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Science

Giant Octopus 40

Posted by michael from the eight-arms-and-feeling-mean dept.
texchanchan writes "Yahoo reports that the first adult specimen, dead unfortunately, of a very large octopus species has been brought in by fishermen. '[A] very big octopus, the size of a fully mature male giant squid,' says a marine biologist. It is described as 'extremely deep... extremely large...'"
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Giant Octopus More

Giant Octopus

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  • I am never going in the water again!
  • i remember seeing this photo from somewhere around the 20's of men standing next to this massive tentacle that washed ashore...it was like 7ft in diameter. When is someone gonna find one of those monstrous creatures? oh yea...first post!
    • wasn't there something about a Giant Octopus duking it out with a giant squid in 20,000 leagues under the sea?
      Screw cock-fights, now that we know such creatures exist, who wouldn't pay to see them go at it?
  • I thought the plural was octopi.
    But it'd make a hell of a nice first course [alastra.com]
  • Amazing.

    Just goes to show how little we truly know about what lives in the ocean. I'll be interested to see what their analysis is after they examine it.

  • Now that I've got a huge octopus (Score:3, Funny)

    by Violet Null ( 452694 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @10:32AM (#3240830)
    All I need to do is genetically modify it to be smarter, and then strap on a mind control device, and presto: my plan to conquer the world will be complete!
    • So, is Sam Jackson going to play you in the movie?
    • They did this Red Alert 2. (well its a squid not an octopus.)

      http://westwood.ea.com/games/ccuniverse/redalert 2/ english/sovietunits4.html

      "These leviathans are a product of Soviet research teams who captured giant squids from their natural habitat and trained them to be a force of terror in the Red navy. One of the few melee units in the Red Alert 2 arsenal, the Giant Squid is also one of the most powerful naval units, able to mangle, dismantle and destroy enemy ships by crushing it with its powerful tentacles. Since it's invisible to enemy radar, the Giant Squid is perfect for sneak attacks against powerful enemy pieces such as Destroyers or Carriers -- send it with support units to guard against counters such as Dolphins, and your Giant Squids will repay your investment many times over."
    • Remember the saying "you get what you pay for" when you are shopping for thugs.

      If the empire had actually spent the money to get quality stormtroopers the universe would still be ruled by the empire!
  • It is described as 'extremely deep... extremely large...'

    Reminds me of my prom date! Ah.. memories better left at the bottom of the ocean..
  • I watched this thing last night about O'Shea trying to catch Archetoothus (sp?), the giant squid. After pulling up all sorts of random deep-sea creatures, he caught several larval ones, but they all eventually died.
    I laughed, I cried, I ate a box of Fig Newtons. It was great.

  • CNN (Score:2, Funny)

    by sllort ( 442574 )
    Aw c'mon, you've got to post the CNN link [cnn.com], where a reporter under so much pressure to deliver a visual aspect to America's short-attention-span audience pasted a picture of a giant squid captured 8 years ago onto a story about an octopus.

  • Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn! (Score:4, Funny)

    by yndrd ( 529288 ) on Thursday March 28, 2002 @12:20PM (#3241538) Homepage
    Finally the Old Ones have returned to cleanse the Earth from those pesky nests of human beings.

    I was beginning to lose hope.
  • Sure it's big, but can it be thrown onto the ice during a detroit red wings hockey game? That is the true test of how great an octopus is.
  • What are the differences between Squid and Octopus?
    • Where to begin?

      Squid and octopi come from the same branch of the tree as oysters, snails, and chitons, meaning that they're mushy, non-segmented (think millipede or vertebrae), have a shell, and taste yummy. Of all the molluscs, squid and octopi are most closely related to each other, but there are several key differences.

      In squid, the shell is reduced to a beak and a thin, flexible support called the pen. The pen lets them have that long, tubular body. Octopi have a beak, but no pen, making them pretty mushy (and able to fit through really small holes).

      For the most part, squid live in the water column and hunt and octopi on the bottom and scavenge. (You could probably call picking on clams hunting, but really...). Squid are fast; octopi slow.

      Here's a key difference if you want to keep one behind glass. Squid have to keep moving. Put them in a tank and they die quickly. You can keep an octopus for years, just throw it a raw crab once in a while. Because of this, we are able to find out that many octopus species are intelligent. Some squid may be just as smart (they haven't caught a live Architeuthes yet, so they're smarter than tuna!), but we have no way of knowing because we can't really do tests on them.

      Both are cephlapods, meaning they have their feet on their heads. Octopi have eight arms, more or less identical. Squid have eight stubby arms and two long ones with grabby pad on the end, the tentacles. Inside, they're pretty much the same: gut, ink sac...nothing you really want to eat.

      There you have it, the highlights, at least. God, I'm a nerd.
    • http://www.aqua.org/animals/species/procto.html

  • 13 feet? That barely registers on my giganto-meter. 13 meters, maybe. 13 feet, nah!

    • Indeed. This is like an article saying, "Scientists today captured a GIANT ANT. The feisty Formicidae measured over ONE QUARTER OF AN INCH LONG."

      Now, that would be pretty giant by ant standards, but when I think of giant ants, I want cars being crushed and houses being levelled.

      It's hard to believe that this made CNN.

    • Maybe, but note this line in the BBC article that somebody mentioned previously:

      "He has provisionally identified the sub-mature female as being Haliphron atlanticus."

      This one was still a kid. Wonder how big Ma and Pa Octopus were?....

  • The BBC also has a article [bbc.co.uk] on this story.
  • Many, many years ago, I read a library book on Unexplained Phenomena, and in it, there was the tale of some large, dead animal that had washed ashore on some beach somewhere. The thing looked sort of like a giant octopus, but it was too decayed to really make a comparison.

    Most people thought it was a just giant squid, too long decayed, but some scientists took tissue samples and preserved them in alcohol.

    Many years later, once microscope technology had improved, the sample was re-examined, and they discovered that it was HUMAN FLESH!!!!!

    Oops. I mean, they discovered that it was octopus tissue.

    So it turns out that sometimes, these wierd unexplained tales aren't quite so implausible after all.

    Now excuse me. I need to sign up for anal probe insurance.

  • >>"The frightening thing is that we are getting an animal like this newly reported in New Zealand waters today...so new and large, you've got to sit down and ask yourself 'What is it we know about the deep sea environment?'," O'Shea said.

    The frightening thing is that we've been (people have been) fine-net trolling those depths and deeper, cleaning out species we know little about in an environment we know less about.

    Um, I'll have the orange roughy please, extra tartar sauce.

  • I thought the largest was 32ft? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jayson ( 2343 ) <jnordwick @ g m a i l . com> on Friday March 29, 2002 @02:55AM (#3246591)
    The largest octopus reported in scientific literature was 32 feet from arm tip to arm tip and weighed 300 lbs. It was an unusual looking octopus. The biggest one that I've ever seen was found in the waters around Vancouver Island, and was 22.5 ft. from arm tip to arm tip and weighed 156 lbs. (Jim Cosgrove, RBCM)

    taken from http://7thfloormedia.com/projects/safari/newslette r/questions/qocto.html

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