Thursday 2 October 2008

colossal squid

I was watching discovery channel, or animal planet...one of those two the other week, and I saw a segment on the colossal squid. I had heard of a giant squid before, and when they started talking about it, I assumed that a colossal squid was a really big giant squid. However, I soon learned that the colossal squid is actually a different species of squid, and is bigger than the giant squid. I bet scientists felt stupid when they were thinking of a name for it, and they had already named a species, "giant squid."

"Hey, we found another species of squid!"
"Wow! what's it like??"
"it's huge! It's actually bigger than a giant squid!"
"You sure it's not just a really big giant squid??"
"Yeah, it has a different body type, different tentacles...lots of differences!......what's wrong???"
"Well, what are we supposed to call it?? Really giant squid??"
"Oh, yeah...I dont know."
"I told Ron!! I told him not to name the species giant squid!! I told him we might find something bigger!!"
"Look, it's not a big deal, we can just call it colossal squid or something..."
"yeah, I guess so....it sounds kinda stupid though...."
"Kinda...but we'll get used to it..."
"I guess so..."

anyways, here is a picture of the first colossal squid caught. They can grow up to 50 feet long including their tentacles. This one was about 33 feet long. They also have sharp teeth lining their tentacles...and some of them swivel. So try to avoid swimming to deeper than 1000m in the ocean, cuz they can be quite dangerous.

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