Mar 17, 2007

Colossal VS. Giant

I've done a few posts on squids. Occasionally, I am afraid to say, I have misidentified a colossal squid as a giant squid. I apologize to all cephalopods and their friends. I shall refrain from eating calamari for a month as penance.

Heather was the one to bring this matter up. She forwarded to me a couple of links to help us all know the difference:

Tonmo.com

Tolweb.org

Below is a picture of a colossal squid being caught (I got it right this time) and brought on board. Not the most pleasant of images (Ugly Overload), but we really don't have many photos of these leviathans in the wild. They are rather elusive.

Photo source: Zapato Productions

7 comments:

Arachnophile said...

LOL! Penance is hardly necessary. This is ONE cool creature. It was only known from beaks found in the guts of sperm whales for the longest time.

Seriously gang, check out the Tolweb (tree of life web proj.)site for some close-up pictures of the spikes on this puppies tentacles! This squid is 10x the bad-ass of the giant squid. VERY cool. :)

Heather/Arachnophile

Anonymous said...

These are indeed great websites. I now know there is a difference between arms and tentacles. I shall regale my friends with these facts until they tell me to shut up.

Arachnophile said...

Lol - THAT's why I'm never invited out anymore. ;p

Goalzilla said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Goalzilla said...

Look, you can see the squid being poked with a stick! I've noticed that bad things happen when I poke wild animals with sticks. I wonder if the official research poker was worried?

Arachnophile said...

Poking has been a very long and honored technique of scientific discovery, especially when the creature is bigger than you, has fangs or just looks slimy. ;) The official Poker of Science had to be pretty long for this one.

Oh and "bring the matter up," is Justin's way of being politely euphemistic. It was really more like jumping up and down in the comments and then emailing him like a pedantic no-life. ;-p *~All Hail the Raging Wombat~*

Raging Wombat said...

All hail lil' ol' me?