wasn't sure if I'd enjoy this, as it focuses largely on extinct cephalopods and my interest lies with the living The author kept it lively and entertaining , always maintaining the link to the modern animals, though, so I learned a lot and had fun doing it ( )

4,5 stars

A pretty decent look into the history of cephalopods (at least for someone with basically zero knowledge on the topic). The writing was pretty approachable and I felt the author found a pretty good balance on keeping things factual without being dry. ( )

Not always easy to follow, because it covers such a large range. Still, it is mostly accessible, and goes into a depth that I appreciated.

> the buoyant shell “an evolutionary step with a significance comparable to the development of wings in the insects.”

> A small tube of flesh called a siphuncle (based on the Latin word for, unsurprisingly, “small tube”) runs through every sealed-off chamber. Remarkably, the animal can control the saltiness of the blood in its siphuncle, thereby taking advantage of water’s tendency to diffuse across a membrane toward higher salt concentration, a tendency named osmosis. An extra-salty siphuncle naturally absorbs water from the phragmocone chambers, and the empty space left behind is filled with gases diffusing out from the blood.

> Despite evidence of shell shedding in Sphooceras, truncation remained a little-used technique for dealing with the unwieldy cephalopod shell. The mainstream approach became coiling the shell

> Because we associate modern pens with modern squid, there’s a certain tendency to associate fossil pens with squid as well. A dizzying variety of early fossil coleoids with pens, or in some cases just the pens by themselves, have been described and given squiddy names (look for the “teuth” root): Plesioteuthidae, Teudopsidae, Trachyteuthidae. Further study, however, suggests that nearly all of them were closer to octopuses

> Two electronic homes for tentacle science deserve special mention. FASTMOLL is a mailing list for researchers who study “fast mollusks” (which means, of course, the cephalopods), and despite their heavy workloads the scientists on the list responded quickly and generously to all my inquiries. TONMO, The Octopus News Magazine Online, is a forum for anyone interested in octopuses (and other cephalopods), amateur or professional. ( )

This was a rather interesting overview of our favorite squishy tentacular friends in the ocean. It's not cutesy, however. It's basically a best-guess rundown of what we know about squids from the earliest instances in the ocean to the limited modern variety that remain today.

It is SCIENCE, or at least a popular reporting of it. :)

I particularly liked the instances describing their brains, cognition, and long-term memory. The odd juxtaposition of (possibly) being colorblind despite the fantastic ability to blend in with so many colors was a close second. And the accounting of escape attempts and octopod wrestlers. :)

The ecological problems that might wipe these fascinating creatures out is similar to ALL the same problems the ocean is facing. Scary, sad, and enraging. The previous die-offs went on for long periods of time, long enough to acclimatize. The current cycle is rather rough.

I'm glad I read this. It's not sensationalist. Just factual. :) ( )

Squid Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Cephalopods is a book that does exactly as "described on the tin". This is the fascinating tale of the evolutionary rise and fall (and possible rise again) of Cephalopods - everything from ammonites, nautiloids, squid, octopuses, cuttlefish and the other odd prehistoric creatures that get lumped in the "head-foot" category.

The author takes an evolutionary approach starting off with the first Cephalopods in the Cambrian, and ties in several threads of anatomy, biology, ecology and other aspects of marine life. She covers such topics are the swimming revolution, the invention of jet propulsion, shell development and abandonment, their co-evolution with fish, development of ink, paleontology, intelligence, how they deal with extinction events, how they deal with the current anthropocentric age, the ecology of these "swimming protein bars", and why modern squid don't fossilize.

Danna Staaf has a lovely, clear writing style that is fun, while at the same time maintaining the science of the topic. She also includes numerous helpful diagrams, illustrations and photographs.

This is a superbly written, entertaining and informative book about the evolution of certain mobile, tentacled, squishy creatures that live in the ocean.

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