On April 20, local time in Japan, in a certain sea area of Fukui Prefecture, a large king squid with a body length of more than 3 meters and about 80 kilograms was found drifting in shallow water. King squid generally lives in the deep sea, and floating on the shore is extremely rare. Some people say that this is an ominous omen, and there should be natural disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes soon.
At present, this king squid has been sent to the Matsushima Aquarium, and the staff of the museum said that it will not be made into a specimen, but will be exhibited to the public. Compared with the mainland's practice of rescuing stranded sperm whales a few days ago and spending 20 hours to assist them to return to the sea, Japan's practice cannot help but be lamented.
Some people will ask after looking at the picture, is this really not the squid getting bigger?
At first glance, it seems to look really quite similar, but in fact, there is a big difference between the two, the squid as a whole is like an oval, which is relatively hard to touch and the squid is like a bullet, which is softer to the touch. The fins of the squid are on both sides of the body, while the fins of the squid only grow at the ends. Squids also unleash "ink" like octopuses when they are not in danger to interfere with enemy vision. But squid tastes much better than squid.
King Squid
The king squid is actually a very mysterious creature, very rarely found, the king squid lives in the depths of the ocean below 1000 meters, the current scientists recorded that the largest king squid has nearly 13 meters, it is said that the length of the king squid can grow to 20 meters, 20 meters is about equal to the height of 6 floors, who wants to see, giant phobia have to be committed, anyway is very long.
The King Squid has the largest eye in the animal kingdom, with a diameter of about 40 centimeters. These massive organs allow them to detect objects in the dark depths of most other animals that see nothing.
Like other squid species, they have eight arms and two longer feeding tentacles that help them feed food into their beak-shaped mouths. Their diet may include fish, shrimp, etc., and some people think they will also eat small whales.
One thing drops one thing. The king squid is also the favorite food of sperm whales. Scientists have found the huge squid beak in the stomach of stranded sperm whales, as well as the remains of other undigested king squid. Sperm whales can generally grow up to 20 meters, and the stranded sperm whales found in Zhejiang a few days ago are also 19 meters.
Therefore, in the depths of the seabed, the scene of the king squid vs. the sperm whale also occurs from time to time, of course, it is not the kind of showdown that we imagine, generally speaking, the sperm whale can hang the king squid.
The king squid is small in number and often lives in the deep sea, so it is difficult to find its traces. King squid is believed to swim in the world's oceans, and based on the beaches they washed, it can be seen that they rarely appear in the tropics and polar regions. They usually wash over the coasts of New Zealand and the Pacific islands, and this distribution suggests that they prefer mainland and islands.
Does the 20-meter King Squid really exist?
The fact that king squids are in the deep sea makes them particularly difficult to study, and scientists know almost everything about them from carcasses washed up on the beach or dragged in by fishermen. In fact, so far, scientists have photographed and captured the living king squid is not 20 meters long.
In late 1873, Harvey, a priest in Newfoundland, bought a dead king squid from an accidental fisherman for $10. Harvey immediately displayed it in his living room, hanging his head and arms over the sponge bath for easy observation. This is the first ever complete specimen of giant squid,
In 2004, Japanese scientists took the world's first photo of the living king squid in the deep sea of 900 meters according to the predation trail of sperm whales, but from this photo alone, it is not obvious how big it is, the squid only left a 5-meter-long tentacle, and experts speculate that it is about 8 meters long.
His team also photographed a king squid attacking bait squid near the Ogasawara Islands, south of Tokyo, in December 2006. As can be seen from the picture, the size of the king squid is hundreds of times larger than that of the squid.
In 2012, he captured a video of the king squid, who used a submarine to capture the king squid that was hunting at a depth of more than 600 meters, and it pulled the bait all the way to the deep sea, and the whole process was photographed. But unfortunately, this is the king squid is not yet underage, so it is not much bigger, the torso is only 3 meters, far from 20 meters.
Someone once measured the suction cup diameter on the carcass of a sperm whale to 40c meters, while the diameter of the 17-meter-long king squid was only about 9.5c meters, so it is speculated that the sperm whale chewed the king squid up to 70 meters.
This is equivalent to the reincarnation of the mythical North Sea Demon, but this speculation is not necessarily reliable, because as the sperm whale grows, the suction cup mark will also become larger, and the length of the king squid is still unknown.
Although no king squid of more than 20 meters has been found at present, some scientists have calculated the number of sperm whales preying on the king squid, there may be millions of king squid in the world, if from this number, the king squid above 20 meters should exist, there may be a larger one, but we have not found it, after all, this is a deep-sea animal.
Deep-sea animals appear in shallow seas, and there is a fear of major events in Japanese waters?
According to statistics, in March this year, there were 195 earthquakes of magnitude 4 or above in japan and around japan, and March was the most frequent earthquake in the past decade. Just the day before the squid brother appeared, there was a 5.3-magnitude earthquake in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, although Japan is an earthquake power, but the increasing number of earthquakes has affected the normal life of the people.
Some people speculate that the king squid from the deep sea is likely to have detected a natural disaster and accidentally ran to the sea. As soon as such remarks came out, the Japanese people were panicked and very worried that the tragedy of the nuclear leak caused by the tsunami would happen again.
There are many reasons why the king squid swims to the surface of the sea
Relevant experts said that this is not the first time that the king squid has appeared in Japan, last year, the bodies of two king squid were found one after another, and the figure of the king squid has also appeared in Australia, South Africa coast and other places, and there has been no natural disaster since then.
As for why the king squid appears in shallow seas? There are also many possibilities, such as the old and infirm king squid being washed to the sea by the ocean current, or the stranding caused by getting lost in the sea like a whale, and will not be able to go home for a while and a half.
There is also an inference that Japan's nuclear wastewater pollution and the frequent activities of U.S. warships have affected the marine ecological environment, causing the habitat of marine creatures such as the king squid to be greatly affected and forced to run to the shore, which is a warning of human destruction, which is not unreasonable.
All in all, there are many possibilities for the king squid to appear in shallow waters, but there is no direct connection with earthquakes, and we don't have to panic too much.