New Deep Sea Squid

texchanchan writes: "Yahoo reports on a newly discovered species of deep-sea squid, quoting scientists as saying the creatures are very different from normal giant squids. 'New species are a dime a dozen. This is fundamentally different' in behavior and appearance -- with 10 identical long skinny arms and a jellyfish-like hunting strategy. 'We don't know of any cephalopod that has arms like that.' --Michael Vecchione of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service. 'I had never seen anything like this creature,' oceanographer William Sager of Texas A&M says."

squidish

[CordMeyer]

All squid have ten arms, but 2 are usually much longer & skinnier than the others. It seems this one has them all the same length. the 2 longer tentacles are used for feeding, they shoot them into schools of fish & then retract them. the other 8 are for propulsion.
A Soviet tanker in 1965 came across a battle between a giant squid and a sperm whale that would have weighed around 40 tonnes. The fight continued for some time and finished far below in the depths, beyond the range of the tanker's sonar equipment. About an hour after the sighting the strangled body of the whale was found floating in the ocean. It still had the giant squid wrapped around its body. But the squid did not win - its head was found inside the stomach of the whale!

Re:squidish

[satanami69]

Urban legend? [longman.com.au]

This new squid looks like a half-breed Manta Ray/Squid.

I couldn't get enough of Discovery Channel's Search for the a Giant Squid [discovery.com]

Propulsion?

[GungaDan]

Not to question the authority of anyone whose post rated "+5" - just out to satisfy my curiosity: I thought squid moved by water-jet propulsion, squeezing water through the head/body (mantle?) and directing the flow with an articulated "nozzle." How efficient could propulsion by rounded tentacle be, anyway, for a creature that swims in open water, rather than "walking" on the ocean floor?

In other gastropod news...

[Otter]

A recent National Geographic article [nationalgeographic.com] had the most amazing discovery I've seen in a long time: an Australian octopus that mimics dangerous marine animals by changing color and pattern and folding its arms.

It can bunch its arms into a flattened oval and develop brown patches to resemble a toxic flatfish, curl and hang its arms and turn light blue to resemble a local jellyfish, elongate and develop stripes to look like a sea snake. Absolutely mindblowing.

Unfortunately the pictures they selected to put on the web don't begin to do it justice.

Lots of neat stuff in the shallows, too.

[ackthpt]

Go out into the Monterey Bay in a small boat on a calm morning and you'll see lots of interesting invertebrates near the surface. Crystal Jellies and the like.

My favorite is this one. [google.com]

Some 1600x1200 jpegs from the Monterey Aquarium, in Monterey, California. Enjoy!

Crystal Jelly [dragonswest.com]

Giant Sea Slug [dragonswest.com] with Giant Sea Cucumber back among the anemones

Anemone and Clownfish [dragonswest.com]

Squid size

[cnkeller]

I had a book back in my younger days (70's,early 80s') called Dangerous Sea Creatures. I believe it was published by Time/Life. What was interesting was the way that they could estimate a squid's size based on it's suckers. Suckers of a given diameter belong to a squid of a certain size. Makes sense, fairly believable. Anyway, they reported that sperm whales had been caught (back in the days of unrestricted whaling) wich sucker marks 18" across. I guess it's pretty obvious what a sucker mark looks like and it's reasonable to assume they game from a giant squid. That brings the length of the attacking squid right around the 175 feet or so of the one reported in the Indian Ocean in the late 60's. I wish I still had this book so I could give out the ISBN etc and make sure I had the story verbatim.