The scientists are currently inserting an endoscope with hopes of finding out what this beastie’s last meal was.
As the scientists were attempting to move the colossal squid, it became apparent how gelatinous the tissue is. We want to keep the squid as intact as possible for display, so they are reassessing how to turn it successfully.
Currently there are 6 people assisting – but it has been decided to leave the specimen upside down and fix it in place before trying to turn it over.
The measurements indicate that the mantle length is comparable to that of the 2003 specimen, also held at Te Papa, but this specimen is 195 kg heavier! The two long tentacles that the fishermen observed have shortened and shrunken considerably post mortem, giving a final total length of 4.2 metres.
It is apparent from the examination of these two specimens over the last few days that these are incredibly plastic animals, and dimensions obviously change considerably!
The beak, however, is made of hard chitonous material and not subject to shrinkage: the lower rostral beak length of the 495 kg specimen is 42.5 mm – beaks up to 49 mm have been found in sperm whale stomachs, therefore these animals must attain much much bigger sizes than this!
That’s life on squid row!
The scientists are going to get into the tank and rotate the squid. They will finally see what sort of state the squid is in.
Emma touches the smaller colossal squid
Phew-wee! Never thought I’d be saying this but…. I’m becoming a squid geek!
I’m Emma – you might’ve just seen me on the various cameras (not sure which is my best side) – I work at Te Papa and couldn’t turn down this once-in-a-lifetime invite to see THE SQUID.
My plan was also to touch it. To be honest anything with lots of legs/tentacles gives me the willies but if it’s there (and not moving is a bonus in my book) you have to touch!
It’s cold – not surprising. It’s smooth, slimy. The gills felt extremely fragile, you could hardly feel them at all other than slime. They were breaking up in my fingers. I was told that each set of gills has a heart, with the main heart close by – eat your hearts out Dr Who!
Emma holding part of the gladius
I held the gladius – it’s like a very thin, curved plastic ruler that goes through the mantle. It provides some support for the muscles but is nowhere as strong as our backbones. Its curve makes it stronger.
Emma touches the delicate gills
What I was really intrigued about was the eye-sockets. Ours are bone. Eyes are squishy and need that support – so I don’t know why I was surprised at how solid the cartilage felt – kind of like a glue gun stick before you melt it.
Emma holding part of the eye socket
Now I’m off to face my fears and let one of the scientists stick a sucker on my finger – ewwwwww
JUST DONE IT! I’ve been suckered by a sucker from the big colossal still defrosting (it fell off – honest!)
It reminded me of an eyeball that wouldn’t come off my palm – when you pull it off it makes a kissy noise. xxx
Hi all,
I have been so busy today that I haven’t had a chance to reply to many posts, so I thought I would at least say that I have never had so many birthday wishes from so many countries.
We’ll be busy for a few hours yet so I may not do the usual birthday drinks, but then this has hardly been a usual birthday!
Thanks for watching
Mark
The scientists have completed taking measurements. Olaf (above) has just been studying the caecum (gut) of the smaller colossal specimen which was thawed yesterday. It needs to go into formalin asap so we have moved the first of the three 200 litre drums of formalin into the lab. The formalin will be injected into the thicker tissue then added to the tank to make a 5% solution – the squid will remain in this for at least a month to ‘fix’.
Hi, Pamela here.
What an amazing day! I’m the interpreter for the squid exhibition which means I have to digest all the squid info to make it easy and interesting for all you squid fans out there.
We’re hoping to display the colossal squid later this year. We’ve got lots of things to work out and plan before we can do that – like how big a tank we need to make. We can’t do that until it’s completely thawed out.
Meanwhile we want to hear what you want to know about the colossal squid and what you’d like to see.
Post your comments and ideas below. We’d love to hear from you!
Dr O’Shea and Dr Kubodera are taking measurements of the colossal squid characteristics, for example measurements of the tentacle portions, the carpus (‘wrist’), manus (‘palm’ or ‘hand’), and dactylus (‘digit’ or ‘finger’). Counts of the numbers of suckers and claws . . . .
The second eye is still frozen, but is 25-27 cm in diameter.
Chromatophores under the microscope (x250).
My name is Prof. Eric Warrant from the University of Lund in Sweden (blonde hair, blue glasses), and I am here together with Prof. Dan Nilsson (also from Lund) to study the gigantic eyes of the colossal squid. These are truly amazing eyes – in the collapsed state we see here, they measure 25 cm across, but in the living animal they are probably larger, up to around 30 cm in diameter (the size of a soccer ball). These are without doubt the largest eyes that have ever been studied (and probably among the largest eyes that have existed during the history of the animal kingdom), and it is tremendously exciting for Dan and I to be here in Wellington.
The eyes of cephalopods (squid and octopus) are very much like our own, “camera eyes” that contain a single lens that focuses images onto a retina lining the concave rear surface of the eye. We have removed the lens from one eye, and as in all cephalopods, it consists of two halves. In the pictures showing two “lenses” we are in fact looking at the two halves of a single lens. They are somewhat degraded, and these two halves probably represent the higher refractive index core of a larger lens – the jelly-like coating around the lens (of lower refractive index) has most likely disappeared. When this squid was alive, the lens was almost certainly spherical and possibly of a size similar to an orange (ca. 80 – 90 mm diameter).
The “optic lobe” of each eye is the part of the brain that processes the visual information coming from the eye. Even though we have not yet had the chance to look at the optic lobe in this Colossal squid, we did have access to the optic lobe of a considerably smaller Giant squid (Architeuthis dux). Its optic lobe was the size of a small sausage – larger in size than the entire visual cortex of a human (the visual cortex is our “optic lobe”). The optic lobe was also much larger than the remainder of the Giant squid’s brain, and shows just how important vision is to these huge squid.
I suppose the question on everyone’s mind is why these squid have such enormous eyes? Firstly, by having huge eyes it is possible to have huge pupils, and a huge pupil (in our Colossal squid probably around 80 – 90 mm across) allows the eye to collect every last photon of light in the incredibly deep and dark waters where it lives (ca. 1000 m below the sea surface – human visual threshold would occur at a depth of around 500-600 m). Large eyes also allow the possibility of high spatial resolution (the ability to distinguish spatial detail), although it is possible that neural mechanisms in the optic lobe sum signals from groups of neighbouring photoreceptors, thus making the visual “pixels” larger, but also much brighter. Thus with enormous eyes, and a large and complex optic lobe, giant deep-sea squids, like the colossal squid we are studying here, have the potential for advanced vision in the profoundly dark depths where they live. This ability would be potentially useful for many tasks, including the detection of prey and predators, and for seeing each other.
Here’s an update of the schedule for today. We know the squid is taking longer to thaw than we thought so even this schedule may change.
11am Media
12.30 – we off for some lunch
2pm onwards – Filming by Discovery Channel
4pm Endoscope, move formalin drums into the room
5-6pm? Defrost continues
After that – fixing in formalin – everyone clears out as the scientists will be masked up with respirators because of the toxic fumes. We hope SquidCam will stay though.
Mark’s birthday drinks – if he’s still in the tank we’ll have one for him anyway 
who knows!
We can’t predict how long it is going to take to defrost internally so it is impossible to give exact times. The squid needs to be in the correct shape before we can start fixing its shape in formalin. They’ll start injecting it into the thickest tissues first – like the tail fin, the arms and the mantle cavity, where the internal organs are.
