Giant Squid photographed!
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First ever Giant Squid photographed in the wild!
This extraordinary image, captured by Japanese scientists, marks the first-ever record of a live giant squid in the wild. The mysterious deep-sea creature has inspired countless sea monster tales and a variety of scientific expeditions.
The giant squid was photographed 2,050 feet (900 meters) beneath the North Pacific Ocean in Japanese waters, where scientists attracted it toward cameras on a baited fishing line.
The photo sequence, taken off Japan's Ogasawara Islands last September, shows the moment that one of the squid's two elongated tentacles broke off the animal (top image). The severed body part is reeled onto the research vessel in the lower photograph. The researchers captured more than 500 photographs of the giant squid before its tentacle broke off and it swam away.
The researchers recovered a tentacle from the giant squid after it escaped. Analysis confirmed that the tentacle belonged to the species. The tentacle measured 18 feet (5.5 meters) long. Using its size as a guide, the team estimates the animal was 26 feet long (8 meters). The longest giant squid on record measured 59 feet (18 meters), including its two elongated tentacles.
for more of the story, click here => National Geographic News
again, wow.. i've always been fascinated by the Giant Squid and now, the Japanese scientists have pics of it!
hope one day they'll film it in the wild! -
Same here!!! It is really cool... Giant Squids...
I always love to imagine their colossal battled with whales underwater.....
and cuttle fish too!!... and octopuses...... -
sashimi
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Ewuee... I think old sotong will taste disgusting... (not fresh) lol
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can't eat it.. too much ammonia..
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beautiful -
wonder if it eat humans?
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errrhhh....
dnt like such a huge squid especially the huge tentacle..
so 'er xin' i am scare..
always will image the tentacle sucking is painful -
i feel hungry lookin at this pic..
mm..takoyaki! -
i like your siggy!Originally posted by alexkusu:
i feel hungry lookin at this pic..
mm..takoyaki! -
u can have it, i want change new one tomorrowOriginally posted by 798:i like your siggy! -
it's reported in the news on tv too!
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1st reaction on Singaporeans' minds ---> can it be eaten?
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enuf calamari to last me for 1 yr
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poor thing
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wow
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poor thing
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Does it eat humans?
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That's only in the movies. They actually wrap their tentacles around an object to get a sense of the object, but they aren't aggressive. Divers can tell you that they can swim around cuttlefish quite peacefully.Originally posted by subarugal:errrhhh....
dnt like such a huge squid especially the huge tentacle..
so 'er xin' i am scare..
always will image the tentacle sucking is painful
Some foreign experiments have shown that cuttlefish are quite smart, e.g. they know how to open a bottle to get the food inside.
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big mf Sotong
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wow so huge.. eeks!
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Sept 28, 2005
Experts capture giant squid on film for first time
PARIS - Japanese zoologists have made the first recording of a live giant squid, one of the strangest and most elusive creatures in the world.
The size of a bus, with vast eyes and a querulous beak, Architeuthis has long nourished myth and literature, most memorably in Jules Vernes' 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, in which a squid tried to engulf the submarine Nautilus with its suckered tentacles.
Until now, the only evidence of giant squids was extraordinarily rare -- from dead squids that washed up on remote shores or got snagged on a long-line fish hook or from ships' crews who spotted the deep-sea denizen as it made a sortie near the surface.
But almost nothing was known about where and how Architeuthis lives, feeds and reproduces. And, given the problems of getting down to its home in the ocean depths, no-one had ever obtained pictures of a live one.
The breakthrough has come from Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Science Museum in Tokyo and Kyoichi Mori of the Ogasawara Whale Watching Association.
Writing in a British scientific publication, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the Japanese experts describe how they also used sperm whales as a guide.
Whale watchers on the Ogawara Islands, in the North Pacific, had long noted the migratory patterns of sperm whales, observing in particular how the mammals would gather near a steep and canyoned continental shelf, about 10-15 km south-east of Chichijima Island.
By attaching depth loggers to the whales, the watchers found the creatures made enormous dives of up to 1,000 metres -- just at the depths where the giant squid is believed to lurk.
They then set up a special rig, comprising a camera, stroboscope light, timer, depth sensor, data logger and a depth-activated switch attached to two mesh bags filled with a tempting bait of freshly mashed shrimps.
Suspended from floats, the rig was lowered into the water on a nylon line, with flash pictures taken every 30 seconds for the next four to five hours.
At 9.15 am on September 30 2004, squids as we know them changed forever.
At that moment, 900 metres down in the Stygian gloom, an eight-metre specimen lunged at the lower bait bag, succeeding only in getting itself impaled on the hook.
For the next four hours, the squid tried to get itself off the hook as the camera snapped away every 30 seconds, gaining not only unprecedented pictures but also precious information about how the squid is able to propel itself.
After a monstrous battle, the squid eventually freed itself, but left behind a giant tentacle on the hook.
When the severed limb was brought up to the surface, its huge suckers were still able to grip the boat deck and any fingers that touched them -- testimony indeed to the myths of yore, that spoke of monstrous arms that grabbed ships and hauled them to their doom.
The Japanese scientists have carried out a DNA test from the tentacle, and the result concurs with that of other samples taken from washed-up squid.
Their deep-sea pictures suggest that the squid is far from being the 'sluggish, neutrally buoyant' creature that it has traditionally been deemed to be.
Quite the opposite, say the Japanese duo. It is an active predator that attacks its prey horizontally, and its two long tentacles coil up into a ball after the strike, rather like pythons that rapidly envelop their prey in their sinuous curves. -- AP -
Make me tink of tako pachi!!
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enough to last till u die lahOriginally posted by FireIce:enuf calamari to last me for 1 yr