Watch Japanese Divers Swim with Giant Squid in A First of Its Kind Footage

3 No one knows how long they will live

People think they become sexually mature at around 3 years old, but the maximum age isn’t known yet. Giant squids have a built-in accelerometer that works like your inner ear. A mineralized deposit moves around inside a sensory organ to tell the squid which way is up.

This deposit, called a “statolith,” gets bigger as the animal grows older. If you count the layers, you can figure out how old the animal is. The beaks also get bigger over time. Based on these two facts, the oldest specimen discovered was thought to be about 14 years old. However, the question of their lifespan is still a mystery because most estimates are based on a lot of assumptions.

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2 Giant squids are extremely rare

Even though they can grow to colossal sizes, giant squids are notoriously hard to find, making it hard to guess how many there are. Assumptions can only be made by looking at what’s in the stomachs of sperm whales, which are the main animals that eat giant squids. Ablett says, “A study by Clyde Rober and Elizabeth Shea estimated up to 131 million giant squid are fed upon by sperm whales each year.”

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1 They dwell in many oceans around the world

Even though squid can be found in all of the world’s oceans, they are most common in the waters around New Zealand, Japan, the North Atlantic, and Africa. But since they are hard to find, not much is known about this species. Knowing these facts, Tanaka said, “I feel very lucky to have met him even once in my life. I hope that this will shed some light on the mystery of this squid, and I hope many divers visit this area.”