weird creatures

Wook

Imagine having a nice little swim and see this next to you...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3039102.stm

Giant blob baffles marine scientists

The 12-metre-wide remains of a sea creature found by the Chilean navy are puzzling marine scientists, who think it may be a new species.
The remains measure 12 metres across
The specimen was at first taken for a beached whale when it was washed up a week ago but experts who have seen it say it appears not to have a backbone.

"We'd never before seen such a strange specimen.

"We don't know if it might be a giant squid that is missing some of its parts or maybe it's a new species," Elsa Cabrera, a marine biologist and director of the Centre for Cetacean Conservation in Santiago, told Reuters news agency.

The mass is too big to be a whale skin and does not have the right texture or smell, she said.

Ms Cabrera said she was contacting Chilean and international organisations in the hope that they could help work out what the find was.

The Chilean navy first saw the remains along with another large mass which turned out to be a dead humpback whale.

Ms Cabrera will be interviewed on BBC Five Live's Up All Night programme at 0125 BST on Thursday.

check link for photo.

mooman_00

"The mass is too big to be a whale skin and does not have the right texture or smell, she said."

gee id love to have her job,

'poke it and smell it Ms Cabrera and give us your expert scientific opinion'

Saruman

Looks like one mother of a Jelly Fish!!

patch

It looks like there was fight to the death between a whale and a giant Jelly-Fish! :eek:

weemcd

the oceans of the world are so big and changing, thers bound to be species well never find out. i heard somewhere that people know more about the surface of the moon, than under water on our own planet.

BoobeR

It looks like the whale won?
imagine the sting off that bugger if it was a jellyfish?!

TacT

yeah weemcd, that statement is true.
/me flashes back to a national geographic special about 3 years ago where they discovered a new type of shark that was the biggest they'd ever seen, lived at depth's no other shark could and it was able to remain upside down while swimming unlike any other shark amongst other capabilities never before seen in the species.

Looked like a cross between a great white and a whale :eek:

Karl Hungus

OMG ITS THE BLOB!!! WHERE IS STEVE MCQUEEN WHEN WE NEED HIM!?


Personally, I don't think that's a new species tbh.
I think it's the giant jizz of a yet to be discovered species.

ScArY_Cheese

i know what that is, its called "plastic"....

wel looks like plastic to me :P

Wook

Chilean blob could be octopus

The 12-metre (40 foot) wide remains of a sea creature found in Chile could be those of a giant octopus, the first washed up on land for over a century.

The remains measure 12 metres across

The 13-ton specimen was at first taken for a beached whale when it came ashore a week ago, but experts who have seen it say it appears not to have a backbone.

"Apparently, it is a gigantic octopus or squid but that's just our initial idea, nothing definite," said Elsa Cabrera, a marine biologist and director of the Centre for Cetacean Conservation in the capital, Santiago.

"It has only one tentacle left. It could be a new species or the remains of a whale."

Ms Cabrera said samples from the creature's remains will be sent to France for analysis by specialist Michel Raynal, and to a university laboratory in southern Florida on Monday.

Just blubber?

The creature washed up one week ago on Los Muermos beach, 1,100 kilometres (680 miles) south of Santiago.

James Mead, a zoologist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, thinks the huge mass of slimy flesh is whale blubber.

"I don't have enough data to say it's an octopus or it's a whale, but I would hazard a bet that when it gets firmly identified, it'll be a whale."

Mr Mead said a whale could have died of old age, decayed and a big piece of it could have drifted to shore.

Richard Sabin, a marine biologist, cetacean specialist and curator at the Natural History Museum in London said he would be surprised if it was whale blubber after studying photographs of the find.

"Whale blubber has a very recognisable collagen matrix which gives it shape," he said.

"We're not going to know for sure on this specimen until someone gets a biological sample back to the laboratory."

Experts agree the bottom line rests with DNA analysis.

Recurring visitor?

European zoologists said it closely resembled descriptions of a bizarre specimen found in Florida in 1896 that was named "octopus giganteus" which has confounded experts ever since.

Other alleged sightings of similar deep-sea creatures by fishermen and divers from the Bahamas to Tasmania are the stuff of folklore, as well as academic study.

The largest of the more than 100 officially recognised species of octopus can measure up to seven metres.

Information gathered about this case matches that gathered by 19th Century scientists who examined a creature found in 1896.

They described pulling at the 18-metre animal with a team of horses and hacking at it with an axe without making a dent.

daveg

Originally posted by patch69
It looks like there was fight to the death between a whale and a giant Jelly-Fish! :eek:

I'd loved to have seen that fight.

i heard somewhere that people know more about the surface of the moon, than under water on our own planet.

Twas from the blue planet documentary. A fantastic series for anyone interested in the sea.

weemcd

Originally posted by TacT
yeah weemcd, that statement is true. :eek:

thanks its nice to be agreed with every month or so, cant even remember the last time. I dread to think whats living in the darkest deepest oceans in the world, like in star wars epesode one with the huge sea creatures eating the other tiny ones compared to it, that got me thinkin

DriftingRain

Ewwwww...Giant squid, octopus, blob, or jizz...I don't wanna be swiming anywhere near the vacinity of where that was found.
YUCKY!!!;)