Giant Squid Photographed Live

A few weekends ago, SciFi Channel was showing the made-for-TV film of Peter Benchley's story about an Architeuthis terrorizing an island town in the Upper Northwest of the USA. It was a sort of Jaws, reprised, but with the giant squid and its baby. It made a half-decent thriller, but was about an hour too long at 3 1/2 hours.
 
FullerH said:
A few weekends ago, SciFi Channel was showing the made-for-TV film of Peter Benchley's story about an Architeuthis terrorizing an island town in the Upper Northwest of the USA. It was a sort of Jaws, reprised, but with the giant squid and its baby. It made a half-decent thriller, but was about an hour too long at 3 1/2 hours.
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I read that. I love Peter Benchley stories.
Shark Trouble is a non-fiction book of his that's definately worth reading.

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fulloflead said:
Anybody else fascinated by this story? I've been wanting to see one of these live and/or in it's habitat for a long time.

http://tinyurl.com/8yvsz

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The fact that there are still large creatures like this that we have yet to observe fully is both mind boggling and incredibly exiting, I'm hoping that we get to see one of the REALLY big ones soon.
 
When i read bits of the book Jaws what fascinated me was that they said that there shouldn't be a reason the Megalodon (giant shark) would be extinct as food would not be a problem i.e. whales can survive why not giant sharks?. It also said that sharks are not usually found 'cos they just sink when they die so there wouldn't be any evidence of it washed up on shore.

Of course it probably isn't just that simple but it made me think that somewhere there might be a huge shark wandering about. Just the fact that it's so difficult to get live pictures of this giant squid goes to show that there are still many things that humans have not uncovered in the deep blue sea.
 
For myself I thought the first live pictures of a Arcituethis in wild is awesome.

And yes Benchley's Beast is a great book, and if one notices the photos the
Squid is a dark red color, that is not it's natural color. A giant can change
it's color's at need and dark red means that the blood has rushed to it's
outer extremeities in order to feed. And unfortunately the scientists have
just removed the Arcetuthis's main hunting "claws". the two long tentacles
are needed to snatch prey and then draw it into the squids beak.proboscus
in order to feed. they have just crippled the squid and it may die due to
being declawed.

Oh well


Way cool :thumbup:
 
Megalodon died out because it was too specialized in it's eating habits. It was a giant, shallow-sea whale eating shark. For the most part it fed on whales that lived in great numbers in shallow waters. There are no such species of whales any more except the Grey Whale, which was around by the way 30,000,000 years ago.

Megalodon was apparantly at a loss once such prey forsook the shallow waters for the deep ocean.

Apparantly it had no adaptations that allowed it to change. The extinction took maybe half a million years to play out though. Individual Megalodons never noticed that food was ever so slowly getting harder to come by.

Too much specialization in food has caused many a great predator to fade away. The Sabertooth, Giant Short-Faced Bear and Andrewsarchus all went by the wayside for the same reason. If the Giant Squid ever became extinct, the Sperm Whale and Sleeper Shark, which are it's only natural predators, and whose diet is mostly the Giant Squid, might do so as well.

Any predator that needs reliable supplies of very large animals for food is in trouble once anything disrupts the gravy train, which in the course of evolution will usually happen eventually. Golden Ages all come to an end.

Take the Sabertooth. Once humans in North America wiped out the big slow herbivores it fed on, it for all its strength just could not compete anymore. Match the Sabertooth (which fed only on large, and I mean LARGE mammals) against a grizzly bear going after temites, roots, small rodents and the occasional large prey and you will understand what I mean. The huge teeth were then a liability and not an asset.

The giant predators always must rely on a well tuned ecosystem that produces reliable supplies of big food items that they are able to find and kill When that ecosystem is screwed up by anything, they usually die out.
They get replaced by the little guys who are more into little prey, or the generalists like a grizzly bear.

After that, maybe evolution produces another Golden Age and you will get another spectacular predator. It is the way of the Earth.

See this article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrewsarchus
 
I've been looking forward to this too!!
Watched many shows about the giant and humbolt squid. They're fascinating critters.
This statement bugged me though.
"They also recovered one of the giant squid's two longest tentacles, which severed during its struggle."
Damn, now the thing will probably starve to death.
They use the two main tentacles to catch their prey.
 
L6steel said:
I've been looking forward to this too!!
Watched many shows about the giant and humbolt squid. They're fascinating critters.
This statement bugged me though.
"They also recovered one of the giant squid's two longest tentacles, which severed during its struggle."
Damn, now the thing will probably starve to death.
They use the two main tentacles to catch their prey.
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The part that got me thinking was that they don't now if those testicles broke off at the base or halfway, so they aren't sure about the size figure they calculated based on that. They can always tell the size of a squid by the size of it's testicles.

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fulloflead said:
The part that got me thinking was that they don't now if those testicles broke off at the base or halfway, so they aren't sure about the size figure they calculated based on that. They can always tell the size of a squid by the size of it's testicles.

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Fulloflead, are you going to go deep sea diving and lift up the Arcetuthis's
tentacles and look at it's testacles? :eek:
 
If the squid lost its' testicles, does that mean that the squid now has to take hormones for the rest of its' life to be normal again?.:D.:D.
 
Heck, no. Those testicles it uses like weapons for catching prey. I wouldn't go anywhere NEAR his testicles.

Normal squids would die of hunger if it lost it's testicles. It needs it's testicles to provide for itself.


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Great so now there is one very angry and testicleless Giant Squid roaming
the pacific ocean. That sounds like a great horror movie plot. :D
 
There are probably at least several hundred million Giand or Colossal Squid in existence. Megalodon probably never hunted them as principal prey for the same reason humans cannot find them. In the depths of the ocean they are not easy to locate. Sperm Whales are adapted, however, to do that.
 
fulloflead said:
Heck, no. Those testicles it uses like weapons for catching prey. I wouldn't go anywhere NEAR his testicles.

Normal squids would die of hunger if it lost it's testicles. It needs it's testicles to provide for itself.


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so it eats its offspring? That is one cold hearted squid. :p
 
Jim,
I read the whole articlce..I have always been fascinated by these beasts..Remember the movie 2000 leagues under the sea??

this is right out of that..
 
fulloflead said:
Heck, no. Those testicles it uses like weapons for catching prey. I wouldn't go anywhere NEAR his testicles.

Normal squids would die of hunger if it lost it's testicles. It needs it's testicles to provide for itself.


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I prefer to keep mine in my pants. :)
 
Ren the devils trailboss said:
Jim,
I read the whole articlce..I have always been fascinated by these beasts..Remember the movie 2000 leagues under the sea??

this is right out of that..
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Me too. I've never seen that movie though.

Wouldn't it be messed up if these ended up being the most agressive animals in the sea to humans? If everytime a scuba diver encountered one that s/he got attacked and gobbled up?

There aren't many animals that will go out of their way to attack you - polar bears, one or two snakes, komono dragons - and that's about it. But you just gotta wonder about these things. Maybe they HAVE been seen live and in person before, if you know what I mean. ;)

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