant is supporting our summer research.
 
robyn;189976 said:
No problems here - but let's call it nociception rather than pain. I'll try to post where appropriate here but I'll leave the main story telling to Katherine.
Additional thanks (outside of Tonmo, though) should also go to Roger Hanlon's lab and Terry Walters' lab, whose joint project grant is supporting our summer research.

Nociception would be the more accurate term, indeed .
 
The first few days have been full of logistics. We got some squid in, have 6 black bass (one of which is sick), and had to clean a tank. Dark, murky, nasty brown is the official color of progress, folks. Robyn and I put in some serious elbow grease cleaning it.

Practice is required to figure out how healthy a squid is going to be - if it looks healthy, you have to wait a few days to see whether it was just showing a kind of response that many animals that are prey tend to do - hiding its injuries.
 
Robyn and I put in some serious elbow grease cleaning it.
:biggrin2:

Very interesting! If you note some that are "hiding" injuries, please describe your observations. I have not noticed this in octopuses, however, it is not odd to realize that an arm or two are short after a few days rather than immediately. The discovery may fall into this thought rather than a lack of observation.
 
Robyn told me something similar to that even if they look healthy initially, they may be hiding injuries that aren't detectable by looking at the skin by itself. I can't identify individual squid; we can usually tell if the squid crop is good by the number of dead squid in two to three days after they're caught. However, I think squid are caught three times a week here.

We have our own tank where we keep squid for our experiments, and it's easier to assess their health there, I think.

Also I learned how to do electrophysiology and how to euthanize squids.
 
At least in my experiences, the "hiding" of injuries and also disease is probably just because we cannot assess cephalopods the same way we assess sharks or polar bears or even humans. The epidermis is probably the last thing we want to use in assessing health of cephalopods but in reality, it is the only thing that we have to go on. Behavior is also a way to assess health but I've never been much of a fan of that. I've seen some very diseased cephalopods and they eat well, swim normally, and "act" normal. Most of the time, they are probably rotting on the inside long before there is anything noticeable on the epidermis. What great patients!!

Greg
 

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