In some literary works and legends about ocean exploration, the mysterious and terrible shadow of "giant squid" often appears. In the past, people could only study this animal through the dead squid caught in fishing nets or the "wreckage" of a big guy washed ashore by the waves. Some scientists had hoped to observe the growth and living conditions of small squid through artificial breeding, but once these little guys were "confined", they often died soon.
Recently, two scientists from Japan successfully photographed this deep-sea monster in a "natural state of life" for the first time. At that time, a big squid more than 8 meters long was preying on prey in 900 meters deep sea water. Scientists captured many precious moments with remote control cameras and extracted samples from them for analysis. The DNA test results show that this monster, which bares its teeth in front of the camera, and the previously captured deep-sea squid are "family".
It is reported that the researchers tied the camera and depth gauge to a long floating rope and hung it on the bottom of the sea to capture the squid picture. They hung small squid under the camera as bait and lured big octopus with a bag of chopped shrimp. When this giant squid, about 8 meters long, wound its tentacles around the bait, it was hooked by the hook hidden inside. In this way, in the process of giant squid struggling to break free, scientists have taken more than 550 photos, including the scene of giant octopus sticking out its tentacles and winding a long rope, trying to escape.
Scientists said that it took the giant squid 4 hours 13 minutes to break free from the hook, but a hooked 6-meter-long tentacle broke away from its body and was pulled out of the water from the bottom of the sea. At that time, this sticky guy was still alive, and kept sucking the deck of the ship with suction cups. Scientists worry that human fishing activities, especially deep-sea trawling, may destroy squid eggs on the seabed on a large scale, leading to the "shutdown" of sperm whales that feed on this squid.
It is not easy to track an 8-meter-long giant squid, but their natural enemy sperm whales feed near the North Pacific Ocean from September to 65438+February every year. Therefore, Japanese researchers tracked the activity of sperm whales, and finally captured the activity image of this giant squid in the 900-meter deep sea near Ogasawara Islands through underwater cameras. It is reported that the biggest feature of giant squid is that it has a pair of long tentacles, some of which can account for about two-thirds of its total length. At the same time, "broken arm" will not affect the injured squid.
Scientists said: "The biggest feature of giant squid is that it has a pair of extremely long tentacles. The length of this pair of tentacles can reach two-thirds of the total length of its body. " Scientists say that they had previously suspected that giant squid was a slow-moving animal. But after witnessing it with my own eyes, I found that it is far more active than originally thought, and it is an active and fierce predator. Scientists say that losing a tentacle will not endanger the life of giant squid.