Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion
In a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit DiscussionIn a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
This has nothing to do with the mantis shrimp directly, but it does have to do with life in the sea, and so I thought I’d drop a little plug for it. A little plug… hmm. I’ll hold onto that for a second.
I was going to call this a little squid, and it does belong to the Decapodiformes, the group that includes squid and cuttlefish. However, this animal is not exactly a squid, and it isn’t a cuttlefish either. It’s a round squiggly dot known by the scientific name Stoloteuthis leucoptera. If we had to give its group of cephalopods a name, we might call them, scientifically, the sepiolids.
Scientific names lack something when it comes to the imagination, however. We don’t all spend time in wood-paneled lounges at the headquarters of the British Geographical Society.
So, I’d like to hear people’s ideas for a common name for this little animal. Personally, I’d like to see the genus it belongs to given the common name of “little plugs”. This one in particular might be called the stumpy plug.
You can find out more about this animal at the tree of life.
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March 12th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
plug = luke vibert = an album i like called Big Soup.
these guys look like they’d be the really super intelligent component when the puckish waitress delivers the fly with the soup.
how’s about… the Soupies,
ie. spectacled soupie, gem soupie, crackling soupie
March 12th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
or
again along the vibert line…
base = headphones…
phonies, homies, phone homies, uhh…
got any soup?
bbzzztt!
March 12th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Out of those ideas, I like soupies.
I’m thinking Rice Crispies, for some reason, though. Crispies?
Kibbles?
March 13th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Plug, no, but the word “pud” keeps coming to mind. I don’t suppose you can use Yiddish like that in the sacred woodpaneled halls though.
Can you really eat the thing–they are just about the size of those goldfish soup crackers. And photopores–do they glow in the dark? I would definitely send back any soup that glowed in the dark.
March 14th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Dr. James Wood at The Cephalopod Page calls them “little cuttlefish like cephs”, and writes, “Although sepiolids are commonly called squid, they are not true squid. They look like a combination between octopus and squid but are actually more closely related to cuttlefish.”
http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/taxa.php
March 14th, 2008 at 9:41 am
[…] couple days ago, Mantis Shrimp Man turned us on to a little cephalopod with the scientific name of Stoloteuthis leucoptera, but with no common name. He got me thinking about cephalopods, and looking more into the sepiolids and their relatives. […]
March 15th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Folks: With suggestions like these, you’ll have to fall back on
the old standards of “Fluffy”, “Spot” or “Phydeaux”. I’ll
personally go for “Fluffy”.
March 15th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Are those ears on the side of it? In keeping with the snack motif, maybe you want to call it a “sound bite”. Or since you can also spell bite as byte, you could play with the spelling and call it a “plugue”. Maybe an “ear plogue”, or, as he seems to be equipped to glow in the dark, a “spark plogue”.
March 15th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
There is, apparently, already an octopus known as the Dumbo Octopus, genus Grimpoteuthis.
March 15th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Dumbo octopus–you have to see this one:
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/blueplanet/photo/photo_zoom7.html
But isn’t that uh, racist?
In the same genus, a Red Jellyhead.
Not to mention a Flapjack Octopus, various types of Umbrella Octopus, and the Japanese Pancake Devilfish.
Then there’s the Wonderpus:
http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/imgdb/imgsrch3.cfm?ID=611&PhotographerID=&CephID=&Location=&Keywords=&LowestTaxa=Family%20Octopodidae
sometimes misidentified as O. horridus. Tee, hee. Sometimes I think they just make up these names.
March 15th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Moderation? Oh, more than one link.
March 19th, 2008 at 9:49 am
[…] with a very cephalopodish kind of mood that I have followed the trail begun by Mantis Shrimp Man and his little animal, Stoloteuthis leucoptera. Yesterday was flamboyant cuttlefish Friday, and today, link upon link has led me to the most […]