Just yesterday, Japanese fishermen caught a 6m long giant squid, and it lived for a few hours before expiring. Here’s a video of the rare beastie swimming about, with shots of the tragic corpse afterwards.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Being human beings, of course, it never occurred to them to just let it go.
It was probably already doomed. Being brought up from a great depth to the surface is hard on most organisms.
It did look pretty lethargic in the video, beautiful, but without much time left.
That makes me sad.
It was beautiful. But let’s hope we can learn more about these wonderful creatures from it’s passing.
Discovery channel has some cool vid of live giant squid in situ from a sub. It would be cool if they could critter cam one.
#6 ISTR they tried to put cameras on some squid (humbolt?) and the other squid exterminated every on with a camera on. A lesson for Google Glass wearers!
From PZ:
Yes, many deep ocean creatures brought up to surface basically get a massive case of the bends – dissolved gases bubbling out of solution in body fluids due to the large and rapid change in pressure, which makes for a rather slow, certain and horrible way to die. Even returning it back to the depths in a hurry wouldn’t have helped it, sadly.
If the post-mortem pictures were taken just after death, it is astonishing how rapidly the body deteriorated, with the epidermis peeling off to create that familiar mottled appearance of dead cephalopod so quickly. Does that beautiful red skin color of the living squid disappear instantly after death?
@amphiox 9
The red color is from chromatophores. It’s flesh is more or less the more bleached color you see in the post mortem. When alive squid, octopi, and cuttlefish can open and close various colored chromatophores to create various patterns.