Creepy Cannibals: Squid Have No Qualms About Eating Their Own Kind
Laura Geggel 2016 (Live Science Article)
Published on Aug 31, 2016
In the depths of the deep sea a squid has captured a much-needed meal with two specialized feeding tentacles bearing suckers and large hooks. The hooks allow the squid to secure prey that can sometimes be larger than themselves, but the downside of wrestling with a meal this large is that the squid cannot swim away from the approaching lights of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Nearly 1,000 meters above on the research ship, scientists watch a live video feed from the ROV’s camera. Like any observations in nature, they never know what they will find, so when an opportunity presents itself, it is filmed, annotated, and added to the MBARI video archive. With the vehicle hovering a few meters away from the preoccupied squid, the scientists use the camera’s telephoto lens to zoom in. What they find is a Gonatus squid, and what it has in its grasp is apparently another squid of the very same species.
Laura Geggel 2016 (Live Science Article)
Published on Aug 31, 2016
In the depths of the deep sea a squid has captured a much-needed meal with two specialized feeding tentacles bearing suckers and large hooks. The hooks allow the squid to secure prey that can sometimes be larger than themselves, but the downside of wrestling with a meal this large is that the squid cannot swim away from the approaching lights of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Nearly 1,000 meters above on the research ship, scientists watch a live video feed from the ROV’s camera. Like any observations in nature, they never know what they will find, so when an opportunity presents itself, it is filmed, annotated, and added to the MBARI video archive. With the vehicle hovering a few meters away from the preoccupied squid, the scientists use the camera’s telephoto lens to zoom in. What they find is a Gonatus squid, and what it has in its grasp is apparently another squid of the very same species.
