The King Squid was washed up in Cape Town, South Africa
On August 16, the body of a tragic white king squid was washed up on the rocky shores of Scarborough Beach in Cape Town, South Africa, with a total length of 4.3 meters, many broken wrists, many worn on the body, and the large eyeballs of the dinner plate stared unwillingly round. This is the second king squid in the area to be washed up on the beach this year.
On 30 April, a 3.5-meter-long king squid was found, and its body was studied and made into specimens.
Despite their size, in the population of the king squid, these two are just little guys, because the largest king squid ever built is 13 meters long, and although it is not as good as the marketing number says, it is more than enough to leave some wounds on the sperm whale. Some studies even believe that the king squid can be up to 20 meters long, but no one has ever found such a large, mythical story does not count.
What is the cause of death?
From the outside, the skin of this king squid was severely worn, the tentacles were also broken a lot, and the muscle sheaths containing the organs were exposed under the broken skin, which emitted an eerie white under the sunlight. The skin damage may have been caused by the wear and tear of the rock during the rush ashore.
Dylan Clarke, a marine scientist and curator at the Iziko South Africa Museum, believes that the king squid may have ventured into shallow, near-shore waters for some reason to feed, and then was hit by the ship's propeller, cutting off its tentacles and cutting off its vitality.
What was the exact cause of death of this king squid? It is not known that it needs to be inspected internally.
Precious samples
As we all know, the king squid, despite its huge size, is still a species that is little known to humans because it inhabits the deep sea and has strange movements, so each specimen is crucial.
The City of Cape Town's Fisheries Authority has collected tissue samples from the body of the king squid, which will soon be examined and studied by researchers at the Iziko South Africa Museum. Scientists can use these samples to sequence the DNA of the king squid and perform chemical analysis, which in doing so can detect the presence of contaminants and stable isotopes in its body, a non-radioactive chemical element that has a different number of neutrons in its nucleus. So analyzing its isotopes will provide a lot of information about this king squid, including its eating habits, as well as its digestive system.
According to the King Squid's Shizune, a small mineralized substance in the sensory organs of the head, as well as its reproductive organs, scientists can speculate on its age.
King Squid
Legends of giant sea monsters have been common for centuries, and according to the situation described at the time, it was clearly the Great King Squid. It was not until 1857 that the Danish zoologist Japetus Steenstrup synthesized these legends and, based on the actual discovery of the remains of the great king squid, confirmed that there was indeed some kind of giant squid lurking in the ocean, and he named it Archieuthis dux, a scientific name that is still used today.
But it wasn't until 2004 that humans captured the first king squid that was still alive. It was photographed by zoologist Dr. Tsunemi Kubodera near the Ogasawara Islands in southern Japan. At that time, the researchers threw a bait line and a camera into a depth of 900 meters and unexpectedly photographed it. Coincidentally, the tentacle of the king squid was strangled by the decoy line, and when it broke free, the tentacle broke off, and when the camera was recycled, the tentacle was still twisting.
The king squid's inaccessible habitat makes it difficult to study, and data obtained from sperm whale diving behavior and trawl specimens suggest that the king squid may live in deep seas of 300 to 1,000 meters, and possibly even deeper. They are widely distributed in the world's oceans, but tend to avoid tropical and polar regions.
The king squid looks like a magnified squid, it has 8 tentacles, these tentacles on the suction cups can reach 5 cm in diameter, and the suction cups have sharp serrated chitin rings; If you are sucked by this suction cup, you must lose a piece of meat. Sperm whales feed on the king squid, and although the king squid can't beat the sperm whale at all, it is still common to use this suction cup to leave wounds for sperm whales.
After examining the stomach of the king squid, various deep-sea fish and the remains of their kind were found, and it is not known why they cannibalize, possibly because of the limited food in the deep sea.
Most cephalopods have a short lifespan, some as short as 6 months, and most about a year. The lifespan of the king squid is conservatively estimated to be 5-6 years, which may be the trick to their huge size.
postscript
There are too many secrets in the deep sea, and we who have a shallow understanding of the king squid are even more peeping leopards in the deep sea.
But this feeling of the unknown is really fantastic, the vastness of the universe makes people feel powerless, and we seem to be very passive all the time; But the deep sea is right on Earth, it is a foreseeable limited territory, so I believe that sooner or later, human beings can spy the secrets of the deep sea, although I will certainly not live that day.