Dead squid dances

July 28, 2011 • 6:47 am

by Matthew Cobb

This is Jerry’s blog (sorry, website), so I am wary of playing anything other than a very straight bat (cricketing analogy). I certainly didn’t intend on getting involved in the kitteh/squid wars with PZ.

BUT, but, but. Then I saw this link on Ed Yong’s Twitter feed (does that man have USB keys for fingers? He seems to be plugged into the web!). And I couldn’t resist it.

It is rather gruesome, and tells you something about the squid nervous system. It certainly wouldn’t work with a cat.

33 thoughts on “Dead squid dances”

  3. does it have anything to do with the squid having 3 brains and 9 hearts? (so i hear)

  6. My rubric is to never eat anything more interesting than those I attended high school with. This significantly diminishes dietary options and keeps multicellular suffering to a minimum.

  7. I have to say I think it more than a little cruel (altough I suppose Nature is ‘cruel’ & a squid might be half-eaten by any number of predators)…

      1. True only for some values of ‘dead’.
        Although all that’s in the bowl is the animal’s head, most of its central nervous system is still in there. Depending on the anaerobic capacity of the nervous system, it’s not at all clear just how dead it was.

      2. Did you watch the second video where they slice it open and tear it in half while it’s very much still alive? If that’s not cruel…

    2. When I had to dissect a worm – Lumbricus terrestris – at school, we had to drop it in boiling water to kill it. I can still recall the shape it made that moment it died. 🙁

  8. Blech, I just saw this on my Google+ stream. Never eat zombies, that’s my motto.

  9. It certainly wouldn’t work with a cat.

    It might well work for a frog, lizard, or turtle though.

  11. How have I managed never to have seen this in fifteen years of living in Japan? Will definitely be asking YokohamaPapa about this in the morning…

  12. Some friends and I discovered this phenomenon when we went to Italy in college. We went off the beaten path in Florence and found a restaurant where nobody spoke English (harder to do than we expected!). I ordered something that looked like “chicken” and two others ordered the specialty of the day, which turned out to be tiny squid.

    They couldn’t eat them at all. They played with them and after emptying our wine bottle, let them grip the sides of the wine glasses. I’ll never forget that image. Very creepy.

  13. It’s funny that we’re so weirdly fascinated with things like this. It’s obvious cruelty when you have the whole animal writhing right in front of you, whereas in the US all of our meat raising and slaughtering goes on well away from the vast majority of the folks eating it, so we recoil at the sight of someone eating a live squid and then happily munch our cheeseburgers without thinking about what our dinner went through.

    I’m not a vegetarian (I was when I was a teen), but the horrific conditions we force upon our livestock and the regularly inhumane (and unhygienic) practices at slaughterhouses should give anyone pause. We’re just good at *pretending* to be civilized, really.

  14. Why is the squid presumed to be “dead”? The brain and tentacles are very much intact — its digestive system has simply been hacked off. We may be observing a response to pain instead of some automatic reaction of a dead nervous system.

    I suppose the question is: what does brain death mean for a squid?

    1. This has been known to work for frog legs and similar stuff for a long time, another blog reminds me; just pour anything with sodium (like soy sauce) on muscle tissue.

      They showed a video demonstrating that, but I can’t link to it: disturbingly the lay experimenters laughed at the result. It *could have* been the “non-common sense” severed muscle response that triggered that. But it doesn’t feel comfortable watching them.

  15. This video shows the steps involved in the preparation of the dish as well as an Americagin’s reaction to the dining experience.

  16. The squid isn’t dead. It’s just been disemboweled. This is actually part of the preparation process. After the squid does its “dance” the chef takes it back into the kitchen and finishes killing and cooking it. Left alone, the squid would die of either suffocation or starvation.

    Horrible. Horrible horrible horrible.

    1. Considering one or all of its brains surround the bowels,* I would assume it is de-brained as well?

      The chemical trigger works on any muscle tissue, with or without nerve cells I assume.

      ————
      * I believe PZ “Cephalopod” Myers had a post waaay back on how one brain surrounds the digestive system, and have to stretch to accommodate food.

      Evolutionary result on eye construction: cephalopods +1, mammals 0. On brain construction: mammals +1, cephalopods 0 (?).

  18. It works for frog legs too, another blog reminds me; just pour anything with sodium (like soy sauce) on muscle tissue.

    *Of course* it doesn’t work with cats like that. That is what the 9 lives are for.

  19. I don’t buy the frog legs analogy. Look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmur-9Ahcgg

    The squid continues to move after it gets disemboweled. Where is supposed the point of death? I would think its life tapers off — by the time it gets served up, it may be catatonic but not “dead dead”.

    But here’s what really decides it: notice the sauce is poured onto one side of the squid, while the squid launches itself straight up. It must use the opposing limbs in order to do that. Also notice that all limbs seem to be flailing after the launch, not just the salted ones.

    1. Good observation, about the non-sodiumed limbs responding, and in a coordinated fashion.

      The part cut off is the gut. Intestines. The major part of the nervous system is below the point where it was severed.

      I find this to be a pain response, not a simple sodium jerk and…horrible.

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