6 I DOING SCIENCE A 133 



its ft'uitful fruitfly era, to be followed later by a period dominated by 

 squid. 



The early 1960s brought intense neurophysiological work on the highly 

 visible and relatively simple giant squid axon. As supply department head 

 John Valois explains, this is because "two very thick nerve fibers, or axons, 

 run down the sides of the squid's mantle. These fibers coordinate a system 

 of muscles that enables the animal to shoot water through a siphon under 

 its becik, propelling it through the water like a torpedo. But it's the axons 

 themselves, not the squid's behavior, that bring biologists here. Fifty years 

 ago J. Z. Young discovered the axons. He was the first to penetrate one with 

 a tiny electrode to measure the electrical transmission of nerve impulses. 

 Much of what we've learned since then about our own nervous system 

 comes from work on this animal. " 



Valois explains tliat the demand for squid has escalated from maybe 

 fifty per month in the 1950s to two hundred (up to four hundred) small ones 

 per day. Currentiy, about one tliird of the MBL demand for marine animals 

 is for squid, today's martyr to science as sea urchins, frogs, and guinea pigs 

 have been in the past. The collectors devised specicd fraps and other tricks 

 to gather enough squid in tlie beginning. Recentiy tlie national popularity of 

 seafood has helped. People eat so many of the fish that normally eat squid 

 that the squid have increased in population and are easier to collect now. 

 Because squid do not remain alive in fraps for more than twenty-four hours, 

 the increased supply and better collecting methods have saved the day. But 

 even the vigilant supply staff still occasionally has trouble meeting the 

 increased demand during peak season. A sort of marine farm to provide 

 cultivated and more confrolled specimens, which Whitman and other 

 directors have envisioned since the 1880s, could help to solve the problem 

 and may soon come to fruition. 



Beasts of study are chosen for different reasons. One man, who liked 

 peace and quiet, elected to study the c34ology of a particular algae tiiat had 

 to be scraped from the rocks around Woods Hole about midnight. Another 

 researcher wandered into the MBL community by accident, because the 

 Massachusetts Department of Entomology sent him to study corn borers. 

 Long-time MBL researcher Sears Crowell says that he initially wanted to 

 sfridy the coelenterates Tubularia and their grow^ patterns. Or maybe 

 Hydra, which have enormous regenerative powers. But, he feared, "the 

 smart guys probably knew about all there was to know" about tiiose two 

 types of organisms. He chose other coelenterates instead. He later realized 

 that hosts of questions remained unanswered about the old familiar friends as 

 well. 



The earlier tendency to divide up the world so that each person chose 

 an organism and then asked a familiar set of questions of it has changed. 

 Instead, people in this century have increasingly concenfrated on the same 



