Two points about the giant squid, Architeuthis dux, recently caught on video by Japanese scientists and now writhing all over the Internet. It is not a colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, which is even larger. And this is not the first deep-water image of a giant squid. In 2004, Japanese scientists photographed one taking their bait nearly 3,000 feet underwater in roughly the same location, some 600 miles south of Japan.
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We might add that as giant squid go, this squid — about 10 feet long — is 8 feet shorter than the tentacle retrieved from the 2004 squid. What matters, though, is how vivid this squid is. This isn't a glimpse. It's a full-length portrait. Positioned vertically against the blackness of the deep, this squid glimmers, as tall and slender as a painting by John Singer Sargent. It phosphoresces, it irridesces.
The most human eye in the sea belongs to the cephalopods, and the eye in this video is no exception. It envelops the viewer. Tsunemi Kubodera, the zoologist who led the scientific team, has said that the squid looked rather lonely. Whether a squid can be lonely is an interesting question. But it's worth noting that this squid was photographed at home, unattracted by bait, unentangled by fishing line, free to nautilize where and as it likes.
Scientists once supposed that giant squid and the colossal squid were relatively passive creatures, zeppelins of the deep. That is changing. They are regarded now as hunters, a view completely consonant with the tattoos their tentacles have left on the thick skin of sperm whales. Most of what we have known about these creatures came from their mortal remains, which said something about size and anatomy. But this video is the first unequivocal evidence of their living beauty.
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