Named for the Humboldt Current off Peru, where the species was first found, the Humboldt squid can weigh up to 100 pounds. Its body may measure up to 7 feet long, with the mantle, which houses its internal organs, constituting a little over half the length, and its eight arms and two tentacles, bristling with suction cups, making up the rest. The squid feeds at night, its enormous eyes allowing it to see in the dark.

The squid’s two tentacles are remarkably fast and elastic. They can lash out from among the arms to grapple startled prey, holding them fast with clusters of suckers. As the tentacles retract, they draw the fish into the arms, which wrestle the prey to the squid’s mouth and hold it there as the squid tears its food with the razor-sharp edges of its parrotlike beak. "It’s like they are sucking the animal right in," Gilly says of the speed with which squid demolish their prey. "But they leave the bone. I don’t believe they have the jaw muscles to crush through it. Fishermen have been bitten by the squid, but I have never heard of a serious accident."

Humboldt squid can feed with amazing speed, even stripping clean a hooked fish before an angler can reel it, says Roger Hanlon, senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The fiercest of all the cephalopods, a group that comprises squid, octopus and cuttlefish, [b]the Humboldt is notoriously cannibalistic[/b]. "As soon as one of their fellow squids gets hooked, and they can see it is caught or behaving differently, they attack it and start chomping away" Hanlon says.
Fact

Ancient Creatures
Squid are a type of mollusk. Their ancestors swam the seas some 400 million years ago, long before fish or land animals existed.

Here are a few sea monster stories. Some of these are unconfirmed reports, but they are good examples of the these type of tales:



Off the coast of Ireland on July 30th, 1915, the German submarine U-28 torpedoed the British ship Iberian. It went down rapidly, stern first. As the crew of the U-28 watched there was a large explosion that sent water and wreckage a hundred feet into the air. A "gigantic sea animal" was thrown to the surface and remained visible for about fifteen seconds before it sank. It was shaped like a sixty foot long crocodile with webbed feet.

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Excerpt from the log of the ship General Coole, around 1780:
"A very large snake passed the ship. It was 3 or 4 feet in circumference. The back was of light color and the belly yellow." - S.H. Saxby, Master Mariner, Bouchurch, Isle of Wright.

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In 1808 an Australian three-masted bark was attacked by a sea monster that, "had climbed across bow and bitten or chewed, one of the hands." It's eyes were the size of a "warrior's shield." The attack continued until the captain went below and returned with guns. He fired them into the animal's eyes and the monster returned to the ocean.
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On December 7th, 1905 at about 10:15 am the oceanographic research yacht, Valhalla, was cruising off the coast of Florida and a "large fin, or frill, sticking out of the water," was spotted. The frill was six feet in length and projected almost two feet out of the water. "A great neck rose out of the water in front of the frill," noted Mr. Meade-Waldo, a scientist on board. The neck appeared to be about the thickness of a man's body. The creature moved its head and neck from side to side in a peculiar manner.
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Three days after the Valhalla incident the Happy Warrior, a merchant sailing ship, reported a "sea snake of great magnitude appeared off our port bow. Was several lengths of our ship. Had long neck. Sounded after few minutes. Estimated speed six knots." The Happy Warrior was cruising only 80 miles from where the Valhalla sighted it's creature.
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A sea serpent, 45 feet long and 15 inches in diameter, was reported off the coast of Maine by Captain George Little in 1780:
"I was lying in Round Pond, in Broad Bay, in a public armed ship. At sunrise, I discovered a large serpent, or sea monster, coming down the bay. It was on the surface of the water. The cutter was manned and armed. I went myself in the boat. We proceeded after the serpent. When within a hundred feet, the mariners were ordered to fire on him. Before they could make ready, the serpent dove."
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A U.S. Navy nuclear submarine left it's home port to start it's patrol. Mysteriously the boat's delicate sonar mechanism failed without warning only a few days into the voyage. The sonar was so critical to the sub's operations that the boat was forced to return to port for repairs.
Examination of the sonar revealed that the rubber-like outer cover of the device had been torn off. Embedded in the tattered remains were enormous hooks. Scientists determined that these hooks, several times larger than had ever been seen before, were from a giant squid that had apparently attacked the sub, thinking it was a whale.
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Toward the end of World War I the German submarine UB-85 was caught on the surface, during the day, and sunk by a British patrol boat. The crew abandoned the sub and was picked up by the British. The U-boat commander, Captain Krech was questioned about why he had been cruising on the surface and he told this tale:
The sub had been recharging batteries at night on the surface when without any kind of warning a "strange beast" began to climb aboard from the sea. "This beast had large eyes, set in a horny sort of skull. It had a small head, but with teeth that could be seen glistening in the moonlight." The animal was so large that it forced the U-boat to list greatly to starboard. The captain feared an open hatch would drop below the waterline, flooding the sub and sinking it.
"Every man on watch began firing a sidearm at the beast," Krech continued. The animal had hold of the forward gun mount and would not let go.
The battle continued until the animal dropped back into the sea. In the struggle, though, the forward deck plating had been damaged and the sub could no longer submerge. "That is why you were able to catch us on the surface," the Captain concluded.

Pierrelatte, France - [b]As long as a tourist bus and with jaws big enough to pick up a cow, "Sarcosuchus imperator" lived 110 million years ago and was surely the biggest, meanest crocodile to ever roam the Earth.[/b]This week its scales-and-blood likeness was unveiled by the man who first identified and named the amphibious predator based on fossil remains found in Niger more than 40 years ago."It is impressive to finally see this animal in the flesh - excuse me, I mean in resin," said a smiling Philippe Taquet, a paleontologist at the Museum of Natural History in Paris.Measuring 12m from snout to tail, and weighing in at 10 tons, Sarco - as the beast is known among dinosaur buffs - undoubtedly chomped on big fish and small dinosaurs, dragging them into the tropical rivers that once criss-crossed what is today the Sahara.The reconstruction of the animal by the French company Ophys required 1 800 hours of work and 750kg of resin, and was undertaken under the watchful eye of paleontologist France de Lapparent de Broin, who co-authored with Taquet the first scientific article on Sarco in 1966.Sarco's new home will be the Crocodile Farm, an wildlife park with 400 of the pre-historic reptile's modern cousins, along with an assortment of giant turtles.

Marine Flatworms from the Indo Pacific Ocean-Maldives, Seychelles, Mauritius

Worm Lovelies

Polyclad flatworms are soft, juicy, and delicate coral-reef dwellers. To avoid predation, many have evolved brilliantly hued coloration. It’s a trait that often signals a critter is toxic, as many of these worms indeed are. Alas, their bright skins are likely not well appreciated by members of their own species, owing to very poor eyesight.

Komodo dragons can kill animals as big as goats and have even been known to attack humans.

These creatures, which can reach three metres long and weigh up to 150 kilograms, are the largest living land lizards.

The museum also invited children born in 1997 to join the party, offering cake, presents, and a documentary film screening.



The tortoise—named after the Roman god of doors, beginnings, and endings—is the result of the same genetic anomaly that gives rise to conjoined twins in humans. Two embryos began to develop, but the process stopped partway, leaving both heads attached to one body.



Such creatures rarely survive in the wild, experts say, but can thrive in captivity.