First ever film of wild hunting behaviour and bioluminescence of a large deep-sea, eight-armed squid

15/07/2007 00:00:00 Feb 2007. A scientists' newly developed underwater video camera system took the first live images of the deep-sea large squid, Taningia danae, hunting prey between 240-940 m deep off Ogasawara Islands, western North Pacific.

The spectacular video footage includes a large squid attacking bait while flashing and shimmering with bioluminescence,revealing that T. danae is far from the sluggish neutrally buoyant squid previously suspected. They emitted short bright light flashes from their large arm-tip photophores before final assault, which might act as a blinding flash for prey as well as a means of measuring target distance in a dark deep-sea environment. They may also use bioluminescence for attempts at communication.


Click here to see the video (On Google Videos).