My name is Haseeb Randhawa and I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Zoology at the University of Otago in Dunedin. I work on different aspects of parasites of elasmobranchs, including: molecular systematics, host/parasite coevolution, and the elucidation of the lifecycle of tetraphyllidean cestodes. For the latter, I am working on creating a DNA library of adult cestodes infecting elasmobranchs. I have collected material from NZ, the northwest and southwest Atlantic Ocean, and the North Sea.

One of the main prey items of sharks is squid. Hence, I have also been collecting squid from different localities, sequencing a nuclear marker from the cestode larvae recovered from the squid and trying to work out the transmission dynamics of these larvae through trophic interactions. Colossal squid carcasses may be eaten by some shark (Somniosidae perhaps). After watching a report on One News earlier this week, I wondered whether you could/would preserve the stomach and caecum of the colossal squid in 100% ethanol (or at least any larvae that can be recovered)? My only concern is whether this material has already been exposed to formalin.

JZ Young, 1977 The Biology of Cephalopods Symposia of the Zoological Society of London #38:

“Everyone wants to know whether giant squids have giant giant fibres. We have no material of the central nervous system but some years ago I was able to dissect the stellate ganglion of an animal washed up at Scarborough in 1933 and sent to the British Museum. The mantle length was 125 cm. The nerves of the mantle muscles are arranged in this genus differently from any other I have seen. Those in the front part of the mantle arise from a relatively small stellate ganglion, in the usual way. The hinder part of the mantle, perhaps more than half of the whole, is suspended from a distinct median nerve, running with the fin nerve and giving off a series of branches to the mantle.
Each of the nerves arising from the ganglion contains one or two large fibres, ranging in diameter from about 80 micrometers in the more anterior ones to a maximum of 250 micrometers further back. The median nerve was further preserved but one fibre of about 250 micrometers could be seen. Two of the more posterior branches contained fibres of about 200 micrometers each. None of the nerves examined contained the exceptionally large fibres reported by Aldrich & Brown (1967). We may conclude that Architeuthis is not an especially fast-moving animal. This would agree with evidence that it is neutrally buoyant with a high concentration of ammonium ions in the mantle and arms (Denton, 1974).”

Of course, this is Architeuthis only, but Nixon & Young’s more recent book suggest that this proved true on examination of more Architeuthis, and that the one Mesonychoteuthis examined did not have a large fiber either.

But I’m waiting with great anticipation to see what the nervous systems of these new specimens have to tell us!

I’m very much looking forward to your unraveling this piece of sailors’ yarn. I hope we’ll get to see the eyes! I’ll be watching from Germany, and it’ll night here – 1 to 6 am – so tomorrow’s working day is going to be hard…

Good luck to you all
Jens

I believe I read in a publication by JZ Young from the 70s that he thought that the lack of a “giant giant axon” was primarily because the large squids are limited by other size-related factors, so they can’t get the same very fast escape benefits from the giant axon that smaller squids do. I could be remembering the details wrong, though, that might have just been what I thought as I read that there is no “giant giant axon” in Architeuthis.