scottwolverine1;108039 said:
Concerning the link,I will fix it a little later,sorry about that.
Monty,I mean no disrespect,but to me,it looked like the GPO was much larger than the shark.Now,I'm a novice here concerning marine biology,so perhaps you can elaborate on..
1)Is indeed the shark larger than the GPO?
2)If so,then it must be that cephalopod weight/mass is difficult to predict from just looking at its diminsions.
3)Or.....Perhaps I may need glasses.
Again,I'm just a beginner here,so don't be offended by my "ignorant,but learning" questions.
well, re-watching it I guess the shark is smaller than I remembered, but it's sort of hard to compare, since a shark is long, thin, and muscular, while an octo stretches and moves. It would be interesting to know which weighs more...
I have seen pictures of squids and cuttles attacking things that are about their size or slightly larger than they are, though, but they haven't been sharks, I guess. But I bet if you take the weight of the GPO and shark in the video, and compare the ratio, that (admittedly unjustified) approach would suggest that a 500kg
Mesonychoteuthis could probably take on a pretty big shark, although I note that the wikipedia page for
Great Whites says that they reach 2,250kg. So the biggest shark outweighs the biggest squid by quite a bit, and that's just 6 feet long, which at least makes it plausible that the squid outweighs the GPO in that video even if it's a bit smaller in length.
In a contest between a ceph and a shark of the same weight, I'd expect there's not a clear winner... if the ceph got a good grip on the shark, the shark doesn't have a lot of options, but if the shark took a big chomp out of the ceph, it could easily cause fatal damage... they're both very effective "first strike" predators.
Caveat emptor: I've read a lot about this stuff, but I'm wishing the real biologists would chime in, 'cause I am somewhat in "conjecture" territory here...