When the animal's body surfaced, it became clear to the crew that they had brought back to the surface much more than they had hoped for: clinging to the body of the fish was another animal of considerable size. They had also accidentally caught a specimen of colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), which, unable to be freed from the line and unwilling to let go of its prey, was, in spite of itself, hauled aboard the vessel and killed. Wrapped in a large net and frozen aboard the vessel in about a cubic meter of water for 14 months, the animal was then sent to the national museum Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, New Zealand. Here, a team of researchers decided to defrost the animal's carcass in a saltwater tank to try to preserve as much as possible the tissues that would soon undergo putrefaction. Driven by the hope of demonstrating that it was the largest squid ever caught, the team began dissecting the animal. The analyses conducted showed that the specimen actually belonged to the species Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, and not to the genus Architeuthis (that of giant squid): the substantial differences lie not only in the fact that the colossal squid is larger and heavier than the giant squid, but also in the structure of the suckers of the tentacles, which in the colossal squid have small teeth and rotating hooks along the edge of the suckers. This is one of the main weapons that colossal squid use to confront and try to harpoon sperm whales, their natural enemies; in fact, over the years, stranded carcasses of sperm whales have been found that had deep striated scars along their sides.
Another difference between the giant squid and the colossal squid is the binocular vision of the latter, which has eyes facing forward and not sideways.
As the dissection of the specimen captured in 2007 progressed, it was discovered that the animal reached a weight of 495 kg and that it had the largest eyeball known to date in the animal kingdom: 27 centimeters in diameter, with a 12 centimeter lens. However, these are measurements taken on a partially damaged specimen that had undergone post-mortem contraction: it is likely that, in the living specimen, the size of each eye was around 30 to 40 centimeters in diameter. The same post-mortem contraction also caused the tentacles to shorten significantly compared to the size of the live animal, thus reducing the total length of the carcass to 4.2 meters. According to an estimate made on some specimens of arrow squid, the volume of fresh specimens can in fact decrease by up to 22% during dehydration with alcoholic solutions.
The data collected by an endoscope also demonstrated the presence of ovaries containing thousands of eggs: the specimen was therefore a female.
With its 42.5 mm of lower rostral length, the chitinous beak of our squid was smaller than other beaks previously found inside the stomachs of sperm whales: this data therefore led to the hypothesis that much larger specimens may exist.
If you feel like having your soul scrutinized by this eye from the ocean depths, you can go to the Te Papa Tongarewa museum, which the animal has never left: it was in fact decided to preserve it in formaldehyde in the Te Taiao sector, giving visitors the chance to admire it from 13 December 2008.
