And strikey, and killey and eatey. But most of all, Giant Squid (note meek and respectful capitalization, any giant squid who may be reading this) kick assy!

I don’t know why I am so fascinated by these critters, but there is nothing that starts my day better than a hot cup of coffee and a paper on Giant Squid from the Royal Society, particularly if it includes, as this one does, the word “cloning.”

Kewl.

Here, we show the first wild images of a giant squid in its natural environment. Recovery of a severed tentacle confirmed both identification and scale of the squid (greater than 8m). Architeuthis appears to be a much more active predator than previously suspected, using its elongate feeding tentacles to strike and tangle prey.
Extraction, amplification, cloning and sequencing methods follow Carlini & Graves (1999) and Kano & Kase (2004).
The recovered section of tentacle was still functioning, with the large suckers of the tentacle club repeatedly gripping the boat deck and any offered fingers (figure 3f)…The longest giant squid on record was 18m total length (Clarke 1969).