GIANT SQUIDS!!!!

First-ever observations of a live giant squid in the wild.

Kubodera T, Mori K.

The giant squid, Architeuthis, is renowned as the largest invertebrate in the world and has featured as an ominous sea monster in novels and movies. Considerable efforts to view this elusive creature in its deep-sea habitat have been singularly unsuccessful. Our digital camera and depth recorder system recently photographed an Architeuthis attacking bait at 900 m off Ogasawara Islands in the North Pacific. Here, we show the first wild images of a giant squid in its natural environment. Recovery of a severed tentacle confirmed both identification and scale of the squid (greater than 8 m). Architeuthis appears to be a much more active predator than previously suspected, using its elongate feeding tentacles to strike and tangle prey.

Proc Biol Sci. 2005 Dec 22;272(1581):2583-6.

NOTHING IS COOLER THAN THIS!!

 My heart is a big place where I keep feelings for my parents and brothers with the VIP room reserved for my wife. Secretly, I keep a second VIP room that holds my feelings for things like giant squids. Deep down, I know that if I dove into the ocean and swam around, a giant squid would show up and tell me the profound secrets of the deep. I would grab its tentacle and it would take me to a magical world where human fingers are used as currency and the Void calls to us all.

 As you can read from the abstract, the researchers were able to record a giant squid hunting and that is really cool. The particular squid that they observed was about 8 m long! To put that into real numbers, you would need 4.2 John Waynes to get the same length as the giant squid!

 When I think of giant sea creatures, I am reminded of the most devastating creatures ever:

STARRO!!!

 Starro is a gigantic starfish thing that floats in space until it reaches an inhabited planet. When it gets to the planet it releases tons of little Starros that begin feeding on the population to create more gigantic Starros.

Recently, Starro was revealed to be controlled by an alien that had subjugated the Starro queen, but I will not show it because it does not have the visual appeal of a gigantic starfish.