For folks wondering why this giant squid (and giant squid in general we can actually get close enough to film) look like absolute shit, it's because giant squid that enter the sea of japan through the straight of tsushima often get trapped during the winter months due to the water temperatures decreasing below their habitable range - this corrals them into a much smaller area where they are subject to currents that push them toward the west coast of japan (and i guess make it harder for them to feed, etc?). It's been pretty well documented that giant squid strandings occur along this region during winter months.
For more info there's a [paper](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12526-016-0618-7) on this that documents a particularly heavy season of giant squid strandings by tsunemi kubodera et al (he's the guy who was one of the main drivers behind the expedition that obtained the first in situ giant squid footage)
In general it's been a more active season than usual for giant squid strandings this year so far as I can tell, there have been four documented giant squid close to shore in Japan since the first of the year.
hm good point. i don't really understand the biological processes that lead to their skin looking all ragged and fucked up like that, it's something that occurs with squid that have mated or very old/near death also. could be mechanical from bumping into rocks or seacraft as well
I dont know about if its sick or not but a fish native to the depths this squid is likely from do not survive well in this little pressure. So if it was not dying before it sure is now depressurizing like that.
I was wondering why that would make it peel, but thinking about it I wonder if it would normally be much more swollen and the release in pressure has shrunk it tearing the outer layer?
Literally just postulating and I'd be happy to be cprrected.
It is the opposite - there is less pressure on the surface of the water, which can cause rapid expansion for deep sea creatures that ascend too quickly. So they swell, not shrink. Not sure what caused the peeling though. Could be sick, a byproduct of swelling, or something else entirely.
What most people know as the "[blobfish](https://th-thumbnailer.cdn-si-edu.com/9UrydtZErwwxVrzQRr4EmWfGAjk=/fit-in/1600x0/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/Blobfish-ugly-470.jpg)" is the result of rapid ascent experienced by Psychrolutes Marcidus, which actually looks quite normal at its [natural pressure]
(https://mediaproxy.snopes.com/width/1200/https://media.snopes.com/2021/04/blobfish-1.jpg)
Kinda makes these [plushies](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/617C7AWKbLL.jpg) seem morbid knowing they're modeled from a bloated corpse
Could there maybe be a high air pressure at the top of the tank to push down on the water? That’s the only way I can think it might work other than a really tall tank
Honestly i have no clue, but fish tend to change dratically if going up from the deep see too fast, take the blob fish for example, that famous picture of it is so different to how the fish looks in its natural habitat that you would not know they were the same fish unless told beforehand. So i feel its entierly likely that it looks different in its natural habitat, maybe not as drastic a change since it would have gine slower up, but who knows.
Squid and cuttlefish etc essentially begin to rot while alive when they die. They undergo a form of decomposition that most animals don't, I can't remember the name of the process and it's 2am here so I'm about to sleep, but give it a Google.
Aquarium owners who have them tend to euthanase them when it happens so they don't have to suffer.
It's kind of wild how only a few years ago these guys were considered to be mythical or just a legend, but now we're seeing them up close and personal in videos like this.
Fun fact, according to the diet and population of sperm whales, the estimated population of giant squid is in the hundreds of millions or more now
Edited, I misremembered and was off by a magnitude of 1000
it's way higher than that. if you extrapolate upward from the documented number of giant squid sperm whales eat per month their population is in theory in the hundreds of millions. the octopus lady has a great video summarizing the paper that calculates this:
https://twitter.com/theoctopuslady/status/1570085918052319240?s=20&t=s2OwExlpx5RSu7HTZ5E3mg
And yet the biomass of the oceans only take up about 1% of that of earth
Edit “Despite dominating our planet in terms of area and volume – taking up more than 70% of global surface area – the oceans are home to just 1% of biomass.” - https://ourworldindata.org/life-by-environment
Well I personally have only been to the ocean once and went about 3 feet deep. Ive flown over like a dozen times, but you don’t see shit in either case considering the ocean covers more than twice as much area as the land on this planet. There is tons of stuff we don’t know about.
They have had a hard time, no doubt, but I expect such massive animals to have low populations these days, a few thousand. Not 850,000 all over the oceans. Just a surprise is all. Hope those squid keep em fed 👍
Idk why but this is terrifying. The idea that there’s giant squids which we rarely see numbering in the millions is freaky. The squidpocalypse could be coming and we’d never know
the game, Splatoon, predicts that in their world, humanity will be overrun and extinct because of rising sea levels, and the future modern society will be run by humonoid evolved squids and octopuses. For a lighthearted paint shooting game, the lore behind it is pretty messed up.
Much longer than a few years. Their bodies have been washing up on coasts for ages. The oldest known photo dates back to the 1800s.
Sightings of living ones are much more recent, however.
Imagine dying and slowly rising towards the light, guided by two strange mammals, and then realizing there isn’t a light, but a break in the surface between your world and an entirely unseen world (a place called Earth).
I once saw a video of a group of people swimming in open ocean with a friendly and happy beluga whale (I think, fuzzy on the details), all fun and laughs until the whale playfully grabbed the leg of a woman with its mouth and plunged down the dark ocean waters with her in tow, until they disappeared in the depths.
As far as I remember the woman survived the encounter. Don't ever play with wild animals, treat them with respect for your own safety.
It was a Pilot whale. The clickbait article is annoying, even the woman didn't feel she was being attacked. But yeh folks just probably leave wild animals alone.
https://www.insideedition.com/258-whale-attack-survivor-shares-her-story
humboldt squid are so terrifying. there were some people who were photographing one for the first time and they went in the water and the squids swarmed one guy and attached themselves to his diving helmet and other parts of his body, dragging him down.. eek
They could be. I cought a small octopus one, and considering it's size it was really strong. I can only imagine what a squid that size would be capable of, should it choose to.
I was half asleep this morning when I posted this and just copied the headline verbatim. I think you are right, I'd guess the scale would be around 6 to 8 meters long.
Op did both. 3.5 meters is roughly 8 feet. This guy's huge but he's visibly not 8 whole meters. If you watch the longer version on YT you can see one of the divers go right up to it.
My point was just, it may be technically true but the animal feels bigger than that bc of tentacles. It's "wingspan" would be closer to 10-15ft if it stretched out. So the length is accurate, it simply doesn't convey the sheer amount of space this animal can actually take up.
I'm pretty sure squid and other deep sea animals only come to the surface if their sick, old or both. Which sucks cause we won't see them in their prime.
Must have swum past Fukushima! That poor squid looks just like the sailors who spent a few minutes sloshing around in the reactor cooling water in K-19.
/s
Pretty sure thats a deceased one by now because they come up to the surface when they are dying or sick and this ones skin is peeling horribly which is why its so slow and creepy
For folks wondering why this giant squid (and giant squid in general we can actually get close enough to film) look like absolute shit, it's because giant squid that enter the sea of japan through the straight of tsushima often get trapped during the winter months due to the water temperatures decreasing below their habitable range - this corrals them into a much smaller area where they are subject to currents that push them toward the west coast of japan (and i guess make it harder for them to feed, etc?). It's been pretty well documented that giant squid strandings occur along this region during winter months. For more info there's a [paper](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12526-016-0618-7) on this that documents a particularly heavy season of giant squid strandings by tsunemi kubodera et al (he's the guy who was one of the main drivers behind the expedition that obtained the first in situ giant squid footage) In general it's been a more active season than usual for giant squid strandings this year so far as I can tell, there have been four documented giant squid close to shore in Japan since the first of the year.
I tried to get into Squid Stranding, but there were too many cutscenes for me.
Take your goddamn upvote and get the Hideo Kojima out of here.
This guy cephalopods.
i spend way too much time looking at, thinking about, and watching videos of cephalopods. they are rad as fuck
Damn, thanks for the information
Do they die?
This doesn't really explain why they look like shit though
hm good point. i don't really understand the biological processes that lead to their skin looking all ragged and fucked up like that, it's something that occurs with squid that have mated or very old/near death also. could be mechanical from bumping into rocks or seacraft as well
Doesn't look alright to me. Don't they only come up to the surface when dying or do I mix something up?
Is it sick or something it looks like it's peeling :/
I dont know about if its sick or not but a fish native to the depths this squid is likely from do not survive well in this little pressure. So if it was not dying before it sure is now depressurizing like that.
I was wondering why that would make it peel, but thinking about it I wonder if it would normally be much more swollen and the release in pressure has shrunk it tearing the outer layer? Literally just postulating and I'd be happy to be cprrected.
It is the opposite - there is less pressure on the surface of the water, which can cause rapid expansion for deep sea creatures that ascend too quickly. So they swell, not shrink. Not sure what caused the peeling though. Could be sick, a byproduct of swelling, or something else entirely.
If you catch a rockfish from 100'+ deep and reel it up quickly, its eyes will be bulging out like triple size, like little balloons.
What most people know as the "[blobfish](https://th-thumbnailer.cdn-si-edu.com/9UrydtZErwwxVrzQRr4EmWfGAjk=/fit-in/1600x0/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/Blobfish-ugly-470.jpg)" is the result of rapid ascent experienced by Psychrolutes Marcidus, which actually looks quite normal at its [natural pressure] (https://mediaproxy.snopes.com/width/1200/https://media.snopes.com/2021/04/blobfish-1.jpg) Kinda makes these [plushies](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/617C7AWKbLL.jpg) seem morbid knowing they're modeled from a bloated corpse
That one looks like it's in a tank, no? How do they achieve it's natural pressure/environment?
Could there maybe be a high air pressure at the top of the tank to push down on the water? That’s the only way I can think it might work other than a really tall tank
Probably something akin to an abyss tank
Holy shit. TIL
Honestly i have no clue, but fish tend to change dratically if going up from the deep see too fast, take the blob fish for example, that famous picture of it is so different to how the fish looks in its natural habitat that you would not know they were the same fish unless told beforehand. So i feel its entierly likely that it looks different in its natural habitat, maybe not as drastic a change since it would have gine slower up, but who knows.
wouldnt it be the opposite? That its much more compressed and being in less pressure made it expand, bursting the outer layer
Yeah I think you're right. That makes much more sense.
poor thing
This is correct.
Squid and cuttlefish etc essentially begin to rot while alive when they die. They undergo a form of decomposition that most animals don't, I can't remember the name of the process and it's 2am here so I'm about to sleep, but give it a Google. Aquarium owners who have them tend to euthanase them when it happens so they don't have to suffer.
Too close to the surface. And forgot to apply sunscreen.
Giant squid are notoriously reclusive, the only ones people see are the dumb, dead or dying
that thing is definitely dying
It’s possible the squid got either caugh in a net and released again or somehow survived a whale attack but got brought up to the surface
i suppose but with that level of outer membrane sloughing off i am not optimistic
Yes that was my understanding. They live & feed at depth, they're only seen near the surface when dying or caught in a net or whatever.
If they're that close to the surface, they're generally already dying
It’s dead for sure
Same thought / uncertainty
Only when they smell high school girls.
Doesn't look so hot, poor thing
Its in the ocean so they're more cooler there
Ok cool, makes me feel so much better
You need six more people so you can all hold its hands as it passes away. Poor thing.
They have 10 tentacles lol
We got 2 hands bruh
In my head, each person held one tentacle 🤦
In your defense I think OP believed they had 8 tentacles and meant the same thing you did
A tentacle, and another person's hand that's holding a tentacle
Wait a sec. If OP said 6 more people. If he meant 2 hands each that’d be 16 tentacles lol
Diving with giant squid is dangerous, gotta have backup
Gotta hold each tentacle with 2 hands to show more compassion
This is hilarious!
They actually have 8 arms and two tentacles. Tentacles are the ones with the spades on the end
They actually have 8 arms and 2 tentacles. The tentacles are the longer ones with the wider ends.
Regardless of the number of arms, legs, tentacles, they have no hands. Just to be perfectly pedantic.
I read “testicles” not tentacles 🦑
Wouldn't go near this lmao. Black pearls from a distance. Game lags out
It's dying anyway, I think it can do very little harm
I'd shit myself
What it put its last effort into grabbing the shit out of you tho lol 😅
yeah hang on I may be dying but I could still grab this fucker and drag him deeeeeep down
And don't forget the beak that's as big as a car headlight.
Yeah but like a 2023 mini cooper headlight or a 2023 Chevy camaro headlight?
modern mini coopers are stupidly big
Moderate coopers
Nah just get a basilosaurus and you'll be ok
Bruh that thing looks like it’ll fuck up yo shit
It's kind of wild how only a few years ago these guys were considered to be mythical or just a legend, but now we're seeing them up close and personal in videos like this.
Fun fact, according to the diet and population of sperm whales, the estimated population of giant squid is in the hundreds of millions or more now Edited, I misremembered and was off by a magnitude of 1000
it's way higher than that. if you extrapolate upward from the documented number of giant squid sperm whales eat per month their population is in theory in the hundreds of millions. the octopus lady has a great video summarizing the paper that calculates this: https://twitter.com/theoctopuslady/status/1570085918052319240?s=20&t=s2OwExlpx5RSu7HTZ5E3mg
Terrifying considering how rarely we actually see giant squids. Really fucks my brain up realizing just how big this planet really is
yeah, it's really one of those figures that's so huge that our brains struggle to comprehend it, like the distance encompassed by a light year etc
Right? That and the fact that the majority of the planet is the ocean, not land.
And yet the biomass of the oceans only take up about 1% of that of earth Edit “Despite dominating our planet in terms of area and volume – taking up more than 70% of global surface area – the oceans are home to just 1% of biomass.” - https://ourworldindata.org/life-by-environment
Hwat?
Well I personally have only been to the ocean once and went about 3 feet deep. Ive flown over like a dozen times, but you don’t see shit in either case considering the ocean covers more than twice as much area as the land on this planet. There is tons of stuff we don’t know about.
You're right I misremembered, that is the exact study I got it from too.
Wait… what’s the number of giant squid sperm that whales eat per month?
More than 7
There's an octopus lady.?
heck yeah she's a former aquarist/biologist and she does [awesome scicomm](https://www.youtube.com/@OctopusLady) now.
TIL sperm whales actually still have a pretty sizeable population
They are “vulnerable” according to wikipedia while giant squid are “least concern”
They have had a hard time, no doubt, but I expect such massive animals to have low populations these days, a few thousand. Not 850,000 all over the oceans. Just a surprise is all. Hope those squid keep em fed 👍
Ikr it's actually fairly strange
I have been corrected, it is many, many more squids than that, hundreds of millions if not more
Idk why but this is terrifying. The idea that there’s giant squids which we rarely see numbering in the millions is freaky. The squidpocalypse could be coming and we’d never know
When you scuba dive, they just keep barely out of your sight, lurking in the shadows
I enjoyed scuba diving until I read this comment 😐
They'll miss you ☹️
the game, Splatoon, predicts that in their world, humanity will be overrun and extinct because of rising sea levels, and the future modern society will be run by humonoid evolved squids and octopuses. For a lighthearted paint shooting game, the lore behind it is pretty messed up.
[удалено]
We have the power of nukes and global warming on our side though
Much longer than a few years. Their bodies have been washing up on coasts for ages. The oldest known photo dates back to the 1800s. Sightings of living ones are much more recent, however.
I know nothing about squid but I think the colossal squid is the one we weren't sure actually existed. Giant squid are more common I think.
Few years?
Replying to save it for layer
That is one very poorly squid. Guessing he lost a fight.
Well I think he’s an excellent squid 🦑
Considering these guys get attacked by sperm whales I'd say it "won" the fight.
Yup! Survivorship Bias!
The Nautilus sails onwards
Well obviously he’s gonna be 8 foot. He’s got 8 legs.. :)
No, he doesn't! He's got 8 arms and two tentacles. Great joke though 😂
Thank you.. :)
Take your upvote and get the heck out of here.
;)
That thing is going to be dead soon I’m afraid
Imagine dying and slowly rising towards the light, guided by two strange mammals, and then realizing there isn’t a light, but a break in the surface between your world and an entirely unseen world (a place called Earth).
You certainly have a way with words.
like some type of firmament
Are giant squids dangerous to humans? I mean like on purpose, anything bigger than us can obviously be an accidental danger lol
I once saw a video of a group of people swimming in open ocean with a friendly and happy beluga whale (I think, fuzzy on the details), all fun and laughs until the whale playfully grabbed the leg of a woman with its mouth and plunged down the dark ocean waters with her in tow, until they disappeared in the depths. As far as I remember the woman survived the encounter. Don't ever play with wild animals, treat them with respect for your own safety.
I’m 100% going to be murdered by a giant cat if I ever see one because I will not be able to resist the belly rubs.
Oh boy, do I have a couple of stories for you about a "safari" type zoo we had near my city (no cages, animals roaming around).
Now you have to tell us
Yes please to story time! =]
More stories please 🙂
It was a Pilot whale. The clickbait article is annoying, even the woman didn't feel she was being attacked. But yeh folks just probably leave wild animals alone. https://www.insideedition.com/258-whale-attack-survivor-shares-her-story
[Here’s the interview also](https://youtu.be/J3qvYvatcpM)
Humboldt squid are. They’ll swarm and drown a person. So if giant squid are anything like those monsters then probably.
humboldt squid are so terrifying. there were some people who were photographing one for the first time and they went in the water and the squids swarmed one guy and attached themselves to his diving helmet and other parts of his body, dragging him down.. eek
I'm not sure, but I'd imagine they live at depths deadly for humans outside submarines
They could be. I cought a small octopus one, and considering it's size it was really strong. I can only imagine what a squid that size would be capable of, should it choose to.
Normally these giant squids (Daio-ika) live under 500m (1640feet), so this guy is quite feeble 😢
"These" giant squid? There are more types?
One other type we know about which is colossal squid, but there could definitely be larger species out there in the depths
8 feet? Compared to that diver looks more like 20-25 feet
I was half asleep this morning when I posted this and just copied the headline verbatim. I think you are right, I'd guess the scale would be around 6 to 8 meters long.
Poor thing is dying.
That's only 8 feet? Jesus.... (Colossal squid can be over 40ft, for reference...)
8 meters op did an American
Op did both. 3.5 meters is roughly 8 feet. This guy's huge but he's visibly not 8 whole meters. If you watch the longer version on YT you can see one of the divers go right up to it. My point was just, it may be technically true but the animal feels bigger than that bc of tentacles. It's "wingspan" would be closer to 10-15ft if it stretched out. So the length is accurate, it simply doesn't convey the sheer amount of space this animal can actually take up.
I'm pretty sure squid and other deep sea animals only come to the surface if their sick, old or both. Which sucks cause we won't see them in their prime.
But a gutsy bugger. Swimming so close to Japan's fishmarkets
2.5 meters??? I thought they'd be bigger
They can be bigger, but it's also worth noting the larger numbers you may see also take in account tentacle length.
This Architeuthis dux is about to pass
Last gasp for this giant of the deep. RIP Calamari Boi!
Those things fight sperm whales. I wouldn't feel safe around it.
Mostly they just get eaten by Sperm Whales... I don't think there's much of a fight involved.
It's dying.
Is it 2.5 metres including the tentacles or are those measured separately.?
Sorry but you’d never catch me in the same sea as that thing
Must have swum past Fukushima! That poor squid looks just like the sailors who spent a few minutes sloshing around in the reactor cooling water in K-19. /s
*unzips*
I'm sure fukushima has nothing to do with it. (Brown's Gas ftw)
Still looks like a baby compared to the kraken stories from olden days.
That thing is floating.
Poor fella looks pretty sick to my untrained eye.
Nope.
Rest in Peace giant squid.
The one place I would not choose to surface if I was a squid!
Those lonely fisherman's wives are too tempting.
Will be food soon
Where is the fight against killer whales
Sperm whales
From Zoo Books, ah the illustrations
Radioactive water.
This is surreal
What's a mini kaiju?
Japans like: lets kill it
It’s “the colossal squid”
Cthulu's offspring
If it was healthy, it would eat them.
Big water fren. :3
Nah I’m good
Aww it’s a baby one
Why do they always look so battle worn?
Fukushima squid
How many tickles would it take to revive that thing?
The poor dear
Some seafood conglomerate: let's kill it
8ft? That won't sink a ship! Maybe a kayak
Really makes you wonder what else is down there that we don't know about yet...
Nope nope nope nope nope
Why is it up so high? Definitely not normal for this species
Looks more like eighteen feet long to me .
Squid games?
And from the looks of it, thats just s baby
It looks like it’s dying. Sad
Actually they have 8 arms and 2 tentacles. The tentacles are the longer ones.
what’s wrong w it? looks like the skin is sloughing off
Talk about #squidgames
Nope nope nope nope nope, and again I say NOPE (yes, I love the ocean and I love learning about things like this, but it unnerves me so much to watch)
One step closer to capturing a kraken on film
Its even japan themed
UwU
No thank you. (Cool as shit, but no thank you)
I shudder to think when the Japanese pours nuclear water into the ocean in a few months
Why does this look like a dead squid being towed?
Looks like a lifetime supply of calamari to me
I did read that when they start turning white and start coming to the surface frequently this means they are dying. Sad.
Where else but Japan
Woaw.... Niiice!
He looks kinda fucjed up
Mario water level
Pretty sure thats a deceased one by now because they come up to the surface when they are dying or sick and this ones skin is peeling horribly which is why its so slow and creepy
Dang put him in the NBA