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- NEW YORK - After sitting
for more than a year in a metal storage tank, a dead, floppy, 250-pound
giant squid is finally ready for public eyes at New York City's Natural
History Museum.
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- American Museum of Natural History The museum's specimen
measures 26 feet and weighs 250 pounds
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- "We're happy to say the squid has been unveiled,"
said Steve Reiche of the Museum of Natural History.
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- It's been longer than a year since the most complete
giant squid specimen ever collected in the U.S. arrived from New Zealand
in a packing case marked "seafood." Last March, curators thought
the specimen might finally be ready for viewing and Dr. Neil Landman, lead
curator of invertebrates at the museum, had a plan. He explained the procedure
much like a decorator might describe a new living room arrangement.
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- "The squid will go here," he said, motioning
with both arms toward a shiny new, $17,000 tank, "but first we'll
move it to the floor on a tarp. Once we sew on the two tentacles, we will
lift it over there," he said, pointing toward a large elevator to
the left. "After we place the squid inside the tank, we'll arrange
it and pour in the alcohol."
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- Landman then paused, his eyes darting to assess the task.
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- "I think it sounds much easier than it will actually
be," said his colleague and fellow invertebrate curator, Dr. Paula
Mikkelsen.
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- Giant Squid Frustrates Again
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- In fact, the task did prove more problematic than expected.
Days before the planned March grand opening of the museum's giant squid
exhibit, scientists noticed a glitch in the squid's custom-made, 10-foot,
Plexiglas holding tank. The tank went back to the manufacturer for adjustments
and plans to put the squid on display were postponed.
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- The long delay in the exhibition at the American Museum
of Natural History falls in line with a string of frustrated giant squid
projects in recent years. A team led by Smithsonian zoologist Clyde Roper
recently finished an expedition in New Zealand where they had hoped to
catch the first glimpse of a giant squid in the wild. Despite making eight
record-deep dives of four hours each in a suspended, underwater capsule,
Roper failed to see a single giant squid sucker.
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- It was the group's third try in three years. In their
first attempt, Roper's team attached a camera to the side of a sperm whale
hoping it would encounter a giant squid. In a second bid, the scientists
sent out a robotic scout deep in the ocean to catch a glimpse of the creature.
The attempts produced plenty of suspenseful television coverage "
but no giant squid.
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- It appears one of the most spectacular deep ocean creatures
is determined to remain elusive.
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- Very Large Mystery
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- "Virtually every question about the giant squid's
natural history remains to be answered," said Richard Ellis, author
of the book, The Search for the Giant Squid. "We don't know how it
swims, how fast it swims. We don't know if it's a powerful predator or
a passive feeder. We don't even know exactly where it lives."
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- The lack of knowledge about the largest creature without
a backbone stems from the fact that no one has seen a giant squid in the
wild. All of the some 200 specimens ever obtained have either been snagged
off the coasts of Newfoundland and New Zealand in deep water fishing nets,
or have washed up dead and often half-eaten on ocean shores.
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- The largest specimen ever seen washed ashore in New Zealand
in the late 1800's. The one-ton creature measured 60 feet long from the
tip of its mantle to the ends of its tentacles. Its black eyes, speculated
to be the largest in the animal kingdom, were as big as soccer balls. The
massive carcass was eventually chopped up for dog meat.
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- By comparison, the New York specimen, which was pulled
up by a fishermen's net off New Zealand's coast, is relatively "small"
at 26 feet and 250 pounds. Landman suspects the squid's smaller size may
be partly due to its gender. Among giant squids, it seems, females are
the heftier sex.
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- According to Mikkelsen, it is logical that female giant
squid specimens are larger since squids belong to the family of mollusks
and female mollusks commonly outsize their male counterparts.
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- Bad Reputation
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- From its temporary tank in the museum hallway, the New
York squid appeared the yellowish color of aged cheese. But, when a senior
museum technician reached in and pulled up a rubbery tentacle, remnants
of the original brick-red hue of the animal became apparent. Lining the
underside of the tentacle, were quarter-sized suckers, each rimmed with
rows of small, very sharp teeth.
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- Evidence shows the giant squid wields these razor-sharp
teeth against sperm whales. Sucker scars discovered on the outer skin of
sperm whales have led scientists to suspect that titan-sized battles between
the two creatures occur deep in the ocean. Scraps of the giant squid are
frequently found in the stomachs of sperm whales and suggest that the sea
mammals prey on the gargantuan squid.
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- In 1997 Australian scientists even suggested that sex
among giant squid might be alarmingly violent. Dr. Mark Norman of the University
of Melbourne presented evidence that male squids fertilize their mates
by grabbing the females, cutting them with their beaks and then injecting
semen into the wounds. Because no one has been able to actually witness
the giant squid's mating habits, the theory remains unproven.
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- Novelists have long mythologized the giant squid as a
fierce ocean creature. In his 1851 work, Moby Dick, Herman Melville describes
a creature with "long arms radiating from its center and curling and
twisting like a nest of anacondas." And, in one of the giant squid's
most famous appearances, Jules Verne describes how a tentacle belonging
to a "squid of colossal dimensions" seizes Captain Nemo in the
1861 novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
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- Despite its dark reputation, it's impossible to know
if the giant squid is indeed an aggressive animal. In fact, squid expert
Ellis suspects the oversized mollusk has been misjudged.
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- "Just because the giant squid has a lot of scary
equipment doesn't necessarily mean it's more aggressive than its smaller
relatives," he said. "All the ideas about how it lives have to
be speculation."
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- Pickling in Storage
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- Unless scientists are eventually successful in seeing
a giant squid in the wild, one of the best insights into the mysterious
animal may be lying in an alcohol solution at the New York museum. The
curators have affectionately named the pickled sea creature "Squidzilla"
and plan to keep the specimen on exhibit for two years. After that, Landman
says there's a "whole line" of scientists anxiously bidding to
dissect the creature.
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- Until then, the challenge lies in keeping the squid in
one piece. Two of the squid's tentacles were ripped off during its entanglement
in the fishing net and Mikkelsen had to take a needle and thread and literally
sew the limbs back onto the body.
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- She planned to use a large crochet needle and cotton
thread. The only remaining question was what kind of stitch to use.
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- "We could try the box stitch," suggested Landman.
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- "No no," said Mikkelsen. "The tentacle
stitch."
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