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Sea Serpents & Monsters (General; Miscellaneous)

Yahoo is calling it a giant octopus... it looks like a half digested one.

Whether it is or not...
 
perhaps a giant squid decided it was time to buy some new clothes, and dump the old ones. or they kicked their boyfriend out of the house and left his clothes out on the footpath
 
Yahoo has got a slideshow

surely the 'authorities' have taken DNA samples?
It is time for those genetic taxonomists to shine!

I tend to find that the results of these tests tend to get much less coverage in newspapers and on cryptozoology websites, because they usually show that the unknown carcass is a recognised species.
This is probably whale...
 
To me it looks like big dead octo gone off. Not that I've ever seen one. :)
 
The photos certainly are evocative of those taken of a similar mass in Florida back in 1890. Very interesting story - makes you wonder what other large unclassified sea creatures are still out there!
 
It's a bit transparent for an octopus, isn't it? Several thousand times bigger than the biggest 'official' one, too...
 
I knew I shouldn't of flushed that quilt down the toilet!!!!!

:D
 
We have a new champion!

Giant Squid

Collossal Squid

BloodyHelllookatthesizeofthat Squid.
 
If that's a half digested colossal squid - what the hell half-digested it? :eek!!!!:
 
If that's a half digested colossal squid - what the hell half-digested it?


And what will we do when its parents come looking for their baby? :p
 
Whatever it was, it's dead now so don't worry about it.
Thank goodness eh? It doesn't look friendly.

If that whale was the one who killed it, he should get an MBE or something. He deserves it more than Beckham does, Beckam couldn't kill a thing like that. And they should sign the whale to Real madrid. "Whalenaldo". but what position would it play? It doesn't matter if it's dead, it would be brilliant in goal.
 
Fortean Times got a mention WRT this event on Channel 4 news tonight - Karl Shuker was even featured in a phone interview for his thoughts! :)
 
I think the Rednova article was just as premature as the yahoo one, I didn't see any mention of tests... They just called it a giant squid.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

**EDIT**

Yep, they haven't actually tested it. They say specimens have been sent off for testing, but not what the results are. Second, the say the only giant squid to have washed ashore previously was in 1896. Which is patently wrong. Thirdly, they say that specimen in 1896 was a squid categorically, which is far from a direct conclusion. Some scientists believed it to have been a giant octopus.

Also, most likely the remains were inside the stomache of the dead whale, when upon death they were ejected.

If you've ever seen a half digested fish, they often become transparent and jelly like.

Finally, correct me if I'm wrong, no giant squid speciment has been found that is even close to that size. 12.4m body length is massive. I think the largest giant squid ever found was something like that length, including arms.

Note, I am not saying it ISN'T a giant squid; but that it is far too early to state categorically.
 
how can a whale eat something that big anyway? Don't they mostly live on plankton?
 
Sperm whales eat giant squid regularly. In fact, giant squid were known solely from bits and pieces inside of whale digestive tracts for a very long time.

Oh, the 1896 "giant squid" they reference is also thought by some to have been a giant octopus. No clear evidence either way. (rednova, from this one story, appears to be shit).

I'm hoping giant octopus. But giant squid/whale blubber could as equally be the case.

P.S. Apparently a 6 foot long giant squid beak was found in a whale's digestive tract... that would make the squid itself something like 80 feet long including arms.

This find may be good for crypto + giant sea wierdies.
 
The whale was a humpback. The biggest thing they eat, being baleen whales, are herring. It would take a lot of vommed-up herring to make a 38 foot puddle of spew....

Where were the other blobsters found, by the way?
 
Please not time of my last post, as my brain seemed to have given up on me. I apologise for such blatant Doh!-ness.:rolleyes:
 
hmm... Humpback.

Odds that it's a chunk of whale flab rising...
 
Yeah, the two pics featuring the suckers do look fake.

The find itself was well documented, but conclusions are divided between octopus/squid.

I think if the Chilean thing turns out to be an octopus (and not a squid or blubber), it would be really cool.

Another massive aquatic animal shows up out of the blue. Would be a "feather in the hat" for oceanic cryptozoology.
 
Ath said:
Another massive aquatic animal shows up out of the blue. Would be a "feather in the hat" for oceanic cryptozoology.
Or, a sign that something's going seriously wrong with the aqua-sphere? :(

I hadn't seen those pics before, either. Great thread! :yeay:
 
If you can find a copy (might be out of print :mad: ), Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis is an excellent read, with a chapter devoted to Blobs and Globsters. It's not every cryptid book with chapters devoted to mermaids, sea serpents, etc gets good reviews from Nature and Scientific American. And he is no debunker by any stretch. Culture, natural history, biology, all covered. It has lots of illustrations, including three photos of the St. Augustine, FL thing. Pix of the Bermuda blob and the New Zealand Globster.

I'm not sure about any of these news reports out of Chile. There all about the same and use the word 'gelatenous' to describe the thing. Most of the other giant octopus-or-what-the-heck-is-it? accounts say it "was like trying to cut an automobile tire". So??? Hopefull, but not sold yet.
 
It vaguely reminded me of the end of 'Kraken Wakes'.
John Wyndham's novel, or Tennyson's poem?

The photos look somewhat like a giant octopus, with the arms having disentegrated completely and the body still retaining some of its structure. But if it has disintegrated that much, it could be almost anything...

There are a lot of deep-sea creatures which disintegrate if brought to the surface, because they are adapted to very high deep-sea pressures... wasn't there a deep-sea jellyfish discovered recently which completely disintegrated to a mostly-liquid mass when brought back up?

Surely it's far too big to be a lump of whale blubber? Even the biggest whales are only about twice the length of this thing, and their blubber is no more than about a metre thick AFAIK - that thing seems much too big, given the shape of a whale, to be a single piece... ?
 
Personally, it looks more like a giant octopus to me than anything else. This is based on the assumption that the 1890s FL creature was an octopus, which seems fairly likely due to recent tests on tissue samples. A good summary can be found here:

http://www.amnh.org/naturalhistory/0602/0602_pick.html

This Chilean beastie does look a bit flatter than the St. Augustine globster, but I suppose there could be any number of reasons for that.
 
UPDATE

according to this msn story, scientists are still puzzled.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/933992.asp

from above story:

In Chile, meanwhile, a researcher who took samples from the 40-foot-long mass said he was certain it is not a giant octopus. “I couldn’t tell you what it is but it’s not an octopus,” said Sergio Letelier, a scientist with the Museum of Natural History in Santiago.

most of the scientists they spoke to (i only gave this a quick read, mind) seem to concur that its not a giant octopus, but theyre not sure what it is. presumably msn will keep following up on this ... i hope.
 
as do i hope, also. Renigirl

I would say, "if we can send a man to the moon", but ..
 
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