New Giant Squid Video Reported on Reuters!

monty

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octobot

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[News]: Japanese researchers film live giant squid, say numbers may be ... - Interna


[SIZE=-2]Zee News[/SIZE]

Japanese researchers film live giant squid, say numbers may be ...
[SIZE=-1]International Herald Tribune, France - 1 hour ago[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]AP. TOKYO: A Japanese research team has succeeded in filming a giant squid live — possibly for the first time — and says the elusive creatures may be more ... [/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Giant squid caught on video by Japanese scientists [SIZE=-1]Reuters[/SIZE][/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]all 12 news articles[/SIZE]

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octobot

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[News]: Giant squid caught on video by Japanese scientists - Zee News

Giant squid caught on video by Japanese scientists
[SIZE=-1]Zee News, India - 18 minutes ago[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Images of the squid -- a relatively small female about 3.5 meters (11 ft 6 in) long and weighing 50 kg (110 lb) -- were the ultimate prize for zoologists at ... [/SIZE]


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OB

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WE LOVE YOU MONTY

Look at the second shot of the scientist turned fisherman pulling the poor brute in; the eye seems to open and close, amazing footage! Some idiot stole my and some of my colleagues' docked laptops today during our ten minute break... This is a perfect gift to compensate, however!

PS: Watch the "tiger striping" effect on the upper arms, that's a novelty to me at least!

PPS: Thank (fill in deity of choice) for network backup...
 

OB

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WOW! At last this clearly shows Architeuthis' eyes as they appear in life. The above mentioned "tiger striping" in higher resolution appears to be abbrasion, as usual :sad:
 

Mola Mola

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Why are they saying for the first time? Wasn't one filmed months ago? Sure the Footage was nowhere near as cool as this but it was filmed, unless i missed something?
 

Sordes

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That´s really great to see it finally alive, I just saw it in the news and some minutes ago in TV. The eyes are really interesting, especially because they seems to have a similar lid like the humboldt squid, and not the round lidless shape which is shown in nearly every drawing or model of the giant squid.
 

monty

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Today's conspiracy question: did Dr Ku know about the "Cephalopodmas" quasi-holiday that PZ Meyers (and seemingly few others) has been pushing, and time it deliberately, or is this just a fortuitous coincidence?

I'm wondering if the video ends where it does because the jet of water hit the camera, or if that's just edited for the most mass appeal segment. I was hoping to see more evidence to counter the "architeuthis is kind of weak" theory/myth, but it seems to be fairly laid back, rather like "hey, let go of me, and my food, you jerks, I'll shoot some water at you, and maybe you'll wise up!" not "I shall lash out and thrash you all!" That certainly seems in character for cephalopod personalities, though-- I was just hoping for solid evidence so I could remove the "It is believed that giant squids are too weak to lift their tentacles out of the water" claim from wikipedia... (I still don't believe it-- it seemed pretty clear that it could have lifted its arms out without any trouble; although it does seem like the tentacles are specialized for the long-range grab, so it's likely it's even more disinclined to use them for anything but prey capture...)

I agree with OB on the eye, it looks much more lidded than bulbous, the way they're often portrayed in models. This looks like it has great potential for eye preservation. It's probably desirable to preserve the whole animal, but I'd love to see the results of some detailed eye dissection-- retina electron micrographs, put some rhabdomeres into a blender and compare the photopigment to the well-studied GPO rhodopsin, etc. Getting an idea of the lens and retina geometry would be neat, too-- do they have any regions of higher acuity? It looked like the pupil was a cat-eye slit more than the horizontal slits and W shapes we see in most surface-dwelling cephs; it seems like the deepwater ones (at least Vampyroteuthis) have rounder pupils, but I don't remember seeing any cat-like ones on squids before... Also, it looks like the picture of a dying architeuthis we determined had been photoshopped around the eye was fairly accurate, although the yellow-eye effect wasn't in this video, that could easily be related to the flash picture...
 
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