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Young World
Calamari feast?
COMPILED BY NIMI KURIAN
Photo: AFP
Giant squid: Washed ashore.
A squid as long as a bus and weighing 550 pounds washed up on an Australian beach. “It is a whopper,”said Genefor Walker-Smith, a zoologist who studies invertebrates at the Tasmanian Museum. Giant squid live in waters off southern Australia and New Zealand — where a half-ton colossus, believed to be the world’s largest, was caught in February. They attract the sperm whales that feed on them. The dead squid, measuring three feet across at its widest
point and 26 feet from the tip of its body to the end of its tentacles, was found by a beachcomber at Ocean Beach on the island state of Tasmania’s west coast, the museum said. The squid was expected to be taken to the museum, where DNA and other scientific tests would be carried out before it is preserved and possibly put on public display. For anyone thinking of a calamari feast, Walker-Smith said giant squid contain high levels of ammonia in their bodies as a buoyancy aid. “It would not taste very nice at all,” she said.
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