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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.
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ftagn
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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.
That's one of the holy grails of oceanography, to catch a live Architeuthis seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
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!
.....
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.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Unfortunately, the flesh of these things seems to hold a high amount of ammonia.
This link tells - among other things - about some dude that tried to cook a part of a giant squid.
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!
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
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
< 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.
Blaming the death of this 60 foot creature on us
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
What do you mean? The squid was probably just trying to cache some fish.
*runs*
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.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
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.
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.
God sucks at running this place. Impeach God at
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.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Even if they wanted to eat it, the ammonia content was too high, and it'd be inedible.
Chill out a bit, dude.
(And btw I've submitted plenty of stories.)
Ah well, free speech, right? They are allowed to complain about stories and you can still try to tell people to do something about it or "STOP WHINING" as Arnold would have it.
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
watch this
s/squid/slashdotter/
...it got abused to death being forced to engage in Japanese Tentacle Sex
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
A beowulf 2 cluster of these!
Sorry, had to be done.
--jdp Maintainer of VisEmacs
>> 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.
And I thought my trouser squid was huge...
Blockquoth:
"Excuse me, how is this 'news for nerds'?"
*sniff*
I thought it was perfect.
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
I can't wait until the Giant Squid episode of Iron Chef!
*ahem*
Anime.
Tentacles.
Any qestions?
who wants SUSHI?!?!?!?!?!
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
Observations of squid 10 times bigger have been cited:
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.'"
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
... you've been smoking too much, man. That was some seriously poetic prose without any real purpose... and, of course, scientifically wrong. Oceans cover only 70% of the globe by area, not 80%.
...
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...
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
Offtopic? What, was the moderator humorless or an ignorant fucker who's never heard of the H.P. Lovecraft, one of the most important American horror novelists ever.
"It's definitely of the giant squid group..."
Wow, it's a good thing David Pemberton was on the scene.
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
...espcially as most Squids I've seen are about 1U in size! ;-)
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
For god sakes, take a little pride in your work. Don't post to every goddamn article you can find. Take some time and make it look good, so it doesn't stand out like a sore fucking thumb. Really, this kind of over-written crap, as it stands, belongs on Adequacy.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
A great day for open source! Squid has been run even in Tasmania!
Oh wait, you meant the sea creature
^_^
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
This may or may not hold for the giant squid, but the smaller varieties will usualy feed in larger groups. The Humboldt squid which lives off the coast of Mexico usuallly feeds in groups of about 20 to 30. These squid are the size of a small man but are much more dangerous, they have eaten people on a large number of occasions. Granted, it is rather unbelievable that there are packs of 200 giant squid out there, but I doubt it would actually take that many to eat a whale. There are far more variables to take into account than simply mass here.
"Ah squidey, I got nothin' against ya, I just heard there was gold in your belly!"
Frankly, all that i can do is offer my best jacques cousteau impression, and hope that they don't evolve further.
NASA
Another Squid Site
Discovery Channel and the Giant Squid
Weird Squids In Action (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>
A 2002 discovery of a MUCH smaller 'giant' squid
and of course, proof that there's a convention group for everything.
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....
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
/usr/sbin/squid -giant
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
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.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
Da Blog
Architeuthis flesh has tons of ammonia in it. People -- Clyde Roper, I think -- have tried to eat the stuff. Nope.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.