Giant squid!

I dig squid. There's just something so fascinating about them. It's easy to love the octopus, and the cuttlefish and nautilus have their own charms, but squid seem to evoke the Ewwwwww response in many people. I think it has something to do with the name. It just sounds weird -- skwiiiid.

But anyway, the Melborne Aquarium is displaying a seven-meter giant squid frozen in a block of ice, and that is pretty neat. But the article gets a number of things wrong. For one, it claims scientists think it's possible that good ol' Architeuthis hunt sperm whales; the opposite is true. Giant squid beaks are regularly found in sperm whale stomachs, and while the whales are often scarred from the squid's suction-cup teeth, I don't think sperm whale has ever been found in a giant squid stomach.

Another error is the claim that no-one has ever seen Architeuthis alive, until it was filmed earlier this year. In fact, it's often seen alive, sometimes even beached -- one encounter even had the squid blast water from its siphon, leaving a long furrow in the sand, and one time in the `80s one even beached near Boston -- but it's usually dying. They live in deep, cold waters and one theory is that only sick or confused squid come to the surface, where their bodies might not be able to absorb oxygen at such a high temperature. There's a good chance we've never seen the animal at its biggest and healthiest.

These are both common misconceptions. My real problem with the article is that it claims "Fascination with the giant squid stems from years of unconfirmed reports from fisherman about their boats being attacked by the creatures." We're talking about the largest invertebrate in the world, that grows to a truly unbelievable size in the span of about two or three years and then dies; it has teeth-studded suction cups and its flesh is soaked with ammonia to keep it from sinking, and despite being in the same group of animals as clams and snails, is probably about as intelligent as a dog or cat. Despite all this, apparently the only reason we're interested is that they might have (but probably haven't) attacked people. I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying that a writer who knew anything about Architeuthis might choose to give other reasons for people to care about.