Colossal Squid!

The national museum located here in Wellington, Te Papa, has just acquired the carcass of a colossal squid caught off the coast of Antarctica. You can watch the web-feed of the dissection and learn all about it at:
http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/TePapa/English/CollectionsAndResearch/CollectionAreas/NaturalEnvironment/Molluscs/ColossalSquid/

They have rotating claws on their suckers which is totally unique among cephalopods (and kind of creepy). The figure from National Geographic shows how big they get, too - longer than a school bus!

The dissection is super exciting, though, because so little is known about them since they live in the deep ocean. How is an animal that's 12-14 meters long still a mystery? Ah, la belle mer.

The squid was frozen to be brought here and is just now being thawed, so it's been dubbed a "squidicle". The news footage has been quite a chuckle, because since the squid was frozen in a crate it's now a cube. A colossal squid cube - ha! So much for the awesome mystique of the Kraken. Tennyson was inspired to write the poem below by thoughts of the awesome mythical beast of the sea, thought to bring down ships. Note that the poem ends with a hint that the Kraken would only be seen at the end of days, when "the latter fire heats the deep"...

The Kraken by Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die