Tanaka and his wife run Dive Resort T-style in Toyooka City, Hyogo Prefecture, which is in the western part of Japan. Tsunemi Kubodera, an honorary researcher at Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science, explained that the squid was probably 1 or 2 years old based on its size.
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Tanaka said the squid was small for its species, even though it was over 8 feet long. Jon Ablett, the senior curator of mollusks and cephalopods at London’s Natural History Museum, stated that giant squids could grow up to 39 feet long.
Ablett said- “It is thought that the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, may reach an even larger size in terms of mass and possibly also in length than that of the giant squid, although no one has found a fully mature specimen.”
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Most of their extraordinary length is made up of their extremely long tentacles. Each tentacle has hundreds of 2–5 cm suction cups. They are surrounded by serrated rings of chitin, which help the giant squid catch its prey and fight off predators like sperm whales, killer whales, and sharks.
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