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New Deep Sea Squid
texchanchan writes: "Yahoo reports on a newly discovered species of deep-sea squid, quoting scientists as saying the creatures are very different from normal giant squids. 'New species are a dime a dozen. This is fundamentally different' in behavior and appearance -- with 10 identical long skinny arms and a jellyfish-like hunting strategy. 'We don't know of any cephalopod that has arms like that.' --Michael Vecchione of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service. 'I had never seen anything like this creature,' oceanographer William Sager of Texas A&M says."
Considering that the earth 90% water and how little we have catalouged the deep sea, its going to be interestig to see what we find...
The deep sea pages at Whitman College have some cool pictures of wierd deep sea creatures.
The Beastiary at NOVA also has a decent rundown of whats down there.
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Referenced in several places, along with claims that Architeuthis will aggressively attack whales and ships. Bear in mind though, that the beak of an Architeuthis only opens a few inches, and is ill suited to eating anything as large as a human, let alone a 40 ton whale or a 15,000 ton ship!
This new species is certainly unusual (compared to the surface beasties that we're used to), but bear in mind that it's part of a subclass that varies in length from 6mm to 16,000mm (and nearly half a ton, that we know of).
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
These things apparently can move quite fast and in a coordinated way. That goes way beyond what jellyfish are capable of. A biologist looking at a moving video image would be very unlikely to confuse the two, and I suspect lots of expert marine biologists have looked at them.
Couple of photos I haven't seen on other sites here - as well as a video of it swimming (in QT).
Some very significant differences. They have differentiated tissue-muscles separate from skin, an actual digestive tract, and probably the most-developed nervous system of all of the invertebrates, including eyes structured similarly to ours. Squid also have an actual circulatory system, but something that actually functions almost like a heart. And squids are actually bilaterally symmetrical. In plain English, that means there's one plane down which you can split a squid, and the two parts will be mirror images of each other.
OTOH, jellyfish are like anemones and hydrae. That means they're undifferentiated. Their tissues are only two cells thick, because each cell needs to be exposed to seawater in order to get oxygen or nutrients. They're undifferentiated, meaning they don't have different types of cells. They have no real nervous system at all. Nor do they have a circulatory system. They're radially symmetrical, meaning that any radial section will be pretty much identical to any other.
A cursory examination of the photo would reveal to nearly ANY biologist (marine or not, though my experience is in marine invertebrates) that this is NOT a scyphozoan ("Jellyfish"), or even a Cnidarian (supergroup containing jellyfish, corals, anemone's, hydras etc...) If you really didnt want to believe this is a squid, you might suppose it is a tentacled ctenophore (comb jelly which most people have never heard of but are really quite common).
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From looking at the picture the animal appears to "fly" using its two HUGE fins (the fins are squid features). The mantle (head covering) is very narrow at the dorsal end (the end at the top of the picture Note to those who know what dorsal means: YES this IS the dorsal side of a squid...) while being fairly broad at the ventral side to accomodate (we presume) the mouth and organs.
The features of this animal are not at all un-squidlike, using occams razor and the BIOLOGICAL features of the animal (not just the way it looks to some shmo) its easy to hypothesize that this is a squid.
Take a look at the Pteropod Sea Angel (Clione) and tell me its a snail. When you can do that successfully come back and comment on this animal. (Note to others: Clione is VERY VERY cool, take a look at the pics if this
In all seriousness, probably not very good. A lot of large deep-sea squid taste like ammonia.
How efficient could propulsion by rounded tentacle be[...]
It doesn't use the tentacles for swimming, according to the story on NPR yesterday. It has a pair of elephant-ear-shaped wings on top of the body, which give it both good speed and fine control, and make it to hover while it's feeding.
Current conjecture is that the tentacles are "sticky" (whether due to a substance or suction mechanisms, they didn't say). One specimen that was actually caught on video seems to be "stuck" to the submersible that was shooting the video, and coudn't easily get free. The squid appears to spread the tentacles much like a spider's web, hoping to snag smal crustaceans that bump into it.