I find the giant squid very interesting. Especially how no one has ever seen one alive. But yearly, many dead giant squid end up on the beaches of the world. I can understand the difficulty, though, since the ocean huge.
I was wondering if there are any other strange creatures like that. That we KNOW for certain exist, but never have seen one alive.
I really want to know there are land creatures like that. Where we’ve only seen the corpses, not the living counterparts.
Anybody know?
There are a few species of beaked whales that are known only from skulls found washed ashore on beaches. Not particularly a strange creature, but still one known only from dead specimens.
I don’t know that I would go so far as to say that many dead giant squid wash up on beaches every year.
Man has explored less then 2% of the ocean, and keep in mind that the average depth of the ocean is a little over 2 miles, which means it’s fairly difficult to get equipment that can survive the pressures at such depths.
this site might be of interest to you.
Back in the 1970s I read that the Tibetan blue bear is so rare that there had yet to be a reliable report of a sighting by a Westerner. After a brief Internet search, I have the impression this may still be the case. I recall seeing a National Geographic special on bears a year or two ago which purported to account for all of the varieties of bear in the world, yet it skipped over the Tibetan blue bear entirely.
Some advocates for the existence of the Yeti have suggested that if the blue bear is so difficult to find, then the Yeti, too, might avoid detection by Westerners. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the Yeti might actually be just the Tibetan blue bear.
The black and white panda was largely regarded in the West as a myth until the early twentieth century as it too had never been seen by anyone except natives.
I had no idea the giant squid hadn’t been seen. Is it because there are so few, or is it their their remote environment?
They may not be as exciting as the squid, but apparently there are still thousands of uncataloged/undiscovered insects.
Speaking of rare life: does anybody remember anything about the ancient species of tree that was discovered some 10 years back by an Australian park ranger? One that was supposed to have been extinct for millions of years?
Yes.
How giant are the giant squid?
Yeah! Architeuthis! Here’s a great book by a squid expert:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140286764/
He mentions that there have been numerous squid sightings going back decades, even accounts of squids attacking small boats, but still no photographs yet. That’s if you don’t count baby ones (many of them found by researchers in New Zeland.) Also nobody knows what giant squids eat. They’re predators, so they must be eating some other huge animals down there.
He and a research group tried cooking a fairly fresh Giant Squid specimin. They found that it’s horrible, like the meat had been soaked in ammonia. It’s full of ammonium salts which give it some bouyancy.
http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/squid.html
http://www.giantsquidcenter.com/
Did you see the news item about the giant squid species with flapping wings and extremely long trailing tentacles?
This recent case, out of Indonesia, was reported before on Fortean times. This news bit out of Belitung verified it:
http://belitung.port5.com/phpinc/gajah_mina.php
It could be a whale, but it was a very peculiar one.
The tree you’re thinking of is the Wollemi Pine, Government agencies are furiously propagating as many of them as possible and planting and distributing as many as they can to ensure their continued existence.
Here’s an article on an even rarer recently discovered Australian tree called the Nightcap Oak that is apparently of more botanic and historic significance. The last 15 Nightcap Oaks were discovered in volcanic crater and a seedling has, with some difficulty, been propagated. According to the article, a lot of care is being taken with the seedling:
p.s partly_warmer, if you want to know more about the Wollemi Pine, have a look here
I’ll get myself organised in a minute but I forgot to say that the startling thing about both the Wollemi Pine and the Nightcap Oak was that they aren’t small trees: The Wollemi grows to 40m (120 feet) and the Nightcap is a similarly sized rainforest canopy tree. There’s an article on the discovery of the Nightcap Oak here. It’s actually a proteacea and was first discovered 20 years ago but was mis-classified
Here we go. Land mammal known only from dead specimens:
http://www.molgen.gla.ac.uk/level2/2b/vqbov.htm
And then they found one:
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/~vern/species.html
Others have been fakes:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/bull010214.html
I watched this discovery show thing on TV about the search for giant squid. They found giant beak in whale’s stomach & it’s indigestable. They predicted that giant squid live deep in the ocean & these whales dive every time to feed themselves giant squids…
Those would be sperm whales I believe. I saw a nature show where scientists tried to get pictures of giant squids by attaching a camera to a sperm whale. Much easier said than done, but they managed it. Of course there weren’t any squids, giant or otherwise, waiting for the paparazzi.
Does anyone remember a small news item a few months back about a strange “bloop” noise recorded by under water microphones?
As i remember some marine experts determined that it was probably biological in nature,but had no idea what animal could be making it.
Excellent, Motag. Blessings on your head.
I can’t imagine getting a camera attached to a Sperm Whale…must have shot the whale with a hook with the camera attached (nice). Sperm Whales seem to be among the more belligerent of sea mammals and I wouldn’t want to piss one off.
I have seen photos of Sperm Whales with scarring on their skin that the scientist speculated came from a giant squid grappling with the whale. If that was true then that squid must have been impressive (the scars ran far back from the head and were of a fairly decent size).
There is more information about attaching cameras to whales at this site: http://whale.wheelock.edu/archives/ask01/0297.html
No hooks involved, apparently. If suction cups work for giant squid, I suppose it’s not surprising they’d work for attaching cameras as well.