Jumbo Squid Flash, Flail in First Ever Squid-cam Video

The first ever video ofjumbo squidacting naturally—footage captured by squid themselves—shows the cannibalistic predators lighting up"like Christmas trees,"according to a new documentary of a 2009 expedition.

The same expedition established the jumbo squid—one of which shattered two Kevlar bite plates with its beak—as having among the world's strongest bites.

In partially sunlit depths of the Gulf of California, or Sea of Cortez (seemap), the camera recorded footage of the squid"strobing"red and white and flailing its arms—signals that could advertise anything from aggression to sexual prowess, according to scientists. (Seesquid pictures.)

Such behaviors have been seen before in the difficult-to-study species but never without the distractions of divers, lights, and submersibles—and never so close up, said herpetologist Brady Barr, part of the team that captured the footage in September 2009 for the National Geographic Channel showDangerous Encounters With Brady Barr: Cannibal Squid, airing Friday at 9 p.m. ET/PT. (The National Geographic Society part-owns the National Geographic Channel and wholly owns National Geographic News.)

(See"Alien-like Squid With 'Elbows' Filmed at Drilling Site.")

Barr said the film's objective—"to get an untethered camera on the squid and hope that the animal would return to the abyss and carry on with its way of life,"was met, and more.

Known to prey on their own kind, jumbo squid—also called Humboldt squid—can travel to depths of about 4,900 feet (1,500 meters), though most of the filming occurred at depths of less than 330 feet (100 meters).

"I've worked with animals for 20 years,"Barr added,"and this was as good as it gets."

Flashy Jumbo Squid Resembles"Christmas Tree"

To get the video, scientists first had to lure several seven-foot-long (two-meter-long) squid—to the surface with bait. (Learn about the relatedgiant squid.)

On three occasions Barr and colleagues got into the water and wrestled different rubbery squid into a synthetic sleeve outfitted with aCrittercam, a National Geographic Society-patented research tool for collecting video, audio, and environmental data.

The first released jumbo squid had red LED lights attached to its camera. When the squid dove deeper, other squid attacked it, perhaps because"squid appear to be able see red LED lights, and it may really piss them off,"according to jumbo squid expertWilliam Gilly, who participated in theCannibal Squidexpedition. Torn off by the attackers, the Crittercam surfaced prematurely.

For the second deployment, the team attached a camera without lights to another jumbo squid. When this Crittercam squid entered a jumbo squid swarm at around 140 feet (42 meters), the Crittercam squid began alternately flashing red and white and flaring its tentacles.

"Their entire body flashes—this thing lights up like a Christmas tree,"Barr said.

(Related:"Squid's Built-In Light to Inspire New Gadgets?")

It's known that squid and related species ofoctopuscan change their body colors quickly—often to camouflage themselves.

But"it was nice to see that for the first time without humans,"Gilly said.

That's because no one knows how artificial lighting can skew a squid's natural behavior, said Gilly, of Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California.

Gilly noted that other squid didn't seem to treat the Crittercam squid unusually—other than the first, light-equipped squid—and that all the camera-equipped squid seemed to swim naturally.

Squid Signals: Aggression or Attraction?

The footage strengthens the idea that squid are communicating via flashing and flaring—though it's hard to say what those mean, Gilly said.

For instance, a squid that opens its arms and flashes red-to-white may be trying to look big and impressive.

(Related:"Colossal Squid a Soft, Sluggish Drifter.")

Then again, such a show could be attractive to a potential mate, Gilly said."If you're a big, strong squid, you're a good fighter and a good mater."

Flashing in jumbo squid is already well known to scientists, saidRoger Hanlon,senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

It's certain that rapid changes in light patterns are part of antagonistic displays among squids—"all of which have some sort of unambiguous visual signal with which to carry out their displays,"said Hanlon, who was not part of the research. Hanlon specializes in the study of chromatophore displays in other species of cephalopods, the class of animals that includes squid, octopus, and cuttlefish.

There aren't many observations published about squid behavior in the wild, addedLou Zeidberg,a squid researcher who works in Gilly's lab but wasn't involved in the project.

But Zeidberg noted that in some studies of other squid species, white seems to be a"seductive"color used by male squid—and in the case of the reef squid, by females, according to the Marine Biological Laboratory's Hanlon—and red has been attributed to combative male-male displays.

For instance, Zeidberg has seen—via remotely operated vehicle—an interaction between a small and a big squid off Monterey,California.

While the small squid hovered in front of the ROV displaying white coloration, a larger squid came into view. The small squid immediately turned red and circled the larger squid while maintaining eye contact, he said.

Jumbo Squid Might Be Planet's Strongest Biter

Though seen as one of the oceans' top predators, the jumbo squid remains little understood, expedition leader Barr said.

But scientists do know"they're powerful, they're smart, they're fast, they've got an arsenal of weapons,"he said.

For instance, at the center of their array of eight sucker-lined arms, there's a parrotlike beak powered by a mass of muscles.

To measure the strength of a jumbo squid's bite, the team caught a squid at the surface and inserted a Kevlar pressure plate into its mouth—which the squid promptly bit in half. Kevlar is 20 times stronger than steel, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The preliminary reading indicated the jumbo squid had a bite force of more than a thousand pounds (more than 455 kilograms)—stronger than the killer jaws of thehyena, though not quite as strong as acrocodile, according to Barr, who specializes in animal bite forces.

More readings are needed, but"for all we know,"the jumbo squid may be"the strongest biter on the planet,"he said.

MBL's Hanlon isn't surprised by this brute power:"I am pretty sure {a} large squid could bite well into a human arm—and perhaps even through the bone."

Gilly would know. A captive squid bit the Stanford scientist's arm in June while he was fitting it with a Crittercam—requiring 15 stitches.

"When I saw blood flowing into the cooler in large amounts, I realized it wasn't going as planned,"Gilly said.

That squid later disappeared with the Crittercam, providing no useful data on how squid hunt and live in oxygen-free depths—Gilly's next areas of study.

Come September, Gilly plans to outfit more jumbo squid with Crittercams—and maybe even find the one that got away.

"I'm feeling like Ahab to some extent,"he quipped."I gotta go get that sucker."

Video: Excerpt FromCannibal SquidDocumentary

National Geographic News

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"Extinct," Pop-Eyed Primate Photographed for First Time

Long thought to be extinct, one of the world's rarest primates has been caught on camera for the first time, scientists announced Monday.

(Related:"'Extinct' Bird Seen, Eaten.")

Discovered in 1937 but"missing"for 60 years,Sri Lanka's Horton Plains slender loris was presumed to have died out. In 2002 a fleeting nighttime sighting of something looking like the elusive tree-dweller, however, gave conservationists hope.

Follow-up surveys led by theZoological Society of Londonfinally confirmed the lorises are alive—if not exactly well—in 2009, when two individuals were photographed and examined.

Initial estimates after the rediscovery put the total world population at fewer than a hundred, said the society's conservation biologist Craig Turner. And in this case, the world is limited to high cloud forests in theHorton Plains area (map)of central Sri Lanka—the animal's only known habitat.

"Potentially this is the rarest primate we're aware of today,"Turner said.

(Relatedpictures:"25 most endangered primates named.")

Lonely Lorises

About 8 inches (20 centimeters) long and weighing just 11 ounces (310 grams), the slow-moving loris has been doomed as forests have been felled for firewood and to make way for tea plantations and other farms, Turner said.

"There's no means for these lorises to move between the {remaining} forest patches,"Turner said."In terms of breeding and finding mates, it is very difficult for them."(See asatellite picture of Horton Plains' forests.)

"The real focus now has to be on the remaining forest areas and looking at how we can enhance and protect them, and also reconnect them to one another,"he added.

(Also see"'Extinct' Booby Exposed—Found 'Masked,' Using Alias.")

"New"Loris Also New Species?

The Horton Plains slender loris is generally classified as a subspecies of Sri Lanka's red slender loris. But, thanks in part to the first ever pictures, researchers now believe the"extinct"loris could be a whole new species.

"It's clearly very different physically,"Turner said. Compared to lowland lorises, the Horton Plains loris is"stockier, shorter limbed—and it's got a much longer fur coat."

Ongoing tests on DNA samples taken from the few individuals recorded to date, he added, should help to settle the issue.

forNational Geographic News

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30 Amphibian Species Wiped Out in Panama Forest

A"catastrophic"epidemic has made 30amphibianspecies locally extinct in a region ofPanama—including 5 species that were lost before they were even formally identified, a new study says.

The species are the latest victims of the deadly chytrid fungus, which has caused major amphibian declines in Central and South America as well as in Australia since the late 1980s. The fungus infects an amphibian's skin, sloughing off the skin's layers and causing lethargy, weight loss, and eventual death.

Suspecting the imminent arrival of chytrid, researchers had visited the forests of El Copé (seemap) between 1998 and 2004 to record genetic information from the region's frog and salamander species.

Chytrid swept through El Copé in 2004, wiping out amphibians so quickly that dead frogs littered the forest floor, according to study leaderAndrew Crawford, an evolutionary biologist at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.

The mysterious fungus acts so rapidly that scientists are rarely able to track its destruction. (Related:"Deadly Frog Fungus Spreads in Virus-Like Waves.")

But armed with the genetic database, the El Copé team was able to make the first before-and-after comparisons to pinpoint the exact species lost to the fast-moving fungus—including a handful of species that proved to be new to science.

"We're discovering species and losing species at the same time—these two conflicting trends have to clash at some point,"Crawford said.

Species Not Gone Globally, But Hope Dim

Before chytrid hit El Copé, Crawford and colleagues had collected DNA samples from 63 frog and salamander species in a 1.5-square-mile (4-square-kilometer) tract of forest. The information was added to a larger genetic database of known amphibians.

By matching unknown specimens with existing genetic lineages, the team discovered 11 unnamed species among those collected in the forest before the outbreak.

A post-epidemic survey conducted between 2006 and 2008 showed that 25 of the 63 species had been lost. Five of the missing species were among the 11 that were new to science.

Another nine species had seen population declines between 85 and 99 percent since the earlier survey, according to the study.

Though the species aren't globally extinct, there's"not much optimism"that amphibians from unaffected areas will recolonize El Copé, Crawford said.

Past experiments—such as inCosta Rica—show that frogs don't bounce back after a chytrid wave comes through. (Read aboutvanishing amphibiansinNational Geographicmagazine.)

A frogless forest could have reverberations throughout the ecosystem, Crawford added. For one thing, tadpoles are crucial to stream environments, because they munch on moss and algae along stream beds, taking in protein and other nutrients needed by animals higher up the food chain.

Frog Fungus a Hint of What's to Come?

No one knows what sparked the spread of chytrid, but it's possible that globalization—with people and goods becoming more interconnected—is a key factor, Crawford said. (See"Bait Shops Found to Be Spreading Chytrid.")

In general, the outbreak is an"alarming"reminder of how such emerging pathogens can devastate whole ecosystems.

For instance, chytrid is so potent that it's killing off distantly related species of frogs that are as genetically different from each other as rats are from whales, he said.

"Hopefully we don't get pathogens like that that hit mammals,"he said."This could be just one example of what's coming."

The amphibian die-off findings appearthis week in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

National Geographic News

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Pictures: Baby Gulf Turtles Released Into Atlantic

Federal workers remove sea turtle eggs from a nest inAlabama'sBon Secour National Wildlife Refugeon June 27.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently began arranging the relocation of some 70,000 rare sea turtle eggs from 700 Gulf Coast nests in the path of theBP oil spill. All seven of the world's sea turtle species—four of which nest in the Gulf—are considered threatened or endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

(Gulf Oil Spill Pictures: Birds, Fish, Crabs Coated.)

If left alone, Gulf sea turtle hatchlings—which crawl through sand layers to leave their underground nests—could get injured or killed through contact with buried oil on their way out to sea, said Riley Hoggard, a resource-management specialist forGulf Islands National Seashore.

Many turtles annually nest on the protected seashore, which includes sites in bothFloridaandMississippi. (Seesea turtle pictures.)

In part to address such threats, the babies were hatched in a special facility in a warehouse at eastern Florida's Kennedy Space Center and are being released on several Atlantic Ocean beaches throughout summer 2010—on the other side of the state from the Gulf.

—Christine Dell'Amore

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Photos:"Glass" Crustacean Among Hundreds of New Species

CalledThalassiosira trifulta, the diatom was discovered as part of an ongoing project to catalog animal diversity on theKorean Peninsula (map). Split into three three-year phases the Korean biodiversity initiative started in 2006 and is slated to run until 2014.

So far, 694 species have been found during the second phase of the project, running from 2009 to 2011. Of these, 420 species were known to science but are new to South Korea, while 274 species are entirely new to science.

The diatom, which forms chainlike colonies, was discovered in Pohang, a coastal city in South Korea's Gyeongbuk Province, according to Kim Min-Ha, manager of the Korean indigenous species project at the National Institute of Biological Resources (NIBR).

Most of the newly unveiled species are microscopic—no new mammals or large animals have been found so far.

(Seepictures of new species found during a recent survey of undersea mountains in the Atlantic.)

—Ker Than

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New Leviathan Whale Was Prehistoric"Jaws"? (Pictures)

Evoking theposter for the original summer blockbuster,a new species of killersperm whaleattacks a baleen whale in an illustration.

Dubbed Leviathan melvillei—an homage toMoby-Dickauthor Herman Melville—the recently unearthed fossil sea monster lived about 13 million years ago in waters atop what's now aPeruviandesert, according to a study published by the journalNatureon Wednesday.

Living alongside the largest sharks ever known, the raptorial—meaning actively hunting—whale measured about 60 feet (18 meters) in length, about as big as a modern male sperm whale.

But whereas modern sperm whales feed primarily on squid, Leviathan's large teeth—some of which measured more than a foot (36 centimeters) long—suggest the whale hunted more challenging prey, including perhaps its close whale relatives.

"It was probably a very powerful and frightening animal, so it fits well with the description Melville made of Moby-Dick,"said lead study author Olivier Lambert, a paleontologist at the National Museum of Natural Historyin Paris.

(Related picture:"Whale Found in Egypt Desert.")

—Ker Than

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Two New"Walking" Batfish Species Found

Two new species of bottom-dwelling"walking"fishhave been found in the Gulf of Mexico—right in the path of theGulf oil spill,experts say.

Small enough to fit in a person's palm, members of the two species of pancake batfish might already be threatened by the ongoingDeepwater Horizonspill and the oil-dispersing chemicals being used in its cleanup, experts say.

(Related:"Oil Spill to Wipe Out Gulf's Sperm Whales?")

The new fish are so named because they are flat and can use their stout, arm-like fins to shamble along the seafloor with a stilted gait, reminiscent of a walking bat. (Seepictures of other newfound fish that walk on their"hands.")

Once thought to be part of a known, widespread species, the batfish are actually three separate species, according to a recent physical reexamination of museum specimens. The species discoveries—to be described in an upcoming issue of theJournal of Fish Biology—were made before the Gulf oil spill began on April 20.

One of the new species,H. intermedius, is found only in the Gulf of Mexico (seemap), including parts—such as coastal Louisiana—that are already heavily affected by the oil spill.

The other new batfish,H. bispinosus, lives along the northeastern Gulf coast, as well as along the eastern coasts of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Oil has begun to dirty the western coast of Florida in recent weeks. (Seepictures of oiled Florida beaches.)

"If we are still finding new species of fishes in the Gulf, imagine how much diversity ... is out there that we do not know about,"study co-authorJohn Sparks, a fish biologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, said in a statement.

Toxic Oil Poses Many Threats to Batfish

There are several ways the oil could harm the newfound fish.

For one, floating slicks of oil may be killing the pancake batfishes' plankton food supply.

Adult pancake batfish on the seafloor could be immediately harmed by oil gushing from the broken wellhead.

And the toxic crude may also kill off the fishes' eggs and larvae, which travel on the ocean's surface, said study co-authorProsanta Chakrabarty, a fish biologist at Louisiana State University.

What's more, chemical dispersants used to break up the oil into smaller droplets for easier digestion by microbes may be toxic to the fish, he said.

As a drastic measure to contain the disaster,cleanup crews have been applying dispersants underwater directly at the source of spill. However, it's unknown how—or even if—dispersants applied at depths biodegrade in the same way that they do at the surface.

Dispersed Oil's Impact on Fish Unknown

It's also unclear whether the right kinds of microbes exist in deep ocean to digest the oil once it's broken up by dispersants, Chakrabarty pointed out.

"How the oil breaks down and how it's affecting the fish is totally unknown. This shouldn't have been done without a study beforehand,"he added.

(See"Gulf Oil Spill a 'Dead Zone in the Making'?")

"I'm afraid that next year when there's no oil on the surface, people will forget about it.

"People are going to say everything's fine in the Gulf,"he said,"when in fact terrible things are still going on below the surface."

forNational Geographic News

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