"Exceptional" Giant Squid Found Dying off Florida

Floating about 12 miles (19 kilometers) off Port Salerno (map), Florida, a stirring, intact giant squid gave a small fishing party a shock around 11 a.m. Sunday—and could give researchers new insights into the species, which has never been studied alive, scientists say.

"We looked at it [and] all three of us were like, Holy mackerel!" recreational fisher Robby Benz told WPTV. "It didn't seem it had been dead long, the tentacles were still moving and it was sticking to you when we got it in" the fishing boat.

After reaching shore, the men called wildlife authorities, and the then dead giant squid soon found a home at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.

Giant squid, the world's largest invertebrates, are thought to reach lengths of up to about 60 feet (18 meters) and can weigh nearly a ton. The Florida specimen, though, is about 25 feet (8 meters) long and weighs about 200 pounds (90 kilograms).

Like other giant squid, the new catch is white with patches of red skin, which contains chromatophores—pigment-containing cells that can change colors rapidly, presumably for communication or camouflage. (Related: "Colossal Squid Has Glowing 'Cloaking Device,' Huge Eyes.")

"Very Rare" Squid

Giant squid are found in oceans worldwide, but the animals have seldom been spotted in the Atlantic Ocean off Florida, said Roger Portell, an invertebrate paleontologist at the natural history museum, who's helping to preserve the squid.

"These are very rare animals," Portell told National Geographic News. "They tend to be in very deep waters, so we don't see them normally."

The new specimen, he added, is "exceptional."

"There was very little trauma to it," he said. Though it was missing a tentacle, the squid doesn't look to have been attacked, he added.

Though not the sea monsters they were once depicted as, giant squid have been known to battle sperm whales in the deep.

(See rare pictures of sperm whales eating a giant squid.)

Since the giant squid appears to have been intact yet on the verge of death when it was found, Portell thinks the new specimen—the gender of which is still unknown—may have just reproduced.

"As a general rule in cephalopods"—including, squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish—"both males and females die shortly after reproducing. It is assumed that this is what also happens in this species."
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New Ruby-Eyed Snake

Seen coiled around a branch in an undated picture, a new species of snake called the ruby-eyed green pit viper (Cryptelytrops rubeus) has been discovered in Southeast Asia, according to a recent study. The snake lives in forests near Ho Chi Minh City and across the low hills of southern Vietnam and eastern Cambodia's Langbian Plateau.

Scientists collected green pit vipers from Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia between 1999 and 2003 and examined them in the lab, using physical characteristics and genetics to identify new species.

"We know this species from only a few specimens, and very few people in the world have seen this snake," said study co-author Anita Malhotra, a molecular ecologist at Bangor University in the U.K. "We know very little about what it does, to be honest."

Malhotra and colleagues also discovered a very similar species with striking yellow eyes (not pictured) dubbed the Cardamom Mountains green pit viper (Cryptelytrops cardamomensis), which inhabits southeastern Thailand and southwestern Cambodia. Both new species were described in the January 23 issue of the journal Zootaxa.
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