October’s Scishimi: Slaying Krakens and taking names.

Brian Switek destroys the lovely image of an artistic Kraken, and Kevin Zelnio rightfully calls him out for it.

Carl gushes over the world’s biggest virus.

The best abstract ever. No, really. You’ll see.

Because one can never hear enough about hagfish slime.

I simply can’t top a title like “Piercing the Paleolithic Penis”.

The death of a whale, in paper cut-outs.

Glowing review of the scientific importance of glowing creatures.

Apparently, placebos are kind of like marijuana.

Oh yeah – and there are over 7 billion people on Earth now. Just FYI.

Vertebrates used to have a sixth sense.

Bathrooms are gross. Though we could try and make them less gross.

Extinction slows evolution.

Your friends are screwing with your head.

Important information: you can chuck a bone spear through a car (oh, and something about mastodons).

Settled, not settled – or neither.

Can we use fMRI to catch pedophiles? Should we?

Sperm donors have great personalities.

Science fiction donates terms to science.

Birth control pills don’t make your relationship better.

Also, Halloween happened. Apparently vampires are addicts – though Layla Eplett has a good recipe for drinking blood.

And finally, a little love:

Author: Christie Wilcox

Dr. Christie Wilcox is a science writer based in the greater Seattle area. Her bylines include National Geographic, Popular Science, and Quanta. Her debut book, Venomous, released August 2016 (Scientific American/FSG Books). To learn more about her life and work, check out her webpage or follow her on Twitter, Google+, or Facebook.