Giant Squid Caught on Film

caffeined writes "I think almost every geek's heart must skip a beat when they hear about giant squids (think "Jules Verne"). It appears the two Japanese researchers have managed (for the first time) to get actual footage of a live giant squid in action. It was "only" 26 feet long (a little more than 8m) which is big enough for me." Update: Pictures and no registration required at National Geographic.

Comments

Pictures

[youknowmewell]

Pictures here.

Re:The Pictures

[m0nk3ym1nd]

Here's one at National Geographic

Pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/ph otogalleries/giant_squid/index.html

Giant Squid happy snaps

[Anonymous Coward]

Pictures here

http://www.smh.com.au/media/2005/09/28/11278045094 63.html

I have some shocking news for you Mr. Geek

[Anonymous Coward]

26 feet long (a little more than 8m)

26 feet = 7.9248 meters

Re:where's the vid

[Bananatree3]

I have been searching up and down google for a video, and I have yet to see even a reference to a site with it. According to this article, It is a 30 time-laps movie of 3 hours while the giant squid was tied up. If you find a link, please post.

will photos do?

[weighn]

National Geographic has some piccys
here...

Re:How long?

[mrchaotica]

Well, yeah, anything's possible, but is it practical to build one big enough for a giant squid? Don't forget that the pressure vessel would have to be much stronger than a spacecraft -- a spacecraft only has to contain a pressure differential of one atmosphere, whereas this would have to contain a differential tens or hundreds of times that.

Re:Too bad

[Otter]

The NYT article makes it sound like the squid got accidentally entangled, but if you look at the diagram on the National Geogrpahic site, the scientists deliberately snagged it. The baits were rigged with what seem to be scaled-up versions of squid jigs.

Octopus attacking shark and other videos

[brit74]

Quite a few people have commented on octopus being predators. Here's a video of an octopus attacking a shark:

(Sorry, realplayer only.)
(Low Bandwidth)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/octopus/media_playe rs_blue/shark_lo.html
(High Bandwidth)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/octopus/media_playe rs_blue/shark_hi.html

WMV of an octopus blending in with its surroundings (which is pretty amazing to watch). http://www.big-boys.com/articles/octopus1.html

Re:pressure

[imsabbel]

ok, lets take your example:

Submarines. You can build submarines capable of diving very deep. But those things are
a) made from steel (many times stronger than _any_ glass
b) self supporting (try cracking an egg by pressing on it from the outside, compare to pressure by chicken form inside)
c) go nowhere near "deep water" besides very small ones (which would be a unsuitable size for an aquarium).

Just imagine: a 1000m deep sea aquarium would have a pressure of 1000 metric tons per m^2 on every surface. Thats a stack of 15 fully supplied M1 tanks.
And it scales _baddly_. if you have a cube, and double the side length, you get square the surface, and thus square the force pushing on one side. But the line of material holding the the face in at the edge is only doubling, so you have to double glass thickness, too...

With those forces, you may build a pressure chamber (i.e. massivly externally supported structure with small volume) from glass (although i dont think it will work well), but an aquarium needs support (air/heating/cleaning), and any of those breaks would make the whole thing instable (remember, glass likes to crack).

Re:Skip a beat, eh?

[StrawberryFrog]

. I have seen old Japanese art depicting Japanese women being mauled by octopus.

Yup. The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife done in 1820.

Re:How long?

[Inominate]

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answer s/970603.html
Exposure to vaccuum isn't the catastrophic event hollywood makes it out to be.

Re:How long?

[moonbender]

Humans' lungs would implode underwater, and explode in space.

That really depends on what's inside them. Divers survive because they fill their lungs with air at the same pressure as their surroundings. Thus the lungs don't collapse. Of course, if the air inside your lungs is at 1 bar while you're in the deep, bad things happen. But the far more common accident AFAIK is actually the converse: you resurface while your lungs still hold air pressurized for 5, 10, 20 metres. Your lungs get stretched (ie they "explode"), and you're in a world of pain.

The BBC article on the subject has photos...

[cbirkett]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4288772. stm

you wont get cold... silly, just hot.

[cheekyboy]

In cold space, there is barely any molocules to STEAL the heat from you.

So how are you going to get cold? you wont.

You actually will get HOTTER, because of the HEAT from the sun. You need to cool down, something to
take the heat (kinetic energy) away, and there isnt enough medium to do that. Thats why in cold antarctica you
get cold, because there is a LOT OF AIR that steals your heat. In space, what little atoms there are, - are not enough
to take the heat out. We have had this posting before, a human can survive in space because their skin is strong enough
to keep the inside preasure (just dont have cuts on you). Your eyeballs wont blow up though they
might dry up real real fast - so goggles will be usefull. Dont open your mouth either.

The bright side of you wont heat up that fast, it would be the same as you being on the beach or high altitude skiing. There is a maximum level of heat energy per second delivered, its not like your are at mercuries distance. As I said before , you will
get hot because you wont loose heat thats why you get HOT. Even if you rotate slowly to even out exposure. So ironically, space may be -270c, but you will get damn hot because of the suns photons, so you need to cool yourself somehow using liquid nitro or something. Sure if you stayed in the dark you would slowly cool down, but not over 5minutes.

I mean people dont blow up on mount everest do they, and thats pretty damn low PSI. Your inside PSI isnt that high either, not strong enough to burst you.