Architeuthis is a giant squid that lives in the sea. This sea dweller scares people already many centuries. A deep-sea squid belongs to the family Architeuthidae. To see it, thousands of researchers are willing to give very much.
There is nothing strange in fact that scientists of the whole world put an incredible amount of effort, the purpose of which is the study of this amazing animal.
For the first time on pictures architeuthis appeared in 2004. In the photo, which was taken, a large squid was in the normal sphere – the water. On the pictures you can see that it has really been incredible.
Places of distribution
Architeuthis, which has a very large size lives in our oceans which are scattered across the planet. Very often they were met by the British Isles in the oceans of South Africa, near Norway and Newfoundland. And the biggest were spotted near New Zealand, Australia, and near the Japanese Islands. Much less in the tropics and the polar regions.
These marine birds felt they needed places where the depth reaches three meters or more, there are cases when the animal was discovered at a depth of a thousand meters.
Food of deep-sea molluscs
Hunt is a huge specimen alone. These animals eat mainly fish and shellfish, which live at great depths in the ocean. To catch prey, he uses his tentacles. To swallow a victim, he divides it into small pieces by the teeth and tongue, before capturing it with its suction cups. Before entering the esophagus, the food comes in huge beak of the squid.
These large animals are isolated lives. Proof of this is fishermen who work in different parts of the world. They often got from their networks of architeuthis, but always one at a time. More than one large shellfish in the same fishing nets have never seen.
It would seem that such a huge squid, other hunting animals will not. But scientists say that the lives of these individuals can threaten sperm whale, there are cases where they were hunted sharks and whales. Young offspring of a huge mollusk is not against to eat other large fish, but it until it a little. When the offspring grows up, it becomes very large size and strikes fear all around.
Everyone who sees such an animal will be shocked from its size. The length of the largest squid has sixteen and a half meters, it was recorded by scientists. From this we can conclude that the giant squid is one of the largest representatives of the invertebrates.
It should be notedthat the mantle of females much more than males. If you take the average, then a long robe, reaching almost three meters.
Anatomy, how many tentacles does a squid have
The study of such a huge animal it is very interesting, however, it is life-threatening.
We must not forget that this animal has a tail:
- mantle;
- eight tentacles:
- two tentacles, which are designed for catching prey.
Shellfish architeuthis of the large tentacles, among all cephalopods. The tentacles of this animal, make up a large part of its length.
This is a huge animal can be more of the sperm whale, according to size. But keep in mind that the sperm whale has a large mass, and squid is light in weight, thanks to its tentacles. But despite this, there are individuals that weigh several hundred pounds.
The squid is the largest resident among the molluscs in the seas and oceans. On all the tentacles that the squid can see a lot of the cups that are in the shape of a hemisphere. They may have a different diameter from two to six inches. Through such suction the animal grab and hold prey. Very often the sperm whale’s head can be seen a large round scars that remain after the attack, a huge clam.
Tentacles big architeuthis divided into three sections, which have such nazvy:
- brush;
- wrist;
- fingers.
Very tight suction cups placed on the wrist, there is paid out once a more than six rows. Brushes are almost at the end of the tentacles. They are much wider than wrist. On the brush two rows of suction cups, but they are large.
The beak of the clam is located in the center of the circle with tentacles. It is very similar to a parrot’s beak.
And also, on the body of the squid has fins. Thanks to them, a large animal moves, although they are small in size. They are over the mantle. Like all cephalopods, the squid can move the jet way. Is this the way the typesetting of water in the mantle, and then expelling it through a siphon. In this way, the squid canmove very quickly.
Used for breathing gills located in the mantle.
Nervous system architeuthis highly organized and the most complex in the body is the brain. This part of the body, researchers are studying very carefully.
Conspicuous hallmark of giant clam are considered its large eyes. They are about twenty-seven inches, and the pupil nine. Such big eyes there is no other animal. Through such eyes, the squid sees the lesser glow of the organisms that are under water. Another interesting fact is that it’s a marine animal to recognize gray.
Meat big squid people are not consumed, because his body is ammonium chloride, so the squid have zero buoyancy.
These sea creatures are very well oriented under water, for this they have special organs, called statocyst. In these organs placed statolitov used to determine the age of squid. The statolitov played a major role in the study of squid, as they have great value to scientists. The material for research, researchers often take out from the belly of sperm whales who are lucky enough to swallow a giant squid. In the belly of sperm whales beaks of architeuthis not digested, because of this scientists have got a lot of useful information.
The size of architeuthis
As mentioned above, squid is the largest mollusk among the inhabitants of the seas and oceans, which exists in our time. And once, many hundreds of years ago, there were clams, are much larger, but they have not survived to our time.
People who had to see such a monster, is often exaggerated its size this often comes from fear. Today there is a lot of information that there are individuals who have a length of up to twenty meters and more, but no evidence for this.
Scientists have studied more than a hundred thirty species of squid. The results that were obtained and existing photos, allow to conclude that architeuthis the biggest squid of all. According to recent studies, you can see that the biggest long mantle of the squid is 22,25 meters, the biggest weight – 275 pounds.
Reproduction features of
On the breeding of the huge animals, very little is known. There is speculation that the squid, which reached three years to become sexually Mature. And also, it is known that females lay eggs long which ranges from 0.5 millimeters to 1.4 millimeters, and a width of from 0.3 to 0.7 millimeters. About how these fertilized eggs, is unknown. But there is speculation that when mating squid, the male puts the reproductive organ from the mantle and throws spermatophore.
On the shores of new Zealand was conducted very significant research on the study of young squid, but important information could not obtain. After that it was decided to study a large clam in special tanks, this should give a lot of new and useful information.
