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Giant Squid, First Video Taken Of The Animal In Its Natural Habitat
This post comes to us from Planetsave.com. For more along these lines, visit Planetsave or some of its most popular categories: Global Warming, Science, Going Green Tips, Animals, or 10 Friday Photos.
For the first time ever a giant squid has been filmed in its natural habitat deep under the ocean surface.
The new film shows the giant squid at a depth of nearly 3000 feet, roughly 9 miles off the coast of Chichi Island in the North Pacific Ocean. The video was taken by researchers from Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science, who received assistance from the Discover Channel, and the Japanese public broadcaster NHK.
The researchers came across the giant squid only after around 100 missions, it took more than 400 hours to capture the 10 minutes of footage.
Interestingly, this animal seems to be missing its two longest tentacles for whatever reason, possibly from fighting or some other reason.
“It was shining and so beautiful,” said museum researcher Tsunemi Kubodera. “I was so thrilled when I saw it first hand, but I was confident we would, because we rigorously researched the areas we might find it, based on past data.”
This of course is not the first time that a giant squid has been filmed, but it is the first time that one has been filmed in the environment that it actually lives in. Typically the footage that has been seen has been of dead squid after being caught in fishing nets or washing up on shore.
This recent specimen doesn’t even come close to max size that these animals can reach. The females can reach sizes of up to 43 feet long, and that of course doesn’t include ‘freak’ individuals that exceed that maximum.
There have been claims of animals up to 66 feet long documented, though not scientifically. That’s certainly an animal fitting of it’s description as a monster of the deep, the legendary ‘Kraken’.
And that’s not even taking into account the possibility that the individuals or species in prehistory may have reached much larger sizes, as many animals did during the ice ages. There is still not much that is known about the deep seas and the life forms that live down there.
Source: Huffington Post
Image Credits: NHK/NEP/Discover Channel
Giant Squid, First Video Taken Of The Animal In Its Natural Habitat was originally posted on: PlanetSave
2013-01-09 00:30:44
Source: http://planetsave.com/2013/01/09/giant-squid-first-video-taken-of-the-animal-in-its-natural-habitat/
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