Giant Squid Washed Ashore in Australia 149
twofish writes "Yahoo News is reporting that the carcass of a giant squid, nearly 8 meters in length, washed ashore in Australia on Wednesday. The creature's mantle is over two meters in length and almost a full meter across. The creature, stretched out, is in total more than eight meters long. 'Scientists would take samples from the creature, identified by state parks officials as an Architeuthis, which can grow to more than 10 meters (33 feet) in length and weigh more than 275 kilograms (606 pounds). The Tasmanian animal was 250 kg ... Giant squid, once believed to be mythical despite occasional sightings by mariners, feed on fish and other squid. Last year, fishermen off the Falkland Islands caught a complete animal measuring 8.62 meters.'"
Stick (Score:5, Funny)
Screw that... (Score:5, Funny)
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Finally, an appropriate use for the phrase "Those things are the size of volleyballs!"
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Any of the large squid are filled with ammonia, scientist thinks it is there to help them float.
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Tasmanian Squid (Score:1)
Two headed from imbreeding down that neck of the woods.. a giant squid is nothing new.
Darren
South Australia
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I love squid (Score:3, Funny)
Fast food (Score:1, Funny)
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Giant margaritas all 'round!
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"It's a TRAP!"
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Delicacy to Cleaning agent (Score:5, Interesting)
Ammonia makes you float? (Score:2)
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Just not prepared right. (Score:2)
Garbled link (Score:2)
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This includes the stingrays, which are known for their bad taste, unless soaked in vinegar to neutralize the ammonia.
Ammonia does not make them float. What I heard is that it helps coping with the pressure at great depths or something like that.
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In Denmark, I have eaten stingrays in a high end restaurant. It is called devil fish or something like that. Can't remember if it was grilled or fried, but it was crisp and very nice to eat. Not sure if the chef did something special, or is it the species.
I once speared a blue spotted [wikipedia.org]
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and if you like it in Windex flavor. those things contain a lot of ammonia.
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You are right, most is pretty bad. But if you get it at a real seafood place or a fish market (cook yourself) it is very nice.
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The definition of a "real" seafood place is pretty nebulous as it is, I've been to a few nice places, chain and non-chain, and quite frankly, I don't care to ever try another one again. Maybe calamari lovers would be better off just admitting that maybe a lot of people are just never going to like it, even if it's done right, it's a heck of a lot easier on everyone.
This probably applies to anything that's subjective, d
Re:Fast food (Score:4, Interesting)
Then a year later, I tried some fried calamari, spanish style, and once again I was amazed.
Octopus grilled in butter and garlic, with fresh mexican sauce and flour tortillas is really damn good, too.
And yes, you're right about it having to be fresh, as if isn't, it's like chewing on a piece of bleached rubber.
So definitely, rule number one: never buy frozen squid or octopus.
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There's several more reports and better pictures than the one posted in the summary.
this is why the sea freaks me out (Score:2, Interesting)
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Wow, talk about antropocentric logic loops.
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it's like an alien environment on our own planet. sure am glad these things are 500m down.
Not as alien as you think. We all evolved from down there, you know. It looks alien because we separated a long time ago. Kinda like UK and US, with many customs and cultural elements being different only because they took different paths some time ago, but they both have the same roots. So, if you learn to look more closely, you'll see that there are many similarities and analogies between land and sea (or UK and US), and you probably can recognise them better if you know some natural history or pale
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the differences between me and a squid are far greater then the USA vs UK
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Finding Giant squids more common now? (Score:2)
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No one had seen a live one, dead ones wash up on the shore quite reqularly in Tassie and NZ although I belive this was the first one found on Tasmania's west coast.
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rj
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What we do know is that ice on both polar caps is melting at a tremendously accelerated rate at the moment. All arctic and antarctic ice is fresh water - made from fallen snow. So when this melts into the ocean two things happen. Firstly, the salinity of the sea is reduced - it becomes less salty. Secondly the density of the sea is reduced, since salt water is more
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The flora and fauna have adapted to this environment and you get to watch them on their terms, not in an aquarium/zoo. Because we humans are considered aliens in this environment, many of the animals haven't learnt to fear us. Some underwater animals seem to show a large degr
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It's Reuters, not Yahoo News (Score:3, Informative)
My squid (Score:4, Funny)
Use less repition it says (Score:1, Offtopic)
Translation for Linux fanbois (Score:5, Funny)
Debuggers are taking core samples for analysis.
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A proxy with a memory leak has segfaulted at Australia's ioctl interface.
Debuggers are taking core samples for analysis.
This kind of crap always happens when Australia's pipes are involved! The debuggers can do what they will in their own sweet time, man, just tell me it was HA and we failed over to a mirror and redirected the DNS entries on the balancer! If not, we'll blame this on GPLv3 or IPv6 or some kind of technology with an 'x' in it... product names with an 'x' always sound cutting edge and therefore dangerous!
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Please... (Score:1)
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Why? Is there something different about you? [wikipedia.org]
Only 8?, that's nothing!, mine measures 32 gb! (Score:2)
Inbreeding? (Score:1, Funny)
8 Meters? (Score:2)
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"It's a whopper," Tasmanian Museum senior curator Genefor Walker-Smith told local media on Wednesday. "The main mantle is about one meter across and its total length is about eight meters."
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Re:8 Meters? Depends how you measure. (Score:1)
Mantle length (as opposed to total length) is the standard measure in cephalopods. Architeuthis is not known to attain a mantle length in excess of 2.25 m. Standard Length (SL) is the length of a squid excluding the tentacles; in Architeuthis this measure very rarely exceeds 5 m.
From: http://www.tonmo.com/science/public/giantsquidfact s.php [tonmo.com]
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== - - - - - - -(:==}
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This is old news so I have to think back, but I recall than the tentacles appear to be chopped off, probably because the squid has been partly eaten. Perhaps the longer length is the estimated length when it was alive.
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what about the colossal squid? (Score:2)
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Necronomicon (Score:1)
So many lately (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So many lately (Score:5, Informative)
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Just think of all those war movies and docos, why did they have all that barbed wire and defensive guns on the beaches? Why did the British navy suddenly collapse to these 'submarines'? All those narrow trenches, wide enough for men but too narrow for an 8-metre squid? Why did we need giant tanks to replace cavalry (hint - look at a giant squid next to a horse).
The great question remains, why was this cov
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Re:So many lately - yup, dupe (Score:2)
Cue 'global warming' nutjobs in 5...4...3...
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We're also using what was just recently cutting-edge military technology, including satellite tech, to hunt wildlife these days.
I doubt the fishermen who caught one off the Falklands were using worms on hooks.
They are coming! (Score:1)
A close up (Score:1)
Found a shot of the giant octopus (Score:1, Interesting)
http://theshadowlands.net/octo1.jpg [theshadowlands.net]
Looking at that it would of been one hell of a big cephlapod, much bigger than a giant squid
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This is a climate change thing. (Score:2)
-FL
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if it happens repeatidly i may agree, but since it a rare occurance that has been happening for hundreds of years i doubt it is anything new from climate
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It's at least the second or third time in twelve months.
-FL
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Oh. I thought when you said rare, you meant a couple of times every hundred years.
I just did some searching, and found that there were two in the last six months.
Here [independent.co.uk] and here [physorg.com]. One off the coast of Australia, and another around New Zealand.
Is two enough for a pattern? No, but it is noteworthy. According to this item [go.com] it seems that squid in general, (off California's coast) are behaving oddly. They think it may be due to the reduction of natural predators, but who knows?
-FL
"I knew I shoulda toined left at Albakoike!" (Score:2)
let this be a warning... (Score:1)
This is what happened to the last company CEO that got in the way of ACCC
Note attached to squid's body... (Score:1)
Obligatory (Score:2)
thank you for the data (Score:1)
Tentacles (Score:2)
So hentai girls can now breathe a little easier.
Just got to love the Ads (Score:2, Funny)
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Cue the squid related handles karma whoring... (Score:2)
You're welcome.
-l
New Zealand != Australia (Score:4, Informative)
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