60' Squid Washes up on Tasmanian Beach

Astrobirdr writes "CNN has a story about a giant squid that recently washed up on a Tasmanian beach. Some think it might be a new species." 60 feet long is enough for a lot of calimari.

Re:Offtopic?

[hplasm]

Just who I've been looking for to help rip out all this old RS232 cabling....sorry, not OJ..

Re:Cthulhu

[nobody69]

The parent post is an attempt at humor, not off-topic rambling. If you've ever anything be H. P. Lovecraft, you got the joke and probably were expecting to see some reference when you read the article. Cthulhu [hplovecraft.com] was a squiddy "god" that lived (so to speak) in the depths in Lovecraft's maltheist pantheon. HTH. HAND.

huh?

[misfit13b]

60 feet long is enough for a lot of calimari.

Yes, and studying too little in English class is not enough for a lot of studying.

Re:huh?

[Ravagin]

Also note that the bbc [bbc.co.uk] says:
"Mr Pemberton said its high ammonia content would have made it unpleasant to eat, tasting a bit like floor cleaner."

Timothy, you can have my helping.

Re:huh?

[hplasm]

...unpleasant to eat, tasting a bit like floor cleaner."

Mr Pemberton..don't eat floor cleaner. It is wrong.

And to fine tune your analogy

[nito]

>> 60 feet long is enough for a lot of calimari.
>
> Yes, and studying too little in English class is not enough for a lot of studying.

Yes, and studying too little in English class is not enough for a lot of studing.

Re:And to fine tune your analogy

[Tackhead]

> >> 60 feet long is enough for a lot of calimari.
>>
> > Yes, and studying too little in English class is not enough for a lot of studying.
>
> Yes, and studying too little in English class is not enough for a lot of studing.

Fair enough, but how's studying in English class gonna help the guy improve his Itilian, which is the real problem here.

Re:And to fine tune your analogy

[catwh0re]

www.dictionary.com [dictionary.com]

babel.altavista.com [altavista.com]

-nerd solutions-

Re:huh?

[R2.0]

If we call squid "calamari" when we eat it, how do squid refer to people when they eat us?

(And yes, I know "Calamari" is Italian for "squid". Just go with it.)

Re:huh?

[Mister Transistor]

Those soft, yet crunchy pink things!

Sadly we can't catch a live one.

[infonography]

That's one of the holy grails of oceanography, to catch a live Architeuthis seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov [nasa.gov]

Re:Sadly we can't catch a live one.

[kbonin]

Actually, it has already [discovery.com] happened! Very smart approach, now they just need to figure out how to keep 'em alive longer...

Re:News for nerds?

[reaper20]

What do you mean? The squid was probably just trying to cache some fish.

*runs*

Re:News for nerds?

[rabidphilosophy]

If you want news for nerds stop spending your time posting bull like that, and submit a story. A new species is science news, and most Slashdot readers also enjoy science. Hell, It's under the Science section of the site, if you don't want to read science news then config your acount a bit.

Re:News for nerds?

[SpatchMonkey]

Chill out a bit, dude.

(And btw I've submitted plenty of stories.)

Re:News for nerds?

[TheGreatGraySkwid]

Blockquoth:
"Excuse me, how is this 'news for nerds'?"

*sniff*
I thought it was perfect.

Did anyone else read this as:

[joebp]

60's Squid Washes up on Tasmanian Beach

I had a picture of a dead, tie-dyed, VW Bus driving squid which stinks of joss sticks.

Steel Cables?

[wompser]

from the article:

The giant squid is a carnivorous mollusk with a beak-like mouth strong enough to cut through a steel cable and its eyes are the largest in the animal kingdom -- growing up to 45 centimeters (18 inches) wide.

I'm not a marine biologist, but what do you suppose giant squid need to bite through that is "as strong as a steel cable?" Unless they prey on submarines, I can't imagine any sea critter that has a shell that tough!

Re:Steel Cables?

[Satan's_Tool]

Duh....20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. You think the Nautilus was made from swiss cheese or something?

Re:Steel Cables?

[Pentapod]

Australia telecommunications giant Telstra would have us believe that giant squids regularly chomp on their underwater cables. Seems to be the explanation for 90% of the inexplicable downtime local consumers suffer. :P Guess the squids are iron deficient.

Re:Steel Cables?

[ShavenYak]

I'm not a marine biologist, but what do you suppose giant squid need to bite through that is "as strong as a steel cable?"

Well, any good design has some margin of safety. You wouldn't want the squid to only barely be able to bite through its food, or its beak wouldn't last long. That said, I imagine you need a good deal of force to break open something like a chambered nautilus (the shellfish, not the submarine).

Editors note

[dr_dank]

From the Article, emphasis mine:
"It's definitely of the giant squid group, which is exciting enough," the museum's senior curator of Zoology, David Pemberton said in the ABC report.

Editors Note: David Pemberton is an associate professor at the Royal Academy of Really Obvious Facts. His new book Kitty Cats Go Meow is due out in the fall.

Re:Editors note

[axolotl_farmer]

Disclaimer: IAABBNAC (I am a biologist, but not an Cephalopodilog)

This is not stupid. The giant squids (Architeuthidae) are a genus of squid within the 10-armed cephalopods. This means that all the species of this group are each others closest relatives.

Pemberton probably means that this specimen is of an undescribed species of this group. 'Giant squid' is not a physical, but a taxonomical description.

Relax, Iron Chef...

[Tersevs]

Unfortunately, the flesh of these things seems to hold a high amount of ammonia.
[nasa.gov]
This link tells - among other things - about some dude that tried to cook a part of a giant squid.

Ammonium Chloride

[Detritus]

I read something that said the giant squid had ammonium chloride in its body, not the sodium chloride that is present in most animals. This was supposed to be an adaptation to the great depths where they live. I think it ruins any hope of making new gourmet dishes from giant squid.

Doubly interesting!

[Blind Linux]

If it's a new species, it's already the largest of its family. If not, it's a record breaker... the largest ever giant squid was 59.5ft (18m). So, either way, it's big news!

Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[nosferatu-man]

Trust CNN to get the basic science wrong. If a whale has a sucker scar, it's from a desparate squid trying to escape, not from a brush with death. Look at the sizes of the things: how would a 250kg squid handle a 60 ton whale?

Jeez.
'j

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[yasth]

How would a 40 kg wolf take down a 1000 kg American Bison?

The answer is pack instinct and teeth. So perhaps the squids hunt in packs (which wouldn't be imposible), or perhaps they just attack weaker smaller, and possibly sickly whales.

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[Anonymous Coward]

A pack of 200 squid is slightly unbelievable.

But extremely fucking cool.

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[nobody69]

A pack of 200 squid is slightly unbelievable.

But extremely fucking cool.

I smell a Bad Horror Movie...

Twelve Tentacled Freaks! Cephalopodaphobia! Deep Blue Sea II: Revenge of the Calimari! And of course, Call of Cthulthu.

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[DrVxD]

> A pack of 200 squid is slightly unbelievable.
Would that be a Beosquid cluster?

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[jacoberrol]

nosferatu-man is right. Squid do not hunt in packs. They are solitary animals. Additionally, squid have been found in the stomachs of whale that have washed ashore. See this link [nasa.gov], which was posted in an earlier comment.

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[Peter T Ermit]

I cracked up when I got to the sentence: "The giant squid is believed to feed on, among other things, the world's biggest animals with several eyewitness stories from fisherman who have seen the squid in fierce battles with whales." Usual high standards of CNN science journalism. *sigh*

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[linzeal]

How much does a squid need to eat to stay alive? Might it bite a chunk out of a whale for food ?

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[warp365]

Actually, they are being fed those giant brained mice that we also get to read about from a link on slashdot [slashdot.org].

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[MagikSlinger]

how would a 250kg squid handle a 60 ton whale?

"One chunk at a time". (From my structured software design textbook)

Hey, someone had to bring it up. Boy, do I date myself by saying I had a structured software design textbook. :-)

Re: Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[Black Parrot]

> Hey, someone had to bring it up. Boy, do I date myself by saying I had a structured software design textbook. :-)

I always lie and say I read it on the bathroom wall.

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[kroymen]

Yeah, and wolves are so much bigger than all of their prey too.

I'm not sure that the idea that they prey on the whales is valid. It could just as easily be territorialism or sheer stupidity.

The whales, however, are not likely to be doing the preying on something that big though. Most whales are filter feeders...and basically toothless. There's no way they could do anything with something that large. Frankly if there's any predatory relationship between the two, the squid doing the preying makes more sense to me.

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[nosferatu-man]

The sperm whale is the largest toothed whale in the world, and likely the largest predator ever on earth. They are known to primarialy eat smaller squid (although a 13' squid is only smaller in comparison to Architheuthis), as well as fish, and the occasional marine mammal, like seals or porpoises.

'jfb

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[oever]

They do! [essortment.com]

Sperm whales have had giant squid in their stomachs, but eyewitness reports prove that the whale does not always get to eat the squid. Sometimes, it is the other way around.

Tadadadadada...

...sperm whales

[thorgil]

...
Why don't we see live giant squids?
- The live where it's really deep...?

Why do sperm whales dive to more than 3000 meters depth?
- Uhhh..mmmm.....To get eaten by giant squids..?..as a macho thingie?

-----
Sperm whales with suckmark scars up to 1 m diameter have been found...
The marks might come from when the whales where young and have thereafter grown with the skin....or...
There is something down there.......BIG!

-----
Umbra (alt. ambra)(used in perfumes and stuff) from the sperm whales's stomach is half-digested chitin-otherstuff thingie that acts as a "spline" in the squids.

-----
What i remember squids have different hemoglobin than humans...They have copper instead of iron as co-factor...

Re:...sperm whales

[Tackhead]

> What i remember squids have different hemoglobin than humans...They have copper instead of iron as co-factor...

So Great Cthulhu's a Vulcan? Someone tell Paramount Pictures! We've got a great set up: "Star Trek XVIII: Call of Shatner's Toupee".

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[shuane]

Look at the sizes of the things: how would a 250kg squid handle a 60 ton whale?
It could get stuck in the whale's blowhole (or throat)!

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[Reality Master 101]

If a whale has a sucker scar, it's from a desparate squid trying to escape, not from a brush with death. Look at the sizes of the things: how would a 250kg squid handle a 60 ton whale?

I don't know what the facts are, but it's not unbelievable. A tiny poisonous spider can take down a pretty large animal in the right circumstances.

I doubt the squid is going to take down the whale by beating on it with its tentacles, but it may have other weapons at its disposal. :)

Re:Squid DO NOT eat whales, whales eat squid

[Rogerborg]

• A tiny poisonous spider can take down a pretty large animal in the right circumstances.

Only after it's been eaten though. Oh wait, did you mean venomous?

Perhaps it is a ... giant squid!

[capt.Hij]

The squid weighs up to 250 kilograms and, including tentacles, measured almost 18 meters (60 feet), the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported on Monday.

< stuff deleted >

"It's definitely of the giant squid group, which is exciting enough," the museum's senior curator of Zoology, David Pemberton said in the ABC report.

There is a reason why this guy is the senior curator and not just some silly junior curator mopping up the lab after hours.

I thought CNN was bad but this article is pretty skimpy. By the way, at the end of the article the y seem to hint that giant squid feed on whales when it is the opposite. Whales feed on squid. The problem is that the squid fight back, but there is absolutely no evidence that the squid feed on whales.

PETA press release to follow no doubt

[malakai]

Blaming the death of this 60 foot creature on us [slashdot.org]

Re:PETA press release to follow no doubt

[mgblst]

Yes, how ridiculous, because we never do anything to upset the natural balance of this world! What a fool PETA is.

Anyway, it's our right to do what we want.

awe inspiring

[tps12]

It is incredible that in this day and age, with GPS in our cars and microwave ovens in our bedrooms, where children are more accustomed to AIM than to the telephone and "snail mail" is only used for paying those few bills that can't be paid online, in this brave new world we still know so little about what lurks beneath the indigo waves of the oceans that cover 80% of our planet.

We talk of finding life on other planets, which orbit around other stars. And we talk about environmental issues and geological events with such certainty, such God-given insight. Or is it indeed God-given? Have we not perhaps eaten instead of the Fruit of Knowledge? Did we doom ourselves long ago to the curse of insight? It is not for me to say, nor for any man. But we have no choice: we, as a species, are driven to seek information, knowledge, science.

And as we do so, we will continue to find wonders that make us catch or breaths. Even in this modern world, beasts crawl the frightening depths, luring the simple-minded translucent fish to their jaws. What else lies beneath those waves? What else hides in the dark rain forests of South America, or in the frozen tundra of Canada? It's an amazing world out there, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It boggles my brains.

Gees, Buddy: A little overly dramatic, aren't we?

[GuyMannDude]

Let me guess: you work as either a narrator or a writer for nature documentaries.

Ah well. I'm glad you found such profound intellectual delight in the discovery of this squid....

GMD

Re:awe inspiring

[Peter T Ermit]

*fweet*
Illegal use of purple prose. Fifteen yards. Repeat first down.

Re:awe inspiring

[runcible]

Katz? Is that you?

Some think it might be a new species NOT

[t0qer]

Discovery channel has been running a special lately, The Hunt for the Giant Squid. Actually it's been in reruns since last year, hardly a new species.

Re:Some think it might be a new species NOT

[Peter T Ermit]

Umm... a "Giant Squid" can be Architeuthis dux, or A. harveyi, or A. martensi, or A. sanctipauli, or a half dozen others. What do you have against a new species being found?

Re:Some think it might be a new species NOT

[nobody69]

It's the whole 'lumpers v. splitters' thing. Rightly or wrongly, somebody who identifies a new species gets more respect ("He's a good scientist") than somebody who finds a big squid ("He's a good fisherman"). I know essentially nothing about squid phylogeny, but if these things are rare, it could be hard to tell if they are multiple species or just one or two species with lots of variation. I mean, if you didn't know better would you think that a Great Dane and a daschund were the same species? Of course, the article gives very little detail ("It's big!"), some of which is wrong ("It eats whales!"), so there could be some pretty good morphological evidence behind this conclusion, but CNN'll never tell.

Search for the giant squid ends...

[hplasm]

/usr/sbin/squid -giant

In other news...

[Zelet]

After a series of underwater-nuclear tests, a 60's style Japanese man in a giant lizard costume invaded Japan killing hundreds of small model people and toppling many a cardboard buildings.

calimari

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they wanted to eat it, the ammonia content was too high, and it'd be inedible.

Like /. users?

[BornInASmallTown]

It is believed they rarely have an opportunity to mate, and live isolated lives, but it is still unknown where the squid fits on the food chain.

s/squid/slashdotter/

Poor squid..

[zulux]

...it got abused to death being forced to engage in Japanese Tentacle Sex [section12.com]

Iron Chef

[ni4882]

I can't wait until the Giant Squid episode of Iron Chef!

I only have one thing to say...

[mike77]

who wants SUSHI?!?!?!?!?!

10 times bigger

[oever]

Observations of squid 10 times bigger have been cited [gutenberg.org]:

Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the most wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs [1/8 of a mile!] in length and breadth, lay floating on the water. Innumerable long arms radiated from its centre, curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas [strangling snakes], as if blindly to catch any hapless object within reach. No perceptible face or front did it have; but it undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.

"With a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again. Starbuck with a wild voice exclaimed, 'Almost rather had I seen Moby Dick and fought him, than to have seen thee, thou white ghost!'

"'What was it, Sir?' said Flask.

"'The great live squid, which -- they say -- few whaleships ever beheld and returned to their ports to tell of it.'"

Brilliant!!!

[lux55]

"It's definitely of the giant squid group..."

Wow, it's a good thing David Pemberton was on the scene.

Incredible...

[riggwelter]

...espcially as most Squids I've seen are about 1U in size! ;-)

They've got squid running in Tasmanian beaches!!

[Soul-Burn666]

A great day for open source! Squid has been run even in Tasmania!
Oh wait, you meant the sea creature

did anyone look at the photo?

[jfruhlinger]

That doesn't look like a 60 foot squid to me, unless those marine biologists are 20 feet tall. The body of the squid looks to be about person length -- are some of the tentacles 50 feet long?

jf

Other Squid Links and Stories

[SolemnDragon]

There's actually been a lot of discussion about giant squid over the years. Here are some of the most common links, and i'm not going to vouch personally for all of the data or opinions in them, but at least they provide a few other places for a look at this subject.

Frankly, all that i can do is offer my best jacques cousteau impression, and hope that they don't evolve further.

NASA [nasa.gov]

Another Squid Site [si.edu]

Discovery Channel and the Giant Squid [discovery.com]

Weird Squids In Action [bournemouth.ac.uk] (that one's just fun for the cool giant squid graphics- how would YOU have done it?)

A A 1996 article regarding giant squid discovery> [carleton.ca]

A 2002 discovery of a MUCH smaller 'giant' squid [bbc.co.uk]

and of course, proof that there's a convention group for everything. [abdn.ac.uk]

And if anybody wants to know how i happen to know any of this, let's just say that i dated a marine biologist. It won't be true, but it would make my mum happy....

Robert Silverberg in Asimov's on these wacky Squid

[meehawl]

On other occasions, though, the squids have taken their time about withdrawing from the scene. There is no reason, after all, why they should show fear of visiting submersibles from the upper world, since such visits have been very few and far between indeed during the thousands or perhaps millions of years that these squids have occupied the lower depths. They have been known to hang around in the presence of the submersibles, gently waving their wing-like fins to hold their positions. One of them, in fact, prodded a submersible with its tentacle, getting its suckers stuck to it and experiencing some difficulty letting go. [asimovs.com]

No calamari, sorry

[ianscot]

Architeuthis flesh has tons of ammonia in it. People -- Clyde Roper, I think -- have tried to eat the stuff. Nope.