On April 20, local time, on the Uku Coast of Kohama City, Fukui Prefecture, Japan, fishermen found a large squid, according to measurements, this squid body is more than 3 meters long, weighs about 80 kilograms, is a deep-sea creature "King Squid", was still alive when it was found, and has been sent to the Echizen Matsushima Aquarium.
To put it another way, the mainland has just rescued a stranded 19-meter sperm whale, and the sperm whale's food includes the king squid, and it is not known whether the two of them appeared on the coast in turn, whether it was a coincidence or another reason.
In fact, this is not the first time that large deep-sea creatures have appeared off the coast of Japan, as early as 2016, a giant squid more than 3 meters long appeared on the coast of Akita Prefecture, Japan.
At the time, seismologists believed that squid living in the deep sea had died or were linked to seafloor earthquakes, and experts also said that the seabed might be undergoing "mutations."
Coincidentally, the day after the giant appeared, there was a real earthquake in the area. So the question is, this time the deep-sea creature king squid has been found on the coast of Japan, will it be a precursor to the earthquake?
King Squid
In Japanese, people will call cuttlefish and squid collectively squid, and the king squid is not actually Chinese sense of the squid, they are actually the creatures of the "king squid family", also known as the "king squid", but people are used to call it the king squid, so we still use the title of the king squid in the following.
If you don't distinguish between octopus, squid and squid, you can simply look at the chart below, where the typical feature of squid is that it has a pair of more prominent antennae.
(In the picture below, the green border is the king squid, and the red border is the king squid.) ）
The King Squid is the prototype for many sea monsters, and in the past, sailors described them as monsters capable of killing crews, using their stout and powerful brachiopods to drag ships into the water and then attack the crew.
But in fact, this is just a legend, is a manifestation of the crew's exaggeration, although the body length of more than 7 meters has been found, but its body length is mainly because of the length of the tentacles, if there is no largest two tentacles, its torso and other tentacles the total length is only 3.5 meters, not enough to drag the ship into the water.
In 2004, Japanese scientists accidentally photographed the figure of the king squid in the ocean at a depth of 900 meters while tracking the sperm whale.
In the 30s of the last century, former Soviet scientists also observed the scene of sperm whales fighting with the king squid in the Atlantic region, although the king squid has been extending its tentacles to block the breathing holes of the sperm whale, but the sperm whale, with its body size advantage, repeatedly threw it away from the tentacles and finally swallowed it.
On some stranded sperm whales, scars left by the king squid suction cup suction cup have also been found, which proves that the sperm whale will prey on the king squid.
After the sperm whale eats, some soft substances are easily digested, but there are also some hard objects that are difficult to digest, some of which will be vomited out, but some of which will enter the intestine.
Although whales are mammals, they are different from terrestrial mammals in that they excrete feces in the form of fly flocculents, which is difficult to excrete solid feces. Some indigestible solid substances remain in the intestine.
The sperm whale's intestines will desperately absorb the moisture of this part of the substance, and then secrete a waxy substance to envelop it, so that these substances accumulate more and more, and eventually form a "ambergris".
That is to say, the reason why sperm whales can produce ambergris is also partly due to the contribution of the king squid, but not all sperm whales can produce ambergris, about 1% of sperm whales have it in the body.
Is the emergence of deep-sea creatures a precursor to an earthquake?
King squid usually lives in the deep sea of 200-700 meters, in general, king squid rarely appears on the beach, but if it does appear, it is not always a precursor to earthquakes.
In fact, some of the king squid floating on the coast have been found around the world, such as:
In 2007, an 8-meter-long king squid was found on the ocean beach off the west coast of Tasmania, Australia;
In 2020, a 4-meter-long king squid appeared off the coast of South Africa, and the remains are very well preserved, and scientists are very interested in it.
In 2021, Japan found the remains of 2 king squids in about 1 month.
It is worth noting that not all the king squid appeared, and earthquakes occurred in the local area. Although there are some deep-sea earthquakes that can affect deep-sea life, there are many possibilities for a single deep-sea organism to appear on the coast.
For example, some elderly and frail individuals, who have difficulty controlling their bodies after foraging near shallow sea areas, may be washed towards the coast by ocean currents, which is also one of the reasons why whales are stranded.
It is also possible that they were injured by the nets, and after escaping from the nets, they were washed off the coast by ocean currents.
Another possibility is that he came to the shallow sea for food and accidentally ran aground on the shore.
Because there are many reasons for the appearance of deep-sea creatures on the coast, and not all deep-sea organisms appear on the coast, earthquakes have occurred, so the emergence of deep-sea organisms does not mean that an earthquake is about to occur. The same is true of the appearance of the king squid, and no association between the king squid and the earthquake has been found.
In addition, even if there is an earthquake in the deep sea, in fact, the impact on human beings is limited, on the one hand, because earthquakes on the earth are very common, about 5 million times a year, but the vast majority of earthquakes are not high in magnitude, and the impact on people is not large.
On the other hand, the deep sea is far from land, and even earthquakes (as long as they do not cause destructive tsunamis) have a limited impact on buildings on land.
Therefore, the appearance of the deep-sea creature king squid off the coast of Japan is not worth our panic, on the contrary, its appearance gives us an additional way to understand the king squid, and scientists will help us further understand the king squid after studying it.