An underwater camera at an oil and gas drilling site off the coast of Texas has captured a rare sight: an alien-like, long-armed, and "elbowed" Magnapinna squid.
The creature, caught on video by a remote-controlled device owned by the Shell Oil Company, was spotted last November roughly a mile and a half below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
Footage of the rare squid had been circulating among oil industry employees for months, but became public after a recent report in National Geographic.
"Perdido ROV Visitor, What Is It?" the email's subject line read — Perdido being the name of a Shell-owned drilling site which is located about 200 miles off Houston, Texas.
Despite the squid's apparent unflappability on camera, Magnapinna, or "big fin," squid remain largely a mystery to science.
First identified ten years ago, Magnapinna, or "big fin," has ten tentacles of equal length (as opposed to other squid species, which normally have eight short and two long tentacles), and those tentacles seem to have a visible "elbow" at a short distance from the main body.
Adult squids of this type can range from 1.5 m to 7 m in size.
Scientists are still unsure what function the elbows serve, with some suggesting they help prevent the tentacles from getting tangled when trawling for food.
The Magnapinna squid has never been filmed at a drilling site before, and has only been caught on camera a few times.
The discovery indicates how little we know about life in the Earth's largest ecosystem.
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Technorati tags: Science
The creature, caught on video by a remote-controlled device owned by the Shell Oil Company, was spotted last November roughly a mile and a half below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
Footage of the rare squid had been circulating among oil industry employees for months, but became public after a recent report in National Geographic.
"Perdido ROV Visitor, What Is It?" the email's subject line read — Perdido being the name of a Shell-owned drilling site which is located about 200 miles off Houston, Texas.
Despite the squid's apparent unflappability on camera, Magnapinna, or "big fin," squid remain largely a mystery to science.
First identified ten years ago, Magnapinna, or "big fin," has ten tentacles of equal length (as opposed to other squid species, which normally have eight short and two long tentacles), and those tentacles seem to have a visible "elbow" at a short distance from the main body.
Adult squids of this type can range from 1.5 m to 7 m in size.
Scientists are still unsure what function the elbows serve, with some suggesting they help prevent the tentacles from getting tangled when trawling for food.
The Magnapinna squid has never been filmed at a drilling site before, and has only been caught on camera a few times.
The discovery indicates how little we know about life in the Earth's largest ecosystem.
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Other science stuff to read:
Technorati tags: Science
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