Solid info on toxins in cephalopods.

[DWhatley]

That 1989 paper uses wild caught animals to look at the TXX in blue ring octos. It does not appear to confirm (or deny) the question of naturally created vs environment acquired toxicity. It would not be the first ceph to utilize an acquired bacteria.

There is also a question about the toxicity (to humans) of O. mototi's bite. It is possible that human toxicity (or at least in the extreme) is only a problem when eaten. I don't know of any recent papers studying this animal.

 

[DWhatley]

I rather hate to admit it (although in today's world not surprisingly!) but some of the "solid info" I could have gotten may not have been fact, as stated, as much as theory.

Sadly, it is difficult to find ways to validate "facts" as many "news" sites simply copy from others and propagate misinformation. Some of the original science blog posts are well done (and usually reference the original paper link) where others seem to just make stuff up. I keep a Google Scholar scan active in an attempt to capture the abstracts and locations for ceph related research. If a found article is specific to a species, I try to remember to add it to an entry in the Cephalopod Species forum. Octopuses are all located under Octopodidae but squid are not as easy to classify.

 

[Thyroyalgeek the third]

How do you get a "Google scholar scan"

 

[Thyroyalgeek the third]

Most of the "new" pdfs it said I needed to purchase for some reason, and the other ones (there were quite a few I did not post,)seems to be a bunch of fake news now. This'll all be figured out someday I hope, but i really feel like an idiot making a post on misinformation. Thank you for clearing all this up, and btw, how do you get google scholar scan, sounds like an interesting tool.

 

[DWhatley]

How do you get a "Google scholar scan"

Create an account (free) with https://scholar.google.com. Click on the three bar menu (top left), select Alerts, click the CREATE ALERT button and type in keyword information to be scanned and sent to your email. You can use conditions like OR or AND (I have not tried NOT). It accepts 'author: "author name in quotes". The info is very sketchy and you can't modify (but can delete) entries. Here is a PDF that @Jean 's university wrote to guide students. Unfortunately, the advanced search arrow does not seem to be available any longer.

 

[Thyroyalgeek the third]

Thanks so much! This would have been good to have for the past few years!

 

[tentaclescuttle]

Hey I think it can be helpful,
So far, no published studies have investigated whether there’s a bite behind the flamboyant cuttlefish’s bark, but one research team is hoping to soon offer some insight. Grasse has been sending flamboyant cuttlefish from the Monterey Bay Aquarium to researchers at Georgia Southern University and Utah State University, Uintah Basin, who are conducting toxicology studies on both captive-raised and wild specimens, as well as on two other cuttlefish species—the dwarf cuttlefish and the European cuttlefish. (The latter two were intended as controls. Before this research, no cuttlefish species were known to contain toxins.)
Preliminary results have revealed something surprising. Using a sensitive amino assay, the researchers have detected in all three species what they suspect is TTX—at trace amounts. The highest level—100 nanograms—appeared in a wild-caught, male flamboyant cuttlefish. That amount is 10,000 times less than what it would take to kill off a few humans, suggesting that M. pfefferi is “probably not toxic to most vertebrate predators,” says Becky Williams, an assistant professor of biology at Utah State University, Uintah Basin, and one of the researchers on the project.

 

[DWhatley]

@tentaclescuttle Please post a link to the paper when it is published so I may add it to our documentation references.

 

[tonmo]

nice, thanks for sharing this, @tentaclescuttle!

 

[tentaclescuttle]

no problem @tonmo