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Giant Squid Caught Near Japan
Frankenbuffer writes "Researchers on a quest to find a live giant squid succeeded in filming one south of Tokyo. They used a smaller bait squid to lure the giant squid to the water's surface. The giant squid, a young female about 7 metres long, put up quite a fight as it was brought aboard the research vessel. It died in the process. The researchers believe that giant squid may be more plentiful that believed previously. From the article: '"Sperm whales need from 500 to 1,000 kilograms of food every day," he said. "There are believed to be 200,000 or so of them, and that would suggest there are quite a few squid for them to be feeding on. I don't think they are in danger of extinction at all." Having filmed the squid, Mr. Kubodera said his next goal is to further study the creatures' habits in their natural surroundings -- at a depth of around 650 metres.'"
"The giant squid, a young female about 7 metres long, put up quite a fight as it was brought aboard the research vessel" You'd put up quite a fight if you knew you'd be performing in live action tentacle-porn too...
In soviet Japan, giant squid catches you!
Queue all Japanese Tentacle Porn jokes in 3... 2... 1...
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
The problem with trying to watch at around 610 meters, is that the pictures were taken at over 1000 meters, if I recall the show correctly, it may have been closer to 1300 or 1500 meters.
The squid put up a fight because one of it's tentacles was caught on one of the hooks that the bait was attached to. It eventually detached or snapped off the tentacle to escape, leaving the Dr. with one very long piece of evidence attached to the hook.
It was a very interesting show. It also showed another researcher working on the other end of the spectrum, capturing live baby giant squid, attempting to get them to live in captivity.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
That's a lot of ika nigiri!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
It died in the process.
They killed him taking it off.
Giant squid sold to Japanese Sushi bar for record amount.
Reuters (JP): The giant squid captured yesterday for study, has been sold to an up-scale Japanese Sushi Bar for a record amount of $170,000, thus providing a needed extra bit of money for the research team, according to spokesman Tsunemi Kubodera. The Sushi Bar is currently booked full for the next week.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
I don't think they are in danger of extinction at all
I'd feel better if that were determined to be a fact BEFORE you started accidentally killing them.
They used a smaller bait squid to lure the giant squid to the water's surface.
Does that mean that we can use this squid to get an even BIGGER squid?
Where's the video?
as soon as I saw this on foxnews.com, I ran straight to /. for inside information. Nothing but standard cliches? Somebody out there's got to have that video.
... will not be pleased by these actions.
Giant squids have been found on other planets before, nothing new. I wonder if the crew of the japanese boat committed suicide though...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I guess Calamari's on the menu today then?
So they found one alive and... killed it. That's helpful. I'm sure they can learn fascinating things by studying one that was recently alive, but there's got to be a better way.
You can see the video linked on CNN's article (after an ad of course):
s quid.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/12/22/giant.
are they TRYING to awaken Cthulhu?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The japanese don't exactly have a good record with endangered species. Seeing as this guy has taken an interest and has now decided without any proof that they're not endangered somehow I don't see giant squid making it to the 22nd century...
This is obviously a scout sent by the creature.
Awaken Godzilla and pals, we must defend Tokyo from the giant squid monster!
It's ludicrous to say these animals are endangered in any fashion. Wikipedia's page has reference-cited information that the giant squid's bigger cousin, the Colossal Squid could possibly make up as much as 77% of the biomass consumed by Sperm Whales, whose numbers are listed as ranging from at minimum 200,000 to a maximum 2,000,000 individuals. The Colossal Squid is seen even less by science, and the beaks of them are found nearly as often in the stomachs of Sperm Whales.
Giant Squid are in no shape, way, or fashion rare. They are simply too fast, too unpredictable, spread over too large an area, and live in such a deep range that they are very hard for humans to find. They are fragile creatures on the surface, they fall apart quite easily, especially when reaching shallower depths, making them an ideal target for scavengers; they would die quickly if they stayed near the surface for too long. This means that not only are you not apt to find a live one, but dead ones are mostly eaten by other animals or deteriorate long before reaching shore. It is very rare to find one washed ashore. This does NOT mean that the animal itself is rare or endangered.
Stop saying scientists are selfish in attempting to recover 2-3 specimens of an animal which probably numbers (at least) in the hundreds of thousands. They are trying to document a species in order to HELP its survival, not destroy it. You should be encouraging them, not discouraging them from researching this animal. It takes thousands of animals being harvested monthly to put a dent in a robust species like this, and since we have only seen a rare few of them, it's only natural to want to see more. Don't be ridiculous and think about one or two dying for science as a problem when hundreds, even thousands of them are being eaten daily by Sperm Whales, Pacific Sleeper Sharks, and possibly other species. Taking the Peter Rabbit approach to a creature like this ("Aww, poor Giant Squid!") is detrimental not only to science, but to your understanding of the world.
Also, you can't eat this animal, and no Japanese have any interest in eating it. On top of this, any who DID would be sorely disappointed, as the animal has a *high* ammonia content, too strong to eat safely, and so strong in fact that even being in a room with a piece of it would make you lose your appetite.
I don't know what else you expect from the people who kill a lot of whales each year, take a quick look at stomach contents, and call the process scientific research.
then why dissect frogs? I'd say that qualifies as extreme interference with what you are studying...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
OK, does it run linux?
I, for one, welcome our new giant tentacled overlords!!
But I think we will be very busy shaking hands for a while...
"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything."
giant squid caught....next stop, SASQUATCH! go Dib go!
Thanks for the video link. Anyone else notice the reporter in the video said the captured squid was only 3.5 meters, not ~7 as the other articles claim? Maybe they were only referring to the body and not body + tentacles? From what you can see in the video it looks a lot closer to only being 11 ft long rather than 22ft. Quick meter-to-foot estimate, go easy on me. ;)
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Farnsworth: Sweet Zombie Jesus! It's huge!
Amy: It's coming up!
Hermes: Oh, that's big!
Farnsworth: A colossal-mouth bass!
I think I'm a little confused here.
As long as I'm the only one supplying said "tentacle" in this "live action lesbian porn", then I'd be fighting too... to make sure I'm in it!!!
First, no offense, but you saw this on foxnews.com? Was this one of those "best to know what tunes the Devil is playing" things? Or do you have some other acceptable explanation, like ... being retarded?
Second, if you see a story on Fox News, that might be a tip-off that it's the kind of soft news Slashdot may not bring its A-game for.
I swear, Bob... the squid gets bigger every time you tell that story...
One man's constant is another man's variable.
Hey we found something! Awesome! Lets bring it on board and kill it! We haven't seen any more but it'll be okay if we say we think there are a lot more.
Truth, Just Us, And Hatred For All Mankind!
Cryptozoology, n.: The study of animals that don't exist.
Maybe I just haven't seen enough tentacle porn, but it occurred to me to wonder, and I'm sure the collective intelligence of Slashdot can answer this: are the tentacle monsters always male? Where are the female tentacle monsters? Given the... uhhh... wide variety of interests already represented, there must be people who'd like to see them.
Maybe the female tentacle monster goes around attacking men more-or-less the same way the male ones do with women? Or maybe to have an "all (including the monster) lesbian tentacle porn? Or maybe a happy ending where the scientists manage to get the male and the female tentacle monster back together and they attack each other? What about a hermaphrodite tentacle monster, with both boy tentacles and girl tentacles?
Okay, for that last one, the answer is probably "sure, they exist, but you don't see them come up and terrorize Japanese towns because they're happy staying where they are and just attacking themselves". But in any case, are there any examples that use these ideas? Or have I managed to out-weird the entire tentacle-porn industry?
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
In the case of giant squids, we already know the anatomy and physiology, from previous finds. We don't need mere case studies that reveal nothing new, we need new data on the stuff we CAN'T find out from the remains of giant squid that have been salvaged. A hundred near-identical remains adds no new information. (Well, not quite true - you can use DNA analysis to get an idea of genetic diversity, so in that case the additional cases would add something. But even there, it makes bugger all difference to the research if the subject is alive or dead. Killing the subject doesn't benefit you at all.)
Animal experimentation has produced mixed results - aspirin and caffeine are lethal to most animals, and many medicines tested successfully on animals were later rejected after human studies showed them unsuitable. At present, better alternatives are limited to non-existant, but that's just a matter of time to fix. The process is simply not producing data of nearly sufficient quality to justify continuing it once suitable alternatives of sufficient quality have been developed.
However, this is not in the same league at all. In animal experiments - however crappy the results - you are at least getting results that you can't get by other means. Mortally injuring giant squids and then examining the remains is telling you exactly NOTHING that you couldn't obtain by other means. Alive, you can learn much about the squid that is unknown today. Obtain a corpse, and you can study something about the lives and deaths of these animals and therefore learn something about their natural environment. Killing them tell you... that they're not monsters from a really bad sci-fi movie, but not a whole lot more.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No, tentacle monsters are not always male, but yes, they are predominately male. Some of the female ones do go around attacking men, but most of them still attack women, some even attack women and men at the same time.
:(
Hemaphroditic tentacle monsters are actually pretty common, too, but I have to say I've never seen, or heard about, a boy tentacle monster and girl tentacle monster getting together. Poor, poor unrequited tentacle love
just some guy
Absolutely, thank you. Anyone who is wringing there hands about the loss of this single squid must consider how little we know about the species. In fact we know so little right now that we could inadvertently alter their environment in a way that would result in the death of millions and never realize it. We must learn as much as we can about these animals that increasingly appear to comprise a significant role in the oceans' ecosystem. This is actually a relatively important area of scientific study.
Did anyone else notice the very quick changes from white to red of the colour of the squid?
... apparently they're a good deal more placid when not impaled on pointed hooks (who'd have thought it).
0 3-10-2005/cover/Article.cover_story
... getting a sufficiently quick and sufficiently quiet robot to observe them is a better approach to seeing them in the wild, but there's been a lot of work put into that, and it didn't work.
Humboldt squid ('diablo rojo') are red when annoyed, and have a fearsome reputation since people wanting to dive with them generally dive from ships in the Bay of California squid-fishing fleet, under which circumstances the squid are understandably usually annoyed
http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/issues/Issue.
So, if architeuthis behaves like the Humboldt squid, the behaviour of this one at the surface is unlikely to be typical
It is irritating that water is really only transparent in visible wavelengths, so you can't do the trick that works nicely for land mammals of observing in light that the squid can't itself sense; they may well be better at detecting our lights and sonar than our own cameras are.
If I remember right, the answer to your question lies in a hentai anime called, Maho Shojou Ai, or maybe Aoi, something along those lines. There's four episodes total, and it's somewhat brutal as most of the newer hentai of that genre seems to be heading.
P.S. how come I always seem to end up with an in topic, yet slightly perverted word for my image check?
By the Nine Tongues, Mahlegeth Slumbers. By the Nine Tongues, Mahlegeth Stirs. By the Nine Tongues, Mahlegeth Rises. By the Nine Tongues, HE will devouer us all.
There IS no out-weirding the tentacle porn industry. The industry is so vibrant in todays society, it seems it may never die out! Like broken treaties between nations and world-domination plots of governments, it's here to STAY! GOD BLESS AMERICA!