I’m a sicko for wanting to see this:
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A fight between one of these and a sperm whale. I’d pay good money.
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Video tape of one attacking a cruise ship. Or a sub. How about 10 or 20 attacking a cruise ship? Ick…
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ferris *
**Another link.
“Grandma, one big eyes you have!”
“All the better to see you, my dear.”
“And Grandma, what big swiveling razor-sharp tentacle-mounted claws you have!”
The scientists quoted in the articles seem to be hung up on it being able to handle something called “Patagonian toothfish”. Whatever. It’s just an awesome creature!
I had to look up what a Patagonian Toothfish is, and it turns out it’s another name for Chilean Seabass. It’s an over-harvested fish as it is, and conscientious restaurants are no longer serving it. That’s probably for the best-- they’re ill-tempered, and hate being thought of as a distant second to sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads.
Anyway, they’re big-ass fish, and theory is that Giant Squid can sneak up on their prey in the total darkness of the deep sea, grabbing fish before fish even know there’s a squid in the area. Pretty effective hunting method.
Wow! It glows in the dark too. 
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/04/03/colossal.squid.reut/index.html
Most hypothesize that the Giant Squid would taste awful, due to high ammonia content. I would assume the Collosal squid to be no different.
Bah! When they pull a sperm whale from a squid’s stomach, I’ll be impressed.
Have there been any measurements done on the brain of this beast?
Oh God, why did i even open this thread, let alone the actual article?!? There were pictures! This is just going to make the sea creature phobia even worse!! Eugh!!
Well, that is true. The colossal squid is neat and all, but no animal will ever be as cool as the coelacanth. I’m glad someone else understands this.
Do squids ever win against sperm whales? It’s always so sad to see my favorite sea creatures “lose”.
Ah, who cares about the coelacanth! I can do headstands too! ::breaks neck::
Just kidding, the coelacanth are pretty cool, but do not usurp the squid from the coolness throne.
There seem to be a lot of references to getting footage of live giant squids in this thread, something that was done for the first time, IIRC last year. Lemme see if I can find a link…
Oh, wait. They did get the first ever footage of a live giant squid, but they were in larval form… tiny, not huge and terrifying as a giant squid should be. Back to work, scientific establishment! (whip cracks) Lazy bums!
LC
And here I was going to make a crack about how Peter Benchley’s next novel will be called “Beak.”
The colossal squid is the coolest animal in the ocean? No way. The coolest animal by far is the dolphin. Remember, they livewith the colossal squid and can still find a reason to smile.
Don’t worry. Be happy.
There is currently a dispute between Australia and China over the illegal catching of Patagonian toothfish in Australian waters. A Hong Kong listed company is apparently responsible - the Australian government recently instructed a Western Australian law firm to look into it.
Hong Kong restaurants, with their penchant for serving sharks fin soup (the shark is thrown back into the water to painfully die after its dorsal is chopped off) , have no qualms about serving toothfish to clientele.
Actually the novel “Beast” had the squid killed by a sperm whale giving the book a semi-environmentalist message of “Don’t kill whales, they keep the squid population under controll.” Naturally, the movie was a cheesy mishandling of the tone and message of the book.
Giant squid rule.
On a side note, most submersibles are limited to a speed of only a few knots, hence their inability to keep up with a large potion of the deep-living sea life long enough to study it or get good pictures. Hopefully this guy -
http://www.divenewzealand.com/deep.html
-will change that and help get our fist good picture of a live colassal squid.
Figures, there’s a colossal squid auction on eBay. I’d post a direct link but my connection is still not completely back to normal - eBay auctions keep timing out for me.
Woah. Deep Flight-- what a wonderful idea. Looks like I need to ratchet my ambition up a notch. Jeff Olsen, please do post a link when you can-- I’d love to see it!
Bead, looks like I still can’t bring up any auctions but the least I can do is provide the squid url: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2315843097.