Nature & Environment
Elusive Giant Squid Washes Ashore Cantabria Beach in Spain [VIDEO]
Benita Matilda
First Posted: Oct 05, 2013 03:17 AM EDT
A giant squid with oversized protruding eyes washed ashore on a beach in the northern Spanish community of Cantabria.
The 30 feet deep-sea monster weighing 400 pounds astonished beachgoers Tuesday, who stumbled upon the near intact remains of the monster that looked more like a mythical gargantuan creature.
Washed ashore the La Arena beach, the giant squid is currently held at the Maritime Museum of Cantabria, where experts will work toward preserving this specimen, according to El Diario Montanes. The museum currently holds two similar but smaller specimens, museum director Gerardo Garcia Castrillo told Montanes.
The deep sea denizen will be cleaned and frozen. The fate of this dead creature remains vague at the moment as museum scientists and the government will decide on the ownership and whether it will go on display at the museum or will be dissected in the name of science, GrindTV reports.
The first footage of this elusive creature in its natural habitat was captured by a zoologist Tsunemi Kubodera, from Japan's National Science Museum, Tokyo. The video captured the sea monster off the Ogasawara Islands at a depth of 2,066 feet.
"It was shining and so beautiful," team leader Tsunemi Kubodera, a zoologist at Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science, told AFP at the time. "I was so thrilled when I saw it first hand, but I was confident we would because we rigorously researched the areas we might find it, based on past data."
Apart from their enormous size, these creatures have the largest eyes that are similar in size to a beachball. Due to their big eyes, they can peer through deep sea regions where light is non-existent. They mostly reside in cool waters, as the squids' blood does not carry sufficient oxygen in high temperatures. They are also known to have an extensive nervous system and a complex brain, reports NBC News.
In recent years, occasionally giant squids corpses have been discovered washed ashore, and scientists are spending great resources in studying these elusive creatures as they are the largest invertebrates on earth . However, these giant squids continue to remain a great mystery.
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First Posted: Oct 05, 2013 03:17 AM EDT
A giant squid with oversized protruding eyes washed ashore on a beach in the northern Spanish community of Cantabria.
The 30 feet deep-sea monster weighing 400 pounds astonished beachgoers Tuesday, who stumbled upon the near intact remains of the monster that looked more like a mythical gargantuan creature.
Washed ashore the La Arena beach, the giant squid is currently held at the Maritime Museum of Cantabria, where experts will work toward preserving this specimen, according to El Diario Montanes. The museum currently holds two similar but smaller specimens, museum director Gerardo Garcia Castrillo told Montanes.
The deep sea denizen will be cleaned and frozen. The fate of this dead creature remains vague at the moment as museum scientists and the government will decide on the ownership and whether it will go on display at the museum or will be dissected in the name of science, GrindTV reports.
The first footage of this elusive creature in its natural habitat was captured by a zoologist Tsunemi Kubodera, from Japan's National Science Museum, Tokyo. The video captured the sea monster off the Ogasawara Islands at a depth of 2,066 feet.
"It was shining and so beautiful," team leader Tsunemi Kubodera, a zoologist at Japan's National Museum of Nature and Science, told AFP at the time. "I was so thrilled when I saw it first hand, but I was confident we would because we rigorously researched the areas we might find it, based on past data."
Apart from their enormous size, these creatures have the largest eyes that are similar in size to a beachball. Due to their big eyes, they can peer through deep sea regions where light is non-existent. They mostly reside in cool waters, as the squids' blood does not carry sufficient oxygen in high temperatures. They are also known to have an extensive nervous system and a complex brain, reports NBC News.
In recent years, occasionally giant squids corpses have been discovered washed ashore, and scientists are spending great resources in studying these elusive creatures as they are the largest invertebrates on earth . However, these giant squids continue to remain a great mystery.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone