[SHIMMERING MUSIC]
>>NEIL LANDMAN: In about 1998 or so, I put out an APB around the world
to see if anybody could find a giant squid.
Because I study ancient organisms, but I’m also interested in their modern cousins.
I think it was just toward the end—about ’98, ’99—and I got a phone call that a colleague
in New Zealand had just found a giant squid and would I be interested. And my answer was,
“Absolutely.” As I got off the phone I wondered what had I just agreed to because
how am I going to get this giant squid from New Zealand into the portals
of the American Museum of Natural History.
My name is Neil Landman. I’m the Curator-in-Charge of Invertebrate Paleontology.
[SHELF LIFE THEME MUSIC]
>>MARK SIDDALL: The giant squid is among the largest invertebrates on the planet. They get to that size from
something very, very small. In fact, the average size of a giant squid egg is on the vicinity
of a millimeter long, total. And then they grow to these enormous things. I think that’s
terrifically fascinating.
I’m Mark Siddall, Curator of Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History.
The giant squid has captivated people for a very long time. The idea that there are
enormous things in the sea that are elusive and can’t be seen very easily is itself fascinating.
But really, giant squid are probably not that rare. Giant squid are in the North Atlantic.
They’re in the South Atlantic. They’re in the North Pacific. They’re in the South Pacific.
Really, all around the globe, and probably in fairly sensible numbers. Otherwise,
what would be feeding all the sperm whales?
And sperm whales certainly love to eat giant squid.
Why we haven’t been able to see them so well partly has to do with exploration. They’re
not down at the very bottom of the ocean. They’re not right up at the top of the ocean.
They’re in those mid-level depths. And, in fact, that’s the part of the ocean that
we still need to go and explore in much more detail than we have already.
>>LANDMAN: This particular specimen is about 30 feet long from tip to tip. It was actually captured
by fishermen off the coast of New Zealand. So, how do you even book passage
for a giant squid? I mean, you know, it has to go by air. It was frozen solid.
It was shipped in a refrigerated truck from Wellington to Auckland, where it boarded a
flight bound for L.A. It was supposed to make a connection from L.A. to New York and that’s
where we began to worry because apparently it missed its connection. I thought, “Oh,
it’s just going to melt on some runway and that’s going to be the end of our dream.”
Fortunately, it managed to make the next plane out.
When the giant squid arrived at Kennedy Airport, a forklift started bringing it toward us,
but then the Customs officials realized that we needed paperwork. You know, this was the
first time they had ever had a giant squid delivered. So, there was a lot of consternation.
Until the general decision was that we would call this frozen seafood, sushi. They came
up with a tariff of $10 to clear it for Customs
and we left with the squid in the refrigerator truck.
Back at the Museum, we laid it out as best we could to let it start thawing. It was in
really great shape.
I was interested in comparing the jaw of the giant squid to the jaws of a fossil cephalopod,
from an ammonite. And this animal afforded me the opportunity to study the jaw.
What we realized is we needed to preserve it somehow.
So, we injected the giant squid with formalin and then, now, we had to somehow get it into
a bath of ethanol. All together it was several hundred pounds. It was a little top heavy.
So, you had to really balance it and everybody was to try to get it into the container in
one piece. And it worked.
>>SIDDALL: This is one of the best preserved giant squids in any collection, anywhere. Now, we’ve
known about giant squids going back to the 1500s, in terms of finding specimens. They
were first described as Architeuthis dux in the 1800s. Since then we have now had up to
20 or so names for different species of Architeuthis.
But some of these different species of giant squid are from partial specimens—usually things
that are washed up on shore. We also know about giant squid from the stomach contents
of sperm whales. But of course, those are chewed up and really, what we get from those
are just the hard parts, like the beak, and maybe some of the suckers. So, having a really
well-preserved specimen here in the Museum for study is terrifically important.
The giant squid we have here at the Museum—it’s labeled as Architeuthis kirkii.
Now, over the course of time, people thought, well, the one from South Africa’s a different
species. The one from New Zealand is a different species. The one from the North Atlantic is
different from the one from the Pacific. We now know from mitochondrial DNA analysis that,
in fact, it all appears to be one species. Given that Architeuthis dux was the very first
name for any one of these, it carries priority and thus Architeuthis dux applies to all of
the giant squid.
What we need to do on a continuing basis is as the science changes, when we learn new
things about synonymy—that, for example, two species are really one species, or the
opposite, that one species is really two species, we need to be able to find what it was called
before. You actually end up having multiple labels inside the jar. Or in this case, a
very large tank.
>>LANDMAN: For me to look at it for the first time, it was looking into this mythical creature, this
sense of seeing something that humans have dreamed about for hundreds of years,
here was finally- I was face to face with the giant squid.