Giant Squid Filmed In Natural Habitat For the First Time 98
First time accepted submitter Edgewood_Dirk writes that a giant squid has been filmed in its natural habitat for the first time. "Scientists and broadcasters have captured footage of an elusive giant squid, up to eight meters (26 feet) long that roams the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Japan's National Science Museum succeeded in filming the deep-sea creature in its natural habitat for the first time, working with Japanese public broadcaster NHK and the U.S. Discovery Channel. The massive invertebrate is the stuff of legend, with sightings of a huge ocean-dwelling beast reported by sailors for centuries.'" The first live footage of a giant squid was captured in 2006 by Japan's National Science Museum researcher, Tsunemi Kubodera, after it was hooked and brought to the surface.
Get A Good Look (Score:5, Funny)
Before they catch it and eat it.
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Or all you can eat sushi.
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Unfortunately, for the Japanese and other seafood lovers, giant squid have high levels of ammonia.
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Unfortunately, for the Japanese and other seafood lovers, giant squid have high levels of ammonia.
So what? Most fish and seafood taste like piss anyway.
No Video at the link (Score:2)
Re:No Video at the link (Score:5, Funny)
the video is more elusive than the squid
Re:No Video at the link (Score:4, Informative)
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"Giant squid in its natural ..." This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by NHK.
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Video Removed by User.. :(
Re:No Video at the link (Score:5, Informative)
Re:wtf? (Score:5, Funny)
creepy human looking eye (Score:2)
The question that's itching to be asked.. (Score:3, Funny)
The question that people must be itching to ask the Japanese Researchers: How does it taste?
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The squid gets all jiggly with some soy sauce.
http://news.discovery.com/videos/animals-dancing-zombie-squid-explained.html [discovery.com]
Re:The question that's itching to be asked.. (Score:5, Funny)
Are you sure their first impulse was to EAT it? I mean...it's Japan.
Re:The question that's itching to be asked.. (Score:5, Informative)
Are you sure their first impulse was to EAT it? I mean...it's Japan.
Japan is widely reviled for using its permitted "research whaling" activities as a cover for what essentially amounts to hunting for food. They kill whales (mostly minke, I think, which are at least fairly common) in the hundreds or thousands every year, I believe in the Antarctic, supposedly for research purposes, but since there is no prohibition on using the leftovers after the "research" is done, the meat ends up being sold in Japan. The problem is that most Japanese don't even know what whale meat tastes like, and from what I've read it's not very appealing, so it's not like there's any wide demand for the product - in fact the government has tried to promote its consumption to gain support for their policies. Obviously certain interests have great interest in the government, but it's never been clear to me whether this was a "protect our livelihoods" thing, or traditionalists and reactionaries trying to preserve a custom in the face of Western imperialism. (There's a lot of this in the US and Canada too, but it's the Indian tribes, not the central governments. Norway is one of the few other governments that pushes the practice, and you can buy whale meat there too.)
The Japanese are also notorious for their dolphin killing - there was a documentary called The Cove [imdb.com] from a few years ago that captured the whole mess on film.
Re:The question that's itching to be asked.. (Score:5, Funny)
WHOOSH! (google "hentai" my friend)
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False premise. Anyone telling you to google "hentai" is not your friend. The inverse is also true: you don't tell your friends to google "hentai".
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Ewww. Point taken, my apologies. I'm going to go hide under the bed and whimper now.
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No, she held out for the bigger one, this is only the second biggest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_squid [wikipedia.org]
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Actually, having just moved back to the states from Japan, while it is certainly not something that is eaten daily (as it's fairly expensive), it is quite easy to find and actually quite tasty ;)
Re:The question that's itching to be asked.. (Score:5, Informative)
This question has already been answered....and the answer is...bad...
From wiki: ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_squid [wikipedia.org] )
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From what I've heard, giant squids have large amounts of ammonia in their bloodstreams. It acts as a natural anti-freeze (the water is damn cold deep in the Pacific, it's only the immense pressure that keeps it from freezing).
The ammonia would permeate the whole thing, completely ruining the taste.
I guess 'Giant' is relative (Score:3)
Though it also says that the squid was missing it's two longest arms and would have been eight meters long if it was whole...
Sharks with lasers were responsible (Score:2)
With all the problems we have in the world (Score:5, Funny)
Someone thought it was a good idea to go and mess with the children of Cthulhu?
Yes, Cthulhu sleeps, but maybe not for long now.
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Apparently, He failed to awake on last december 21.
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It's because they read the date backwards.
it would be awesome if... (Score:1)
a post talking about live footage of something weird actually had ... live footage of something weird
Air dates (for those asking where the vid is) (Score:5, Informative)
It appears that we'll have to wait for the shows to air before we'll see the footage.
January 27th on Discovery Channel [cbsnews.com] for most of us.
January 13th on NHK [asahi.com] if you're in Japan.
Re:Air dates (for those asking where the vid is) (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't forget the intro, the teaser, the coming next, the recap EVERY 5 minutes so that even an American can keep up... well... the bright ones... I give it about 5 years and the TV will be just a static picture with one word repeated "BUY BUY BUY".
"BUY BUY BUY"
buy, buy, buy...
5520-3245-4211-0498 12/15 CVV 102
That is all. I must go watch reality TV now.
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Sorry. Failed Luhn MOD10 check. Please re-enter.
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What? No Hippinotoad?
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Hypnotoad would be better than Coronation Street and Eastenders. It violates human rights conventions, but it looks so much more interesting on the screen. And it's cheaper than all those wax dummies we use now. They are wax dummies aren't they? I mean, they can't be people. Can they?
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That is a pretty interesting show about the giant squid (they also briefly discuss the completely fucking scary looking colossal squid) . DVR the discovery channel nonsense, watch this show, then skip thru the discovery channel show just to see the video. Or just find it on the net somewhere...
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Isn't science wonderful!
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That is likely because their flesh is soaked in ammonium chloride and as such inedible. They use the ammonium chloride to maintain buoyancy.
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Really? [wikipedia.org] Or are those uses just in trace amounts, and the concentrations in the squid are too high?
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In all but some scandinavian nations this is only used in tiny amounts. Most people are not fans.
The Japanese found a giant squid (Score:1)
And here's a picture of it [e621.net] (NSFW).
Bah! This thing can't really exist... (Score:2)
Ya sure... (Score:2)
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Nonsense (Score:1)
They had footage of one of those back in 1954. (It nearly killed the captain of the sub, too.)
Discovery.com teasers (Score:4, Funny)
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TFA's suggestions for what "YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE" sound like juicy reading: "Pop Star Claims Sex With Ghost." "Curiosity: The Orgasm Gap." "Shrunken Head DNA Proves Horrific Folklore True." Now that's internets you can wrap fish in!
Wha...? I'm not seeing them!?
Aah... it may be the tracking cookies on your browser that bring those suggestions.
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...that one movie... (Score:1)
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Misread the title... (Score:4, Funny)
I thought it said "Geek Squad Filmed in Natural Habitat for the First Time."
Can't wait to see this (Score:2)
I've seen quite a few documentaries were this animal is discussed, but no scientists ever had the footage. The neatest attempt I'd seen was sticking a camera to a sperm while and watching its pod descend, but unfortunately it became dislodged before they found any prey.
The decline of Discovery Channel. (Score:4)
Honestly, I'm surprised that Discovery Channel is still involved with projects like these as they appear to be headed on the same path as TLC (The Learning Channel, talk about an oxymoron). They seem to be firmly ensconced in reality television, what with quality content like Property Wars, Moonshiners and Amish Mafia. I predict this giant squid footage is going to be presented in a heavy-handed manner where it's all going to feel like we're watching footage of the Loch Ness monster. A legitimate topic is going to be presented like it's pseudo-science.
Clearly, management has decided they weren't making enough money by going the educational route. So they're trying to appeal to a dumber demographic who's less likely to be analytical about the advertising they're exposed to and more likely to spend money carelessly. This is my fear with the government withdrawing support for public television. It's only a matter of time before they devolve into the same sort of crap.
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I give it until the next presidential election before PBS and NPR are just plain auctioned off. They're doing their best to 'privatize' (aka 'sell public property for pennies on the dollar) everything else. Before long the Pentagon will be the only thing the taxpayers still hold the title to, and that will just be so that we can pay to protect the mega-corps overseas properties at no charge to them.
PBS and NPR have not been getting a majority of funding from any government so the Federal government cannot "privatize" them.
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Re:The decline of Discovery Channel. (Score:5, Informative)
They're still government properties, their frequencies, brands, copyrights and studios belong to the taxpayers, who paid to develop all of it. They'll be on the block soon, just like many municipal water utilities and public power utilities already are. More of the neo-liberal hogwash about how private industry is always more 'efficient' somehow will be used as the justification, or maybe "deficit reduction".
You are dead wrong. According to PBS [pbs.org] themselves, they are not and never have been part of any government:
PBS is a private, nonprofit corporation, founded in 1969, whose members are America’s public TV stations -- noncommercial, educational licensees that operate more than 350 PBS member stations and serve all 50 states, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa.
.
NPR [npr.org] is a "privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization." [wikipedia.org]
Both organizations get a significant minority of funding from the Federal government-funded Corporation For Public Broadcasting [cpb.org] but neither NPR nor PBS is owned by the Federal government any more than the multitude of private organizations which receive some Federal funding. They probably wouldn't exist today if they hadn't been funded by the CPB and if the CPB stopped funding them altogether, they would suffer greatly. However, no part of the Federal government can sell either PBS or NPR and even if all Federal funding were cut off, they'd still have a chance of surviving on their other sources of funding.
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I give it until the next presidential election before PBS and NPR are just plain auctioned off.
That would be really really stupid for anyone in government to demand - with PBS and NPR cut loose from the federal government, they'd have no reason to continue pussyfooting around the criminals in Washington or Wall Street.
Now, of course, the fact that it would be really stupid is no protection from it actually happening.
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TLC [wikipedia.org] has been owned by the same company as the Discovery Channel since 1991 so you shouldn't be surprised that the channels are moving in similar directions. I already noticed shows in common between the two channels in the mid-90s. Until I just read the Wikipedia article, I was completely unaware of TLC's origins from Federal agencies. It sounds like it may have been much better in the 70s and 80s.
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We should be thankful for TLC (it isn't even programmed on my TV at home, but I do have to hear people talk about some of the shows at work). Anyway, TLC is the poster child for why we should never cut all funding for PBS. Because that is what the lowest common denominator turns it into.
Indeed, I hope more people are inspired to fund PBS. I haven't done my part so far but I plan to rectify that.
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the same sort of crap.
You mean mermaids aren't real [discovery.com]?!!!
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Colossal Squid (Score:1)