Here’s a story of a strange large squid carcass hauled up from the Atlantic deep—researchers expect it was between 16 and 24 feet long when alive and intact, but the specimen was a bit gelatinous and damaged and nibbled upon. It’s been tentatively identified as Asperoteuthis acanthoderma, which has previously only been found in the Pacific.
Although muscular squid zip around to catch food, squid with gelatinous bodies typically float in deep, dark waters and let prey find them, Young says. Pacific A. acanthoderma have glowing, prey-alluring pads at the end of their tentacles. Sucker-laden tips on the pads’ ends grab curious prey and hold on until the squid moves in to swallow the food.
At least “that’s what we think happens,” Young says. “No one has yet seen one of these animals alive.”
Perhaps squid are in the minority of sea life that find the altered ocean more to their liking.
More likely, they are finding their old habitat less to their liking.
Why do Squids
Come up, from the deep
Everytime, you make a peep?
Just like me
They want to be
Cloooose to PZ.
(tune: ‘Close to you’)
This is amazing! They’ve never found an adult, or an almost-adult, before? *What else is down there?*
Reminded of the tune:
“June is Busting Out All Over”
from “Carousel”
Squid jello with miniature marshmallows was my least favorite at the cafeteria.
I’ve worried lately, with all these giant squid appearing, why they might be. Is it a lack of food that is driving them to attempt lower depths? Is it that we’re removing predators/competators from the upper levels and so allowing them a foot, er, tentacle hold? Is this some bizarre effect of climate change? Is it a boom from the hunting of sperm whales before the marine mammel protection act? Hey, we don’t know how long it talkes those guys to get that big, for all we know they are the right age.
You mean, no one’s seen one alive and lived to tell the tale!
What does the theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind sound like, underwater?