Rare deep-sea creature seen walking on 13-foot-long legs
WeirdNews
It was seen 10,800 feet below the surface of the water
(Web Desk) - Footage from the depths of the Tonga Trench in the South Pacific has captured a bigfin squid (Magnapinna) walking on its 13-foot-long tentacles.
The rarely-seen creature was seen 10,800 feet (3,300 metres) below the surface of the water and was snapped by an underwater rover deployed by the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre.
Magnapinna sightings are so rare that only 20 of them have been documented to date. It is one of the deepest-dwelling squids in scientific records.
Ocean Conservancy says their fins stretch to about 90 per cent of the length of the mantle or the main body. The largest bigfin squid to be ever recorded was more than 20 feet long. It is not clear how long they can grow, but experts believe it might be way more than what current records say, up to at least 26 feet.
"Some scientists speculate they use their arms and tentacles as a spiderweb-like net to capture small prey as they swim by. They also suspect that the odd angle of their arms and tentacles (which some have compared to elbows) helps ensure the long appendages don't get tangled," the Conservancy says.
Alan Jamieson, a professor and deep-sea scientist at the University of Western Australia who collected the footage, told Live Science, "We always hope to see this type of animal."
"[Bigfin squid] are not something you would actively go looking for, they are a species that relies on us coming across them by accident."
The bigfin squid captured on video was deemed to be a young squid since its tentacles weren't as long as an adult squid. Evidence of the big squid was published in the journal Marine Biology in September.
These creatures are found at extreme depths and the deepest bigfin squid recorded was spotted around 15,400 feet deep in the Kermadec Trench in the Pacific Ocean.
A bigfin squid was previously seen in the Philippine Sea in January 2022, deep in the Philippine Trench.
