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PrintNo matter her state of mind, this Wellfleet summer resident paints vibrant worlds from ordinary settings
Mashpee’s Wendy Williams, a former Cape Cod Times reporter turned science writer, spent a year writing a book that details the interesting lives of cephalopods. Long demonized as villainous creatures, the alien squid and its many cousins have made countless contributions to the scientific community in medicine, neurology and aging. We asked Williams to explain the strange allure of the many-legged creatures and the scholars who study them.
Wendy Williams
Why are squid so mysterious?
There are just so many of them, and they are, apparently, pretty darned smart. There are some that are so tiny we can barely see them. Then, there are the giant and colossal squids. Nobody knows how many species exist. There are squid that live in the very deep sea, and there’s the market squid, that our fishermen catch in Cape waters in abundance in spring and early summer.
Why the squid in particular? How did such a creature beat out scores of other fascinating species being studied by the scientific community?
There’s something special about the cephalopods—squid, octopus, cuttlefish and the beautiful nautilus—that’s kept them around for hundreds of millions of years. When the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago, the squid lived on. They’re survivors. Recently British scientists found a 150 million-year-old squid fossil that looked quite like a squid you might find today in Cape Cod waters. It had an intact ink sack.
How did this book come to be? You were coming off the completion of Cape Wind, which was a much different endeavor.
At the end of my time as a reporter, I received a science journalist fellowship at Woods Hole. There I learned that the little local squid had provided, very long ago, the basis for our studies of the human brain. I found that remarkable. Curious, exciting—but also disturbing. What does it mean for us as a species, that we can learn about us by studying squid?
Why are the squid’s nerves (or more specifically, axons) so important in our understanding of neurology?
In our own brains, axons connect neurons, the main cell in the brain, with other neurons. Messages are sent from one neuron to the other through the axons. Our own axons are too small to study without a lot of expensive high-tech equipment. Some squid, on the other hand, have axons as thick as pencil leads. Scientists can actually hold these axons in their own hands, making them a lot easier to study.
The scientists at MBL and WHOI are world-renowned. What fascinates you about working with scientists who study life in the ocean?
Scientists are an awful lot of fun. They have wonderful lives, and they are more than happy to share their lives and their information with the rest of us.
What is your next project?
I’m starting work on a book about scientists studying coral reefs.
Do you still order calamari at a restaurant?
Never did.
