Tag Archives: display

Hooks & suckers

17 July 2008 – 4.04pm

The hooks seem to grab everyone’s attention, so here’s an update

tentacle club swivelling hook and arm sucker

tentacle club swivelling hook and arm sucker dissected out from the fleshy suckers

Other squid families have hooks on the arms, or the tentacles, or both, but the colossal squid is the only hooked squid in its family (the Cranchiidae, about 20 species). It possesses hooks on each of the eight arms, and also on the club ends of the two long tentacles, but the arm-hooks and tentacle-hooks are very different.

The tentacular hooks are the swivelling hooks. Each sits on a short stalk, flush with the oral surface of the tentacle club, in a flattened depression that allows the flattened ‘back’ surface of the hook to rotate. The hooks can swivel 360 to 720 degrees, but it is not known whether the squid actively controls each hook individually, or whether the hooks swivel passively once latched onto the prey, in order to keep the best grip. There are 22 to 25 hooks in two rows on the middle part (manus) of the tentacle club, and each row is flanked by a row of tiny marginal suckers. The swivelling hooks are smaller than those on the arms and have only a singe main ‘claw.’

 

 

The arm hooks do not swivel. They are set in a double row in the middle of each arm, preceded and followed by the more standard toothed suckers. The arm hooks are set in fleshy, very muscular sheaths and are strongly attached to the arms. They are likely to assist in holding and immobilising struggling prey as it is being killed and eaten. Most of the arm hooks have the main strong ‘claw’, and also two smaller auxiliary cusps closer to the hook’s base, making them three-pointed and maximising their ability to hold and dig in. The base of each hook also has a complex structure that is set deep into the surrounding musculature.  The top picture shows the hook and serrated sucker im structure dissected out from the fleshy part of the suckers.

Non-swivelling arm hooks

Non-swivelling arm hooks

 

 

By chrispaulin | Posted in Colossal squid | Also tagged , , | Comments (2)

Getting tanked

24 June 2008 – 1.02pm

Getting the colossal squid onto display isn’t just a simple matter of building a tank and moving it into the gallery!

First of all we have to plan a few details – for example, because of the size of the tank and the amount of liquid it will contain, it will weigh over five tonnes, so the building engineers have to check that the floor loadings will cope.

Then we have to consider how to get the tank into the building once it is built – it may be too wide to fit through the door, so exhibition staff will have to decide if it can be lifted into the building through a window using a crane – fortunately the museum was designed with these issues in mind, so there are windows which can be removed relatively easily to do this (we’re hoping that  Wellington’s balmy weather won’t cause any delays).

Once the tank is in place we have to fill it with preservative. 5,000 litres of preservative will have to be mixed and pumped into the tank – that’s about 25x 200 litre drums which will have to be transported into the gallery and mixed to the correct concentration in the tank – something which will have to be done when the museum is closed to the public.

In the event of an earthquake there is the risk of the tank rupturing, so to prevent a tidal wave of preservative cascading through the collections, the entire floor of the gallery has to be bunded to contain any spillage – this will involve a complete rebuild of the gallery floor!  

As the gallery is a public space we cannot use the usual formalin or alcohol preservatives, but will be trialling a propylene-glycol mixture. (Glycol is used as anti-freeze and has been used previously to preserve specimens on a smaller scale, but we will need to design the tank so that we can take samples for testing on a regular basis to check the pH for acidity and any signs of deterioration of the specimen). 

Placement of the specimen inside the tank will require the construction of some supports to keep it in place – because of the different density of parts of the specimen, some parts, such as the mantle, will float upwards, while others, such as the arms, will sink.

While preparations are underway to get the tank built, designers are working on how to light the specimen so that it can be seen: we are going to use an LED system which will enable lights to be placed inside the tank to avoid problems of reflection from the liquid surface. Then there’s the supporting display with other specimens and photographs to be prepared and labels written, printed and installed.

Not to forget the squid itself! We are still planning on how to lift 495 kg of pickled  squid out of its temporary fixing tank, into the display tank and move it from the laboratory building (about 1 kilometre away) to Cable Street. The preservation process has made the tissues much stronger and less jelly-like, but so far we haven’t been able to even turn it over to see what condition it is in without the risk of tearing the mantle.

So far things are going to plan – we hope to have a date for the display before the end of the year.

By chrispaulin | Posted in Colossal squid | Also tagged , , | Comments (2)

Does my mantle look big in this?

23 June 2008 – 5.07pm

How many colossal squid specimens are there in the world? And how many of these are on display? How good do they look?

The answer to the first question is probably four, and the answer to the next question, is none – at the moment. The display of Te Papa’s colossal squid specimen is going to be the first – as far as we know. But if you know of one that is already on display, please tell us!

‘How good do they look?’ This creates more questions – what sort of tank do we make to display our colossal squid in? How do we make it look good?

So we thought we’d have a look around the internet at other displays of big squid and get some help. We found quite a few giant squid – all in various states of display, some still looking glamorous, others not so good. If you’ve got a picture of your favourite big squid on display somewhere, please share it with us.

Meet ‘Archie’ (Architeuthis is the genus name for a giant squid), the 8.62 metre long giant squid on display in the Darwin Centre of the Natural History Museum in London. 
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2006/feb/news_5255.html

At the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, they’ve had a giant squid on display in a tank in their ‘Ocean Planet’ exhibit for qutie a few years. This specimen was washed ashore off Massachusetts in 1980. http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/squid_Architeuthis.html

The search for a giant squid in New Zealand waters was also the subject of their exhibition Search for Giant Squid. http://www.mnh.si.edu/natural_partners/squid4/
It makes really interesting reading. Our New Zealand squid expert, Dr Steve O’Shea, was part of the expedition. It was Steve who lead the team at Te Papa when the colossal squid was examined in April.

Closer to home, there are giant squid on display in Australia. A New Zealand giant squid was put on show in a block of ice at the Melbourne Aquarium in 2005 and looked really impressive!
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/new-squid-on-the-ice-block/2005/12/20/1135032018280.html

Here in New Zealand you can see a giant squid at Kelly Tarlton’s. Staff there nicknamed it ‘Squid Vicious’. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10402608
Another, called ‘Maximum’, is at the National Aquarium of New Zealand in Napier.

We have to remember with our display tank that colossal squid are a different shape to giant squid – they have a much bigger, rounder body and the tentacles are shorter. Think fat and round, like a soccer ball, rather than the long cylinder shape and impressively long tentacles of its cousin, the giant squid. How would Trinnie and Susannah describe these body shapes, I wonder…

 

You can order this picture here

So if you’ve got a picture of your favourite big squid on display somewhere, or want to tell us about seeing one on display, please share it with us!

By pamelalovis | Posted in Colossal squid | Also tagged | Comments (2)

Colossal squid – what’s happening?

11 June 2008 – 11.00am

What’s happening with the colossal squid? Why haven’t we put it on display yet? Well the short answer is that good things take time – and money.

While the specimen is happily sitting in its storage tank, slowly preserving in the formalin, the squid team is planning for the next stage – how to put it on display at Te Papa.

There are a few things for us to consider – not least is how to build a tank to store it in that also lets visitors get a really good look at the specimen. We need quite a big tank to hold our 4.2 metre long colossal squid, weighing 495 kilograms.

And when you combine the weight of the squid, with the weight of the tank and the liquid, that’s quite a floor loading. So there are only a few places within the Te Papa building that we can put the tank and the squid in.

What are we going to tell you about the colossal squid? What would you like to see in the exhibition? These are all questions that we are now exploring as we develop the exhibition.

We’ll keep you posted through the blog on how we’re going, and give you a bit of an insight into the crazy world of exhibition development at Te Papa.

If you do have any questions for us, let us know!

By pamelalovis | Posted in Colossal squid | Also tagged , , | Comments (12)

Bringing the colossal squid back to life…

28 April 2008 – 11.35am
Despite what you may have heard on the radio as you drove to work today, we don’t expect the defrosted colossal squid to spring back to life and start eating people.  But we do plan to bring it back to life in a different way – using computer modeling. Among those present at Te Papa when the big squid thaws out will be Peter Batson, who is producing reference material for his brother, digital artist and filmmaker, David Batson. Their company DeepOcean Quest Productions (www.ExploreTheAbyss.Com) specializes in deep-sea graphics and is working to create a fully accurate computer model of the largest squid in recorded history, inside and out. The pair are keen to improve on the level of detail and accuracy of their last attempt, produced soon after the first colossal squid specimen was found in 2003 (pictured). 
By chrispaulin | Posted in Colossal squid | Also tagged , | Comments (0)
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