When scientists tracked great white sharks to a mysterious mid-Pacific hangout, they nicknamed it the White Shark Café — are they eating, or meeting? What’s going on out there? Monterey Bay Aquarium (MBA) researcher Dr. Sal Jorgensen wanted eyes on the scene, so he and engineer Thomas Maughan at sister institution MBARI developed a Shark […]
The Amazing Air-Filled Under-Sea Adventure used more than 40,000 balloons to fill the building’s five-story atrium.
Inspired by diatoms and radiolarians, a new bottle used biomimicry as a basis for its new design.
After making an octopus plushie for her baby niece as a “welcome to the world” gift, fashion designer Dana Muskat decided to make an entire collection of creatures from her “underwater universe.”
Cephalopods like squid and octopuses have color-changing cells called chromatophores, which enable them to blend into their surroundings to hide from predators and prey. Chromatophores can be triggered by electrical signals, so watch what happens when the folks at Backyard Brains play music through a squid fin. The song selection is Cypress Hill’s 1993 classic track, […]
Everyone loves a soft robot, and I’m fond of the marine variety. This bioinspired prototype tentacle, made of silicone rubber, not only curls and extends in eerily squidlike fashion, it’s also got pressure sensors embedded beneath its suckers so it can grasp objects, like a cephalopod should.
What *is* it about cephalopods? You can build your own adorable squid at Te Papa’s Colossal Squid site – there’s lots of information about the real colossal squid, too.
