Giant Squid Seen Live, Filmed

time to go to David Icke's forum and see what CT is springing up about this!!!

"that's a little squid filmed up close!

" that squid is a sign of the end of days"

"The NWO are growing super squid to take over the world!!"
 
StankApe said:
time to go to David Icke's forum and see what CT is springing up about this!!!

"that's a little squid filmed up close!

" that squid is a sign of the end of days"

"The NWO are growing super squid to take over the world!!"
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Why bother looking for them, there are enough here. :duck:
 
That's awesome, I just wish there was something else in the video to show the scale. Next time they should send a manequin down there. :)
 
Joey McGee said:
Congratulations to the researchers! I'll be Kraken out the rum in cheers and celebration tonight
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Oh.....I had that stuff.....Good that night, but not so good in the morning. :D

Checkmite said:
However, it bears mentioning this animal is quite obviously not a "kraken", nor can it have inspired the stories of that legendary creature.
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I second the question: Why could this not inspire the kraken of legend? Bear in mind we're talking about a legend among a group of people who went from manetee to mermaid. Sailors weren't exactly known for being strictly factual in their stories.

edd, is the amonia thing true of live ones, or just dead ones? All of the adult specimens I'm aware of have been dead, and amonia isn't an uncommon byproduct of decomposition (Gordon Ramsey once yelled at a guy for serving lobster that smelled of amonia, then went into a lecture about this exact topic, on Kitchen Nightmares). Since they've all been dead can we really say what they smell like/taste like while alive?

I can't see a strong odor being a particularly valuable survival trate in the deep ocean. These guys are hunted by sperm whales in an environment absent almost all light--having a strong smell would attract predators. It'd also scare away prey (ask any deer hunter).
 
Dinwar said:
Oh.....I had that stuff.....Good that night, but not so good in the morning. :D

I second the question: Why could this not inspire the kraken of legend? Bear in mind we're talking about a legend among a group of people who went from manetee to mermaid. Sailors weren't exactly known for being strictly factual in their stories.

edd, is the amonia thing true of live ones, or just dead ones? All of the adult specimens I'm aware of have been dead, and amonia isn't an uncommon byproduct of decomposition (Gordon Ramsey once yelled at a guy for serving lobster that smelled of amonia, then went into a lecture about this exact topic, on Kitchen Nightmares). Since they've all been dead can we really say what they smell like/taste like while alive?

I can't see a strong odor being a particularly valuable survival trate in the deep ocean. These guys are hunted by sperm whales in an environment absent almost all light--having a strong smell would attract predators. It'd also scare away prey (ask any deer hunter).
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Hrmm, never really thought about it before, but do whales have a sense of smell?
 
phunk said:
Hrmm, never really thought about it before, but do whales have a sense of smell?
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Well, maybe smell is the wrong word--obviously they're not inhaling down there! Rather, it'd be like we consider taste. There are only 4 (maybe 5, depending on who you talk to) taste receptors in your toungue. What makes a meal taste the way it does is aroma. The mouth and nasal passages in humans are closely linked. If they're linked that way in sperm whales, they might be able to use that sense to detect smelly squid.

I also doubt that whales are the only predators of giant squid. That part of the ocean isn't known for being overly productive, and you eat what you can when you're a critter at those depths. There are a lot of critters that use light to attract prey, for example, because down there anything alive (or dead) might be a meal, and you can't afford to pass one up. Of course, even the stupidest fish will eventually evolve an instinctive fear of amonia if every time one of them goes to investigate the smell they get eaten (and fish DO smell--sharks, for example, can smell a very tiny amount of blood).
 
Belz... said:
Why not ? Sure looks like the depictions. Could be a coincidence, sure; but I prefer the exaggeration.
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For two reasons really; the first of course is that while prodigious, the giant squid is nowhere near as large as the kraken was initially reported to be - miles wide, so huge in fact that at the surface it could be mistaken for an island chain and a ship could sail between its open jaws and mistake them for land on either side of a strait. There's something to be said for exaggeration of course, but something that's ostensibly 16 feet long and relatively skinny doesn't become literally miles wide in the retelling. The second is that the kraken was not originally squid-like in the earliest versions of the legend, but more crustacean; the cephalopodic trappings were not added until around the 18th century. I'm guessing a giant squid washed up on the beach somewhere, and some 18th century traveler who saw it dimly remembered hearing about a Norwegian sea monster called a "kraken", and rather arbitrarily decided that this large animal must've been responsible for that legend. Not only did the kraken morph into a squid during this time period, but it also shrank significantly, to something closer to the size of a ship.

To qualify: the giant squid may be responsible for the vast change in the alleged nature of the "kraken" during the 18th century. However, it's unlikely that the giant squid could've been the original inspiration for the legend.
 
Yeah, the original Kraken appears to have roots in Icelandic stories (perhaps even Norse mythology?). Humongous beasts of the sea are perhaps the most ubiquitous thing in mythology.

I would suppose that the vastness and depth of the sea, and imagining the sheer size of something that could hide there would set the ancients' imagination going. Hell, it's pretty dizzying to think about today.
 
Dinwar said:
I also doubt that whales are the only predators of giant squid. That part of the ocean isn't known for being overly productive, and you eat what you can when you're a critter at those depths. There are a lot of critters that use light to attract prey, for example, because down there anything alive (or dead) might be a meal, and you can't afford to pass one up.
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Yes; giant squid start very small, so they'll be pretty low in the food chain until they grow up. That one looks like a tiddler ;)
 
Dinwar said:
Oh.....I had that stuff.....Good that night, but not so good in the morning. :D

I second the question: Why could this not inspire the kraken of legend? Bear in mind we're talking about a legend among a group of people who went from manetee to mermaid. Sailors weren't exactly known for being strictly factual in their stories.

edd, is the amonia thing true of live ones, or just dead ones? All of the adult specimens I'm aware of have been dead, and amonia isn't an uncommon byproduct of decomposition (Gordon Ramsey once yelled at a guy for serving lobster that smelled of amonia, then went into a lecture about this exact topic, on Kitchen Nightmares). Since they've all been dead can we really say what they smell like/taste like while alive?

I can't see a strong odor being a particularly valuable survival trate in the deep ocean. These guys are hunted by sperm whales in an environment absent almost all light--having a strong smell would attract predators. It'd also scare away prey (ask any deer hunter).
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They have very high concentrations of ammonia, so much so, it is thought they use it as a buoyancy aid.
 
On the subject of 'kraken' lore and giant squid: Sperm whales eat a lot of squid, and they really like giant squid. It was not uncommon in the halcyon days of whaling for recently-ingested, largely intact giant squid to be found in whales' stomachs; and even harpooned whales vomiting up squid, while either were not quite dead or due to reactive neuron activity were still twitching. Combine actual sailors that have to be at sea for months at a time with close contact with really big squid, and it's no wonder that the "kraken" myth got supported and passed on.

During the end of large-scale mechanized whaling, marine biologists loved to get onboard whaling ships and study (and collect specimens) from the whales' stomach contents. There are several species of squid known only from the beaks found inside whales. While it is undoubtedly a good thing that everybody but the japanese have stopped whaling, it's too bad we no longer have good access to all those squid remains. Just think what we'd learn from being able to DNA test it!

Additionally, we are not sure quite how large these squid get. The bodies found are rare and most likely do not include the largest specimens; and the sucker scars on whales suggest they get pretty darned big. Let's speculate that some whalers personally saw a squid that was 10 meters to the end of the long tentacles. How big would that squid be described as being? (For that matter, how big would that sucker (pun intended) LOOK if it was arm's-length away from you, and all you have is a handheld harpoon?

There are a number of good articles and books on the subject, and I suspect some of them are going to get re-issued with the current event hitting the news. If I have not done so already, I recommend ""The Search for the Giant Squid" by Richard Ellis as a good overall introduction to the topic.

Cephalopodically enchanted, Miss_Kitt

ETA: My apologies to Dr. Kubodera for mis-remembering his name. And I am so very glad that he happened to be one of the guys in the submersible when they had live contact!
 
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Acleron said:
They have very high concentrations of ammonia, so much so, it is thought they use it as a buoyancy aid.
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How do we know? I mean, we only have two confirmed sightings of live members of the species as adults, and a lot of larva. How can they study the concentrations of ammonia in live organisms under those conditions?

If it's not clear, I'm genuinely confused. And very intrested in the answer. There were some big ammonites (I saw one that was over 3' in diameter), and am wondering if this may have played a role in their ecology as well. I'm also interested in how to figure out esoteric biochemistry given bad sampling, just from the general standpoint of "Okay, how on Earth did they accomplish THAT?!" :D

ETA:

Miss_Kitt said:
(For that matter, how big would that sucker (pun intended) LOOK if it was arm's-length away from you, and all you have is a handheld harpoon?
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Small personal anecdote: When I was in college I helped with some research on Lake Erie. It was in an 18' boat. A 2' wave looks about 4' tall when you see it from a small craft like I was in (particularly when the cause for that wave is the massive thunderstorm you're trying to outrun to shore, and the lightning is so close it's making your hair stand on end). Size estimates during high-stress times can be extremely inaccurate, particularly if you're not familiar with the thing you're trying to estimate (like me--I'm a desert guy, not an ocean guy). And I can only imagine that harpooning something that weighs more than your boat falls under the heading "High-stress situation"!
 
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I think it was Ellis who determined that giant squids have die offs roughly once every 100 years for unknown reasons, and that it's not unlikely that some sea monster legends, including the kraken, began with the floating remains of them.
 
Dinwar said:
How do we know? I mean, we only have two confirmed sightings of live members of the species as adults, and a lot of larva. How can they study the concentrations of ammonia in live organisms under those conditions?

If it's not clear, I'm genuinely confused. And very intrested in the answer. There were some big ammonites (I saw one that was over 3' in diameter), and am wondering if this may have played a role in their ecology as well. I'm also interested in how to figure out esoteric biochemistry given bad sampling, just from the general standpoint of "Okay, how on Earth did they accomplish THAT?!" :D
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By extension, quite a few squid species use the same system.
Analyses show that in almost all the neutrally buoyant squids large amounts of ammonium are present.
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ETA:

Small personal anecdote: When I was in college I helped with some research on Lake Erie. It was in an 18' boat. A 2' wave looks about 4' tall when you see it from a small craft like I was in (particularly when the cause for that wave is the massive thunderstorm you're trying to outrun to shore, and the lightning is so close it's making your hair stand on end). Size estimates during high-stress times can be extremely inaccurate, particularly if you're not familiar with the thing you're trying to estimate (like me--I'm a desert guy, not an ocean guy). And I can only imagine that harpooning something that weighs more than your boat falls under the heading "High-stress situation"!
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That may be a major part of the reason.

And it doesn't surprise me that wildly inaccurate estimates do happen, look at the old maps and explorer journals. They have many fanciful animals. And remember, these are fishermen, the story gets taller every time it's told.
 
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