Colossal Squid Landed
If you notice on the front page of ExtremeScience.com we now have video news feeds of the top stories directly from Reuters. I decided it was time to put it up there ever since the news story (with awsome video footage) of the otherworldly-looking “prehistoric” frill shark captured by the Japanese scientists was all over the Internet. 
Well, the video feed so far has proved to be a real find. As of today there was a fantastic and timely video story about the recent capture of a previously little-known species of deep sea squid, called the “Colossal Squid” (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni). This is apparently a different species than the current world-record invertebrate - Architeuthis dux (the Giant Squid http://www.extremescience.com/giant-squid.htm). This one is WAAAYYYY bigger. According to an interview with Dr. Steve O’Shea (teuthologist) this is the largest specimen of squid ever seen by humans and is most likely a male of the species. From what is known about squids in general the females are usually much larger than the males. So this Colossal Squid, as big as he was (10 meters long and weighing at least one tonne) there are probably more, much larger females squids of the same species lurking in the vast, inky depths of the oceans. If you missed the video on Reuters you can see it here…