The Squid Mystery

Thoughts of live squid may conjure up thoughts of deep sea monsters with tentacles reaching out to you from the deep. Tasty to the tongue, but not something you'd necessarily ever want see with your own eyes.

As it turns out, squid are more similar to us than you can imagine. Researcher Philip Turnbull, PhD student from the University of Auckland, sees past all that, and asks "exactly what can squid see?"

He's decided to use squid as a model of human myopia. Squid belong to a class of animals known as 'cephalopods', which also includes octopus and cuttlefish.

Cephalopods are invertebrates (lacking a backbone), a feature that makes them different from humans at the most fundamental level. Researchers usually use similar vertebrate mammals as models for human disease. Phil's choice to use a squid model of myopia is an unusual one, but not without cause.

Cephalopods have a 'camera-type' eye similar to humans. Camera-type eyes have the ability to adjust the amount of light entering the eye using the iris muscles that control the pupil size. This means we can see outside on a sunny day as well as in a dim room. Camera-type eyes can also adjust the depth of focus, allowing us to read a book as well as the writing on buildings far in the distance.

Because of these similarities, Phil believes that if he can find out how to make squid short-sighted, then this will tell us why humans get myopia.

But this is not easy challenge. No one has ever raised squid before in a laboratory, so Phil has quite a bit of work to do before he can even begin his experiments. Where do you get live squid from??