Video Demonstrates How Giant Squid Hunt Prey in the Ocean's Depths

The giant squid is rarely found in its natural environment. In the first footage of its type, released in 2021, marine biologists captured its hunting behavior in the wild, revealing for the first time how these monsters of the deep chase and attack their victims. Despite being unfriendly to us air-breathing humans, the crushing pressures and darkness of the marine depths have allowed us to gradually but surely learn more about them. However, the majority of our underwater vehicles are most effective when examining slow-moving or static organisms.

Giant squid's sensitive, low-light eyes, which can enlarge to the size of dinner plates, may find the bright lights mounted on underwater vehicles uncomfortable. The sound and vibration may also frighten away more mobile species. Naturally, bringing huge squid to the surface will prevent the capture of their activity in its native habitat. Because of this, a group of scientists led by Nathan Robinson of the Oceanographic Foundation in Spain came up with an alternative fix: a passive deep-sea platform with a camera. They chose longer-wavelength red illumination that won't irritate the gigantic squids because their eyes are designed to see shorter-wavelength blue light. Here is the video:

Eventually, they added bait in the form of a fake atolla jellyfish called E-jelly, which is outfitted with lights that imitate the blue flashing bioluminescence released by an atolla jellyfish in distress. Despite the fact that giant squid don't typically consume jellyfish, they might be drawn to the distress lights of these atolla jellyfish since they could indicate that the jellyfish is being attacked by something the squid would like to eat.

Two huge animals that may have been Promachoteuthis sloani, with a mantle length of 1.0 meters—a species formerly known from small juveniles—were encountered for the first time in 2004 and 2005. Furthermore, in 2013, the researchers managed to capture Pholidoteuthis adami, which had a mantle length of 0.5 meters thanks to ongoing platform updates. The gigantic squid itself, Architeuthis dux, with a 1.7-meter mantle length, was finally captured on camera in 2019.

The interactions clearly imply that the squid are visual hunters, disregarding surrounding smell bait in preference of visual cues. The behavior of the big squid while hunting was probably the most interesting. It seemed to be stalking its victim before advancing for the kill since it tracked the platform for around six minutes before striking.This disproves the theory advanced in a number of earlier articles that gigantic squid are ambush predators. Instead, it appears that the animal is a hunter who actively seeks out prey using visual signals and its enormous eyes, which are located in the dark below.

However, the small number of contacts, each one added to our knowledge of the range and distribution of the observed species.The researchers said that this suggests passive platforms may be very effective tools for observing these elusive creatures, especially if refined and optimized for particular encounters.