Yay! I hope you get it!!

Pati also made a bunch of bigger and incredibly detailed cephs, but unfortunately I didn't get a photo of them. 🤦 And yes, I'm still slowly unpacking and going through notes a month after the conference. November has been rough. Here's to moving forward, one cute cephalopod at a time!

What about the size? Eleven billion base pairs! That's several times bigger than an octopus genome. If I understand right, it indicates that this group had a huge genome expansion early in its evolution (mammals did something similar!), and octopuses later pared theirs down.

The structure of the bat-octopus genome shares many characteristics with squid, indicating that octopuses and bat-octopuses derived from a squid-like ancestor (not the other way around). This supports fossil evidence that squiddy things evolved first, and then octopoddish things branched off.

*"Bat octopus" is better than "vampire squid" bc this species is much more closely related to octopuses than to squid, as I illustrated in this handy diagram. Also, the species has nothing in common with vampires, but the webbing between its arms does look like bat wings.

Now on to the paper...

Stick your hand in a crack
And you don't get it back
That's a moraaay
🎶
(Though I do like the jaws verse best)

I had the momentary thought "Am I allowed to put stickers on this?" And then I remembered that I am a grown-up and I can put stickers wherever I want

It's so clever and funny I can't get over it! You will find the right home for it I am sure

Thank you SO much for saying this! I was really surprised and bummed every time I spotted AI "art."