'Colossal' squid dwarfs giant squid

[blike]

An intact specimen of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni was caught recently in the waters around Antarctica. It is only the seventh specimen of this species ever found, and only the second found outside of a sperm whale. It was first identified in 1925, but virtually nothing is known about it. The mantle of the half-grown squid is 2.5 meters, by comparison the mantle of the giant squid Architeuthis only grows to about 2.25 meters. They estimate a full grown specimen has a mantle around 4 meters long.

 

Full BBC article here

[spacemanspiff]

cool.

 

so why do they know so little about these things. are they that hard to find or has no one really tried?

[Ryoken]

I love things like this, just throws people off by showing them that we really don't know much about our world.

[Guest exo]

Actually, i think there have been deep submersible sent down in the Arctic ocean and in the Indian ocean, specifically in Kaykoura canyon near New Zealand. Also, most unusually, I remember that the National Geographic society had even provided funding to scientists so they could try attaching a camera to a sperm whale.

 

The whale experiment was working untill another whale knocked it off while at an extreme depth. It ended up yeilding no results as far as giant or colossal squids were concerned but served to record some interesting sperm whale behavior.

[daisy]

Around 70% of the world is ocean and we've barely scratched the surface of what's going on down there. I'm desperately trying to remember my undergrad statistics but if I'm right only about 1% (?) of the ocean floor has been mapped. The problem with studying deep sea organisms is a) finding them and b) keeping them alive in pressurised vessels to get them to the surface. Remember that the coelocanth was thought to be extinct until one was captured off Madagascar in the 1960s(?). Exploring the aquatic portion of our planet is much more technically challenging than the terrestrial portion. Think of hydrothermal vents etc. and what they've taught us.

[KHinfcube22]

this only further proves the existence of big foot. there has been many sightings of big foot, but no body produced. what you guys say could only mean that bigfoot is an aquatic being.

[Poena]

Originally posted by KHinfcube22

this only further proves the existence of big foot. there has been many sightings of big foot, but no body produced. what you guys say could only mean that bigfoot is an aquatic being.

 

 

The squid is awesome, yes. Ive always been interested in the existence on them since reading 2000 leagues. Ive seen many a special on them and none yet so big as this one !

 

As for bigfoot-- Didnt the guy who played the prank fess up? That it was a monkey suit-- and even wife of bigfoot and baby bigfoot were all his doing? I remember the guy being on the news even with the wooden feet he made as well as the monkey suit.

[Tom Mattson]

That's great. Here we have this rare, magnficent creature of which we know next to nothing, and the best thing these people can think of to do is catch it and gut it.

 

Didn't anyone think of tagging and monitoring it?

 

Tom

[Loki]

For the record:

 

Not one giant squid has been seen/found/recorded alive.

[Sayonara]

Unless you count their babies, which you pretty much have to as they are Architeuthis dux:

 

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20020225/squid.html#

[Guest Magneto]

Since i was a child, i've always been an HUGE Giant (And Colossal, of course) squid's fan ... I'm sure that we still have a lot to learn about these wonderful animals ... B.T.W., i think that there is some kindo of confusion about the size they can get ... As you probably kow, a 18 m long Architeuthis was found many years ago, and there are people (ex Navy-officers,etc ...) saying that they "met" some much larger squids ... and what about the specimen found one yer ago, whose tentacles were 15 m long ? We shouldn't be surprised if an architeuthis can, in some very rare cases, become a 20-30 m "monster" ... !!! All we know about big squids come from some young, probably weak and ill specimens ... found dead ! Now we also have the "colossal" ... bigger mantle , but shorter tentacles ... and probably stronger than an architeuthis ... Who knows the maximum size it can get ??? Maybe even an adult sperm whale could find itself in a trouble meeting a "heavy weight" squid, and sometimes it could be defeated by the "old boy with 10 tentacles" ... am i wrong ?

Peace

M.

[Sayonara]

It would not surprise me one bit if there were squid large enough to mess up a sperm whale.

 

Those beaks and clubs are pretty mean.