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Concept

squid giant axon

A detailed illustration of a squid giant axon, showcasing its large, elongated structure with a bulbous head and numerous thin appendages extending outward.

An unusually thick nerve fibre, up to a millimetre across, found in several squid species and used to trigger the rapid jet-propulsion escape response. Its size lets experimenters insert electrodes lengthwise inside the cell, something impossible in mammalian neurons that are a hundred times thinner. The fibre was the workbench on which most of mid-twentieth-century electrophysiology was built.

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