We had some interesting visitors from the deep sea the past week.

Not your usual fried calamari variety, definitely.  Scientists didn’t know how to classify this slimmy creature when they saw it because it looked part-octapus, part-squid. The confusion was due to the 8 tentacles (simliar to the octapus) on a squid’s body. After further investigation, the scientists discovered that it was missing the 2 other tentacles, probably from injuries as it was travelling up the pipeline which sucked it out of the deep sea off the cost of Hawaii. You can find more info from the national geographic site entry here.

This giant squid washed up on the shores of Tasmania, on the western coast of Australia. The size if the giant squid was as long as a school bus (around 8 meters or 26 feet) and weight around 550 pounds (250 kilograms).  Unfortunately, the squid was badly injured. You can read the full details from this national geographic site entry as well.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 10:54 am and is filed under animal news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.