From Liz:
Trip to the Honolulu Zoo on Tuesday AM, at Abby's suggestion. We forgot the camera, so no pictures of us with the animals - the zoo was probably quite like other zoos that you have visited although smaller in scale and so I am not going to search around for someone else's pictures to post of animals at the Honolulu Zoo. We rushed through what is supposed to be the most interesting part, the tropical birds b/c we had to get Zachary to his orientation class at Punahou. We became members, so we will start in that direction next time. The African Savanna section was pretty nice, with giraffes, rhinos and zebras all roaming around together in one big enclosure. And a good number of non-human primates, which are always interesting although sometimes a bit sad to see.

Also saw most beautiful tree - rainbow eucalyptus - with very amazing bark that looks like something from Dr. Seuss (this photo from Lisa Jacobs at the Miami Zoo, found at this site):


My big adventure of the day, also with no original photographs to document it, was my trip to collect Hawaiian bobtail squid. A biologist that I know at UConn works on them, and came to Hawai'i to collect some for his research. I could have gone last week, but b/c of the tides, I would have had to go at around 2AM. Not as enjoyable. I offered to help collect b/c I though that it would be fun, and it was. I would definitely do this again. In addition to the squid, we saw a fairly good sized octopus (30 cm?), some small fish and a few small sea cucumbers.

The squid only come out after dark, and it is easiest to collect them by wading in shallow water (i.e., at low tide). So I went out last night from about 9-11PM hunting squid by flashlight (with a net and ziplock baggies) looking for this cute creatures and trying to net them quickly before they swim away or "ink" you to hide.

It is fairly challenging to find them because they are small and pretty quick. I caught two on my own and let one get away. Since there were 5 of us out and we ended up with about 16, I did reasonably OK and this was considered a "good" night. The squid are very very adorable as you can see from the picture below. The biggest ones are ~6 to 8 centimeters long and the smallest we kept were about 1.5cm.

Why do people study them? They have a symbiotic relationship with a particular species of bacteria that are bioluminescent. The bacteria produce light when they are at a high concentration, and the squid uses that light for "counter-illumination". Huh? The bacteria are in the belly of the squid (the part that faces down when the squid is swimming). The squid are predators, and swim around at night to catch their prey. When the moon is out, the squid would cast a shadow and the prey would likely be able to detect the shadow and swim to safety. The light made by the bacteria illuminates the area under the squid so no shadow is made and the squid is likely a much more successful hunter.

The relationship between the squid and the bacteria is VERY specific. The squid come into contact with many many bacteria after they hatch from their egg but only let this particular species into the special organ that is colonized by the bacteria - even though it is less than 0.1% of the bacteria in the seawater. People are interested in understanding how the bacteria and squid recognize one another and how the squid discriminates so well to only let this species in. Also, once the bacteria are inside the squid, they induce changes in the squid so that other bacteria (even the right kind) can't get in - the bacteria that the young squid takes up stay with it for the rest of its life.

Here are a few pictures from Margaret McFall-Ngai's website. She has been a pioneer in research with this critter and has a website that is chock full of information if you want to learn more (McFall-Ngai website) and also these well-written stories summarizing some of their findings (Science Daily#1 , #2, #3).