#architeuthidae

It's difficult to find photos of these guys living and healthy, I found a few, certainly not the best quality, but of these animals in their natural habitat attacking light lures meant to imitate jellyfish, neither squid was harmed in the filming process.

I spy a giant eye-- the eye of a giant squid! The giant squid, and its relative the colossal squid, have the largest eyes of any animal. Their eyes measure over 25 cm (10 in) in diameter, and are perfect for seeing  in the low light of the deep ocean.

(Image: A giant squid (Architeuthis dux) approaching bait, by Tsunemi Kubodera)

Atlantic giant squid (Architeuthis dux)

The Global Kraken

The team found that the giant squid’s genetic diversity is incredibly low. Even though the individuals hailed from opposite corners of the world, they differed at less than 1 in every 100 DNA letters. For comparison, that’s 44 times less diverse than the Humboldt squid, which only lives in the eastern Pacific. In fact, the giant squid seems to be genetically narrower than any other sea-going species that scientists have tested, with the sole exception of the basking shark.

This strongly suggests that the 21 proposed species of giant squid can indeed be collapsed into one. There’s just the one global kraken—Architeuthis dux, the one-and-only original. What’s more, the population seems to have very little structure—in other words, squids that hail from nearby waters aren’t going to be genetically closer than distant individuals. The mitochondrial DNA of a Japanese squid is basically the same as that of a Floridian squid.

Why? It’s possible that the adults are wandering nomads that swim over large areas, but that seems unlikely. Chemical analyses of their beaks suggest that they stick within a relatively contained patch of ocean. The alternative is that they go a-wanderin’ as larvae and youngsters. Young marine animals are certainly capable of passively drifting over tens of thousands of kilometres on ocean currents, so it’s entirely possible that the squids do the same. These young nomads would feed on plankton and other small creatures until they became big, whereupon they’d settle down and sink to the nutrient-rich waters of the deep ocean.

New Papercraft has been published on PaperCraftSquare: Link: http://www.papercraftsquare.com/giant-squid-and-jolly-boat-papercrafts-free-download.html Paper Craft Name: Giant Squid and Jolly Boat Papercrafts Free Download Description:

Here are two very simple papercrafts, a Giant Squid and a Jolly Boat, designed by Inkjet Paper Scissors. The giant squid is a deep-ocean dwelling squid in the family Architeuthidae, represented by as many as eight species. Giant squid can grow to a tremendous size: recent estimates put the maximum size at 13 metres (43 ft) for females and 10 metres (33 ft) for males from caudal fin to the tip of the two long tentacles. The mantle is about 2 metres (6.6 ft) long, and the length of the squid excluding its tentacles is about 5 metres (16 ft). Claims of specimens measuring 20 metres (66 ft) or more have not been scientifically documented.

The jolly boat was a type of ship’s boat in use during the 18th and 19th centuries. The origins of the name is the subject of debate, but it was by the 18th century one of a number of ship’s boats, and was used mainly to ferry personnel to and from the ship, or for other small scale activities. The design continued to evolve throughout its period in service.

You can download these two paper models here: Giant Squid and Jolly Boat Papercrafts Free Download