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megalodon is a extinct shark that lived 23 to 2.6 million years ago

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Interactive

WHAT DID MEGALODON LOOK LIKE?

No one's really sure what megalodon looked like - all that remains of this prehistoric monster are teeth and a few vertebrae. But these allow paleontologists to take a fairly educated guess. Tap or click on hotspots for more information.

Explore the Megalodon

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Megalodon: The Prehistoric World's Worst Nightmare

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Megalodon went extinct 2.6 million years ago, but our fascination with the largest shark that ever lived is timeless. Meet the largest predator in vertebrate history.

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the great white shark is the most deadly animal in the world it eats fish and other sea animals

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1. Home

2. Ocean Life

3. Sharks & Rays

4. http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/sharks-rays/great-white-shark Great White Shark

Sharks are much older than dinosaurs. Their ancestry dates back more than 400 million years, and they are one of evolution's greatest success stories. These animals are uniquely adapted to their ocean environment with six highly refined senses of smell, hearing, touch, taste, sight, and even electromagnetism. As the top predators in the ocean, great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) face only one real threat to their survival: us. The assaults are many. By-catch: the accidental killing of sharks by fishermen's longlines and trawlers. Illegal poaching: selling shark fins for soup. Illegal hunting: sportfishing for shark jaws as trophies. Nets: placed along coastlines to keep sharks away from beaches. Pollution: toxins and heavy metals that build up in the shark's body. In some areas great white populations have plummeted by over 70%. If not stopped, it could lead to the extinction of this ancient species.

For more about all shark species go to our shark overview.

Intelligence & Anatomy

Brains over Brawn

Many scientists now believe that great white sharks are intelligent, highly inquisitive creatures. When great whites gather, they seem to show different behaviors, from open-mouthed gaping at one another to assertive body-slams. These sharks are top predators throughout the world's ocean, predominantly in temperate and subtropical waters. Great whites migrate long distances. Some make journeys from the Hawaiian Islands to California, and one shark that swam from South Africa to Australia made the longest recorded migration of any fish.

The torpedo shape of the great white is built for speed: up to 35 miles per hour (50 kilometers per hour). And then there are the teeth -- 300 total in up to seven rows.

But more than brawn, the great white shark has a tremendous brain that coordinates all the highly-developed senses of this efficient hunter. Its prey, including seals and dolphins, are very clever animals, and the shark has to have enough brains to outsmart them. Despite their reputation as lone hunters, great whites will cooperate with one another, hunting in groups and sharing the spoils. And some researchers have been surprised by how fast they learn.

Shark Senses

Great whites became the ocean's top hunters through the evolution of supremely-adapted senses and physiology.

SMELL
Great white sharks' most acute sense is smell. If there were just a single drop of blood floating in 10 billion drops of water, they could smell it! Their nostrils are on the underside of the snout and lead to an organ called the olfactory bulb. The great white's olfactory bulb is reported to be the largest of any shark.

HEARING
Shark external ears are hard to see: they are just two small openings behind and above the eyes. The ears may be small, but they're powerful. Inside, there are cells that can sense even the tiniest vibration in the surrounding water. Sharks also have an 'ear stone' that responds to gravity, giving the animal clues as to where it is in the water: head up, head down, right side up, or upside down.

VISION
A great white sharks has great vision. The retina of its eye is divided into two areas - one adapted for day vision, the other for low-light and night. To protect itself, the great white shark can roll its eye backward into the socket when threatened.

ELECTRO-RECEPTION
Sharks have a sense that humans can only be in awe of - they can sense an electrical field. A series of pores on the shark's snout are filled with cells called the Ampullae of Lorenzini that can feel the power and direction of electrical currents. Scientists have discovered that sharks can use this sense to navigate through the open ocean by following an electrical 'map' of the magnetic fields that crisscross the Earth's crust.

TASTE
Great white sharks are opportunistic eaters. Depending on the season, area and age, they will hunt seals and sea lions, fish, squid, and even other sharks. They have taste buds inside their mouths and throats that enable them to identify the food before swallowing.

TOUCH
Great white sharks have an elaborate sense of touch through what's called the lateral line - a line that extends along the middle of the shark's body from its tail to its head. This line, which is found in all fish, is made of cells that can perceive vibrations in the water. Sharks can detect both the direction and amount of movement made by prey, even from as far as 820 feet (250 meters) away.

Diversity

Sharks come in all shapes and sizes. Today there are more than 440 known species -- from the 6-inch long dwarf lantern shark (Etmopterus perryi) to the 60-foot long whale shark (Rhincodon typus).

Unlike typical fish, sharks do not produce large amounts of small eggs. Instead, they invest their resources in fewer, larger eggs which are more likely to grow into adults. Some sharks lay eggs, while others give live birth. Great white sharks gestate their pups for a year before giving birth - that's longer than humans. Between 2 to 12 babies are born at a time.

Great whites can live up to 60 years, maybe more. Most sharks are slow to grow and take a long time to mature. That means that on the whole, sharks reproduce only a few young, making them all the more vulnerable to extinction.

Evolution

Shark Ancestors

We may think that great whites are massive, but their ancestors would likely have made them appear midgets by comparison. An ancient shark called the Megalodon (Carcharodon megalodon), appeared on Earth more than 20 million years ago. Based on fossil teeth, scientists believe these sharks could have been as big as a school bus-big enough to probably feast on whales.

For a long time, scientists thought the Megalodon was the direct ancestor of great white sharks. But new fossil evidence, announced in November 2012, suggest that it was more closely related to an ancestor of mako sharks-smaller but faster fish-eating sharks.

Another shark ancestor swam the ocean 290 million years before today. Picture a shark with a teeth shaped in a ring like a saw. This fossil comes from the long-extinct Helicoprion, a buzzsaw with fins. But what did this animal actually look like? All scientists had to go on was a few fossil specimens and came up with a litany of possibilities, some more plausible than others.

The face of Helicoprion was finally uncovered when a well-preserved fossil was brought in for a CT scan, and the result was published in 2013. Most of the toothy spiral is buried in the fish's lower jaw, with just a few teeth emerging. Using the new evidence, the reconstruction is the most accurate to date-and proves some earlier reconstructions wrong. The study also found that Helicoprion is not the ancestor of a great white shark but, rather, to the chimaeras, a group of deep sea shark relatives.

Shark Relatives

(© Sandra Raredon / Smithsonian Institution)

Just look at these x-rays. Not a single bone. Instead, these are animals with skeletons made from cartilage. These boneless fishes are in a class called Chondrichthyes that includes sharks, skates and rays. Sharks are also distantly related to the mysterious and rare chimaeras, which are found in deep ocean waters. Their enigmatic behavior has earned them names like spookfish or ratfish.

Scientist - Alison Kock

Marine biologist Alison Kock has devoted her life to finding the facts and defusing the myths about great white sharks. "My dad and I used to go on regular diving expeditions together, which fostered a love for ocean creatures, especially sharks. I will never forget the first time I saw a white shark flying clean out of the water and into the air while chasing a seal. From that day onwards, I have spent thousands of hours at sea studying these vulnerable creatures and have been fortunate to get to know that the real white shark is not a mindless killer. They are complex and majestic animals that are completely misunderstood."

Research

DNA Identification

DNA is a key tool in criminal cases. And that's not just true of crimes against people. It's true of crimes against sharks. It's illegal to hunt great white sharks in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Malta, Namibia, Israel and the United States and DNA testing by scientists like Mahmood Shivji can prove when a fisherman has broken the law. Watch Dr. Shivji talk more about using DNA from shark fins to determine what species of shark are being killed, often for use in shark fin soup.

Collections

Shark Teeth at the NMNH

The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History has one of the largest collections of fossil shark teeth in the world - more than 90,000 different teeth. The oldest date back about 360 million years to the Devonian Period. Shark teeth come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes (pdf), all depending on their purpose. Flat teeth are adapted for crushing and grinding. Sharp and pointy teeth make it easier to grasp and hold slippery prey. Serrated teeth are ideal for ripping and tearing prey too large to swallow in one bite.

Conservation

Why We Should Save Sharks

Fear of sharks seems to be encoded in our genes. Yet humans are rarely attacked by a shark, while millions of sharks are killed by humans. Some populations of shark species, such as the shortspine spurdog, may have dropped by 95 percent. The sharks' population decline has a ripple effect - throwing entire marine ecosystems out of balance. Shark species often are especially vulnerable to overfishing because of specific life characteristics, such as not mating until later in life, and giving birth to small litters of live young. Sharks even have allies from a group of people who you would least expect - shark attack survivors are banding together in order to urge people to protect sharks.

Why save sharks? The reasons are many. Sharks keep the ocean healthy because they keep different prey species from becoming overabundant. Sharks keep the ocean clean by scavenging on dead animals. Sharks keep other species more fit by weeding out sick and weaker individuals. And sharks are beautiful - like lions and gorillas - crowning achievements of evolution.

Cultural Connections

Shark Fin Soup

Shark fin soup is considered a delicacy in many Asian countries, once reserved only for the wealthy or for very special occasions. But rising incomes in Asia are having a disastrous impact on sharks. To make the soup, the fins of the sharks are sliced off and the rest of the body is tossed back in the water, dead or alive: a method called shark finning. It's estimated that 100 million sharks are killed annually to supply fins for soup. Fins from great whites can fetch the highest prices because of their rarity and size. In Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, conservationists and chefs are leading campaigns to stop serving shark fin soup. ( Read more about shark finning and its effects.)

Threats and Solutions

Shark Nets

Dozens of shark nets have been installed off the east coast of South Africa and Australia. These nets are meant to protect swimmers from rare attacks. The nets entangle, suffocate and kill sharks as well as indiscriminately kill other animals -- like rays, turtles, dolphins and whales.

Shark Sanctuary

Great white sharks are a global species - and saving them will take a global effort. Some steps have already been taken. Countries like South Africa, Namibia, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and Malta have fully protected great white sharks in their national waters. In California, NOAA is protecting the sharks that feed in the Gulf of Farallones National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of California. And the international organization CITES has implemented a ban on all international trade of products that come from great white sharks.

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Home Ocean Life Sharks & Rays http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/sharks-rays/great-white-shark Great White Shark Sharks are much older than dinosaurs. Their ancestry dates back more than 400 million years, and they are one of evolution's greatest success stories. These animals are uniquely adapted to their ocean environment with six highly refined senses of smell, hearing, touch, taste, sight, and even electromagnetism.

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squid is an animal that lives in the bottom of the ocean

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squid is an animal that lives in the bottom of the ocean

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1. Home

2. Ocean Life

3. Invertebrates

4. Giant Squid

Giant squid live up to their name: the largest giant squid ever recorded by scientists was almost 43 feet (13 meters) long, and may have weighed nearly a ton. You'd think such a huge animal wouldn't be hard to miss. But because the ocean is vast and giant squid live deep underwater, they remain elusive and are rarely seen: most of what we know comes from dead carcasses that floated to the surface and were found by fishermen.

But after years of searching, in 2012 a group of scientists from Japan's National Science Museum along with colleagues from Japanese public broadcaster NHK and the Discovery Channel filmed a giant squid in its natural habitat for the first time. The species was first recorded live in 2006, after researchers suspended bait beneath a research vessel off the Ogasawara Islands to try and hook a giant squid. As the camera whirred, the research team pulled a 24-foot (7-meter) squid to the surface alive enabling people around the world to finally see a living, breathing giant squid.

Anatomy

A giant squid's body may look pretty simple: Like other squids and octopuses, it has two eyes, a beak, eight arms, two feeding tentacles, and a funnel (also called a siphon). But, of course, all of it is much larger!

FEEDING TENTACLES
Giant squid can snatch prey up to 33 feet (10 meters) away by shooting out their two feeding tentacles, which are tipped with hundreds of powerful sharp-toothed suckers. These feeding tentacles are very long, often doubling the total length of the giant squid on their own.

ARMS AND BEAK
Eight thick arms speckled with 2-inch wide toothed suckers guide prey from the feeding tentacles to a sharp beak in the center of the arms, where the prey is sliced into bite-sized pieces. These bites are further cut and ground by the radula, a tongue-like organ covered with rows of teeth, that is inside the squid's beak.

EYES AND HEAD
The head holds eyes the size of dinner plates -- the largest in the animal kingdom. At 1 foot (30 centimeters) in diameter, these huge eyes absorb more light than their smaller counterparts would, allowing the squid to glimpse bioluminescent prey -- or sight predators lurking -- in the dark. The squid's complex brain, which is tiny compared to its body, is shaped like a donut. Strangely enough, its esophagus runs through the "donut hole" in the middle, which makes grinding up food into tiny bits an evolutionary priority.

BODY AND FUNNEL
The main part of the body, or mantle, contains all the basic organs. And on the body's underside is the funnel-an amazing multipurpose tool. By pumping water and other fluids through the funnel, the squid uses it to exhale, expel waste, lay eggs, squirt ink, and move through the water by jet-propulsion.

Size and Strength

Giant squid are big-but just how big are they?

Unfortunately, the reports of their size are often exaggerated since finding a live giant squid is an extremely rare event. Almost everything people know about giant squid comes from specimens washed up on beaches. Sometimes their tentacles or arms have fallen off, or have been eaten by other animals while afloat in the ocean. On the other hand, when they wash ashore, the squids can be bloated with water, appearing bigger than they really are.

Because tentacles and arms fall off or, alternatively, can be stretched out, scientists often use mantle length as the best measure of a squid's actual size. The longest mantle length on record is 7.4 feet (2.25 meters); the length from the tip of the top fin to the end of the arms rarely exceeds 16 feet (5 meters), and the longest total length (including tentacles) of a squid on record is 43 feet (13 meters). A new method for figuring out how big a squid can get includes using beak size to estimate total body length, a helpful tool considering the hard beaks are often found in the stomachs of sperm whales. Based on this new method scientists believe the giant squid could reach lengths up to 66 feet (20 meters) long, making it potentially larger than the colossal squid, however, a real-life squid of this size has never been documented.

But does a big giant squid necessarily mean a strong one? If they were proportionally as strong as their smaller cousins, the Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas), giant squid would be VERY strong, says Smithsonian squid expert Clyde Roper. "However, their muscular structure, density and fluid composition indicate that they are not nearly that strong," he says. However, that doesn't make them sluggish weaklings. They have thousands of suckers working in unison on eight arms and two tentacles, with a rapidly-contracting mantle, to help capture and kill prey.

Diversity and Evolution

Squid Diversity

The giant squid is not just a single species -- or is it? Some researchers think there are as many as 8 species in the genus Architeuthis (Greek for "chief squid"), each a different kind of giant squid. But other researchers think there is just one Architeuthis that swims in the world's ocean. There is no consensus because the squid are so hard to track and there are so few specimens available for study.

However, it is certain that Architeuthis has an abundance of evolutionary relatives. The ocean holds an estimated 500 species of squid-and almost all of those are in the same taxonomic order as the giant squid, called Oegopsina. Some are surprisingly tiny-only about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) in length. Others are impressively large, including the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni), which can grow to be even bigger than the giant squid, reaching 45 feet (14 meters).

These squid species are closely related to snails, clams, and even slugs: they are all mollusks, which are defined by their soft bodies. Some of these soft bodies are encased in hard shells, such as clams and snails, but not the squids.

Squids belong to a particularly successful group of mollusks called the cephalopods, which have been around for about 500 million years. Some ancestors of modern-day squids had shells, such as the ammonites, which ruled the waves 400-65 million years ago. Of those that are still around, one small group-the nautiluses-has an external shell. The other-which includes squids, cuttlefishes, and octopods-does not, although squids and cuttlefishes have an internal, backbone-like support made of chitin called a pen.

Shell or no shell, all cephalopods have well-developed brains and are very active, jet-propelling themselves through the ocean. Most have ink sacs. And many can change skin color and texture in the blink of an eye.

Distribution

Giant squid are thought to swim in the ocean worldwide, based on the beaches they've washed upon, as shown in the map ( via Wikimedia Commons). However, they're rarely found in tropical and polar areas. They commonly wash up on the shores of New Zealand and Pacific islands, make frequent appearances on the east and west sides of the Northern Atlantic, and the South Atlantic along the southern coast of Africa.

This distribution suggests that they prefer continental and island slopes, says Dr. Clyde Roper.

Lifecycle

Growth

How long does it take to grow so big? Unlike mammals, including people, and many fish species, cephalopods grow very quickly and die after a short life. Evidence from statoliths (a small mineralized mass that helps squid balance), which accumulate "growth rings" and can be used to measure age, suggests that giant squid live no more than five years -- which means each squid must grow incredibly quickly to reach 30 feet in just a few years! To grow at such a rate, giant squid must live in areas of the ocean where there is an abundant supply of food to provide enough energy.

Reproduction

(©Clyde F.E. Roper)

It's believed that giant squid live about five years and, in that time, reproduce only once. Talk about pressure! Giant squid males don't use a modified arm (hectocotylus) to transfer sperm like most squid; instead, the spermatophore (sperm packet) is expelled from a penis, which sticks out through the funnel and can be as long as the animal's mantle, up to 7 feet long. Once the male finds a female -- whether it happens by chance or by following a chemical signal is unknown -- the male injects sperm packets directly into the female's arms.

The rest of the story from here is mostly guesswork. The sperm could travel through her arms to fertilize the eggs internally. But researchers suspect that the arm-shot of spermatophores triggers the female squid's ovaries to release eggs bound together with jelly, which she holds in her arms. Then the sperm sense the eggs nearby and migrate in that direction to fertilize the eggs.

Females then release millions of tiny, transparent fertilized eggs into the water in a jellied clump called an egg mass. Most are quickly snatched up as food by other marine animals. But a few survive -- and within a few years, they become giant marine predators.

In the Food Web

Feeding

Hunting in the deep dark ocean isn't easy, but these cephalopods have adapted to their environment. In addition to their foot-wide eyes, which help them to absorb as much light as possible to glimpse prey, they also have long feeding tentacles. These tentacles are more than twice their body length, and the squids can shoot out to long distances like a net. This allows these big, comparatively conspicuous squids to sneak up and catch prey. But what do giant squids eat? Although scientists have not witnessed a giant squid feeding, they have cut open the stomachs of squids washed up on beaches to see what they had eaten recently. Giant squid mostly eat deep water fishes and other squids-including other giant squids. They also will attack schools of fish from below, quickly ascending into shallower waters to grab a meal before retreating to safer depths away from predators. Once prey is caught by the suckers and teeth on the feeding tentacles, the squid will rein it in and bring it towards its beak with its eight arms. The beak breaks the food down into smaller pieces, and the radula, a tongue-like organ covered in teeth, grinds it down further. Then the food goes down the esophagus -which travels through the squid's brain-to get to the stomach. Evidence from a washed ashore squid suggests giant squid will steal the captured meal of another squid, presumably in order to reduce the risk of an attack by a sperm whale in shallow depths. The dead squid's two tentacles were ripped from their base and large sucker marks covered the mantle.

Predators

One hypothesis for how giant squid evolved to grow so enormous is that the tremendous size leaves it with few predators in the deep water. However, those predators still exist-most notably the sperm whale. Scientists have found giant squid beaks, as well as other undigested pieces of giant squid, in the stomachs of sperm whales-the remains of a very large serving of calamari. Additionally, beach-stranded sperm whales have been found with sucker marks on their skin, battle scars large enough that only a giant squid could have caused them.

Who wins in these battles? It's hard to know, since these duels have never been seen by people, but most likely the sperm whales emerge victorious. The small sampling of giant squid stomachs have never contained any recognizable sperm whale parts, but many sperm whale stomachs have contained giant squid. And the only way a whale develops a battle scar is if it survives the battle.

Meet Clyde Roper

Dr. Clyde Roper grew up close to the ocean and was a lobster fisherman before going to graduate school, where he studied squid. "I was hooked," he says. Roper is especially passionate about giant squid and has traveled the world studying dead specimens on beaches and in museums and searching for living squid. In his quest to learn as much as possible about giant squid, Roper has been bitten by several species of squids and tasted a piece of cooked giant squid. "It was really awful," he says. A zoologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, Roper has discovered new cephalopod species, published more than 150 scientific papers, and co-authored the Catalog of Cephalopods of the World. He hasn't yet seen a living giant squid-but he hasn't given up on this long-held dream.

Giant Squid on Display

There are about a dozen giant squid on display in museums and aquaria around the world, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is lucky enough to have two.

This female (the bigger of the two) was caught in a fisherman's net off the coast of Spain in 2005. It was probably 2-3 years old and, when alive, 11 meters (36 feet) long with tentacles that extended 6.7 meters (22 feet). Since then it has shrunk considerably, but at 7.6 meters (25 feet) long, it is still an impressive sight.

How do you transport a giant squid carcass from Spain to Washington, D.C.? With the help of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force for Operation Calamari. Displaying specimens of this size is a challenge―so much so that specially designed tanks had to be designed. The tanks hold between 1,500 and 1,800 gallons of water, are completely airtight, contain valves and openings for refilling preservative fluid when necessary and taking tissue samples, and are equipped with appropriate gear for anchoring all body parts and tentacles to prevent floating. International shipping regulations prohibit transportation of hazardous materials in an airplane. The squids could not begin their journey until their tanks were completely finished and ready to receive them. Once that was done the specimens were wrapped carefully in cheesecloth and crated tightly for their trip. Several squid specialists accompanied them on their flight and as soon as they arrived, they were met by Smithsonian personnel and immediately installed into their new quarters at the ocean hall.

This specimen and a smaller male are on loan to the Smithsonian from the Coordinadora para el Estudio y la Protección de last Especies Marinas, which preserves giant squid specimens from the waters of northern Spain.

Collections

200,000 Cephalopods and Counting

The Smithsonian doesn't just house giant squid; scientists at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History are building a National Cephalopod Collection. It already totals about 200,000 preserved specimens collected worldwide-including the most diverse collection of squids found in the world. The museum's collection also includes the holotypes for 164 cephalopod species, including 66 squid species. Holotypes are the specimens that were used by scientists to formally describe and name a new species.

Research

Search for the Giant Squid

If you want to see a live giant squid, you have to go to where it lives. That happens to be the inky black, icy cold waters 1,650 feet (500 meters) to 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) below the ocean's surface-not a very convenient place to watch wildlife. Dr. Clyde Roper, a Smithsonian zoologist, has tried several techniques to track down giant squid in their natural habitat. With help from the National Geographic Society, he attached a small video camera called Crittercam to the heads of sperm whales. He sent a camera-equipped, robotic submersible called an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle to search for giant squid. And he has dived thousands of feet alone in a deep sea submersible.

So far, no luck for Dr. Roper. But researchers in Japan were able to film a giant squid in its natural habitat in 2012 using flashing lights to imitate bioluminescent jellies ( Watch the footage at the Discovery Channel). In 2019 the giant squid made an appearance again, this time off the coast of Louisiana. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) funded project lured the squid with a special probe and caught the squid on camera.

Giant Squid of Myth

The giant squid has captured the human imagination for more than 2,000 years. For a long time, people who spotted them floating, dead, at sea or washed up on beaches couldn't figure out what they were. Were they monsters or sea serpents? Mermen? Rare glimpses of this huge sea creature inspired both fear and fascination. People came up with fantastic explanations for what their astonished eyes saw-or thought they saw. Movies, books, and popular lore featured encounters with huge, hungry sea creatures brandishing many tentacles. It turns out that the giant squid of myth is not a monster at all. But only since the late 19th century has enough scientific evidence accumulated to replace the myths with fact.

From Mermen to Architeuthis

The first known record of Architeuthis comes from Denmark in the 1500s, when several "curious fish" were found afloat by the sea. Historians of the time did not associate these "fish" with cephalopods; instead, they conflated their looks with those of humans, describing these creatures as having "a head like a man... and a dress of scarlet like a monk's cloak," and calling them Sea Monks.

Not until the mid-1800s did the leading cephalopod specialist of the day, Professor Japetus Steenstrup of Denmark, conclude that the mythical beasts were, in fact, very large squid. With the two long feeding tentacles arranged just right, they could be mistaken for arms sticking out of the mantle. The rest of the Sea Monk descriptions, however, he ascribed to a combination of astonishment and imagination. "Squids on the whole make a grim impression on all those who are not accustomed to seeing them more frequently," Steenstrup said. "Those animals aroused still greater astonishment in earlier times."

The First Photograph

In late 1873, Reverend Moses Harvey of Newfoundland, an amateur naturalist and writer with an intense interest in curiosities from the sea, bought a dead giant squid for $10 from a fisherman who caught it by accident. Harvey immediately displayed it in his living room, draping the head and arms over the sponge bath for easy observation. It was the first complete giant squid specimen ever put on display, and it became a turning point in our understanding of giant squid. Professor A.E. Verrill of Yale University used Harvey's "curiosity" to provide the first accurate description and scientific illustration of the giant squid.

A Man-Killing Monster?

(Wikimedia Commons, Pierre-Jules Hetzel)

Even before Harvey's giant squid carcass made the news, fiction writers had been incorporating Architeuthis into their stories. Perhaps most famously, French author Jules Vernes's 1870 novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea features a monster squid with a hunger for human flesh. A "poulpe" -- French for "octopus" but commonly translated as "giant squid" -- attacks the submarine Nautilus, putting up quite a fight and devouring a crew member. Verne describes the 25-foot squid as "a terrible monster worthy of all the legends about such creatures" and, in the process, created a legend himself.

For the 1954 film version of the novel, Disney created a two-ton model squid, requiring 16 men to operate the remote controls and 50 more to move the wires attached to tentacles. Their model squid pales in comparison to modern day film monsters, but it earned the movie an Academy Award for special effects.

Giant squid have made other book and film appearances. In Doctor No, the sixth novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, a giant squid attacks Bond while he's trapped in a pool. And in the 1991 Peter Benchley novel Beast (made into a film in 1996), researchers and monster hunters go after a 100-foot squid, which is finally killed when a sperm whale bites off its head.

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Home Ocean Life Invertebrates Giant Squid Giant squid live up to their name: the largest giant squid ever recorded by scientists was almost 43 feet (13 meters) long, and may have weighed nearly a ton. You'd think such a huge animal wouldn't be hard to miss.

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piranha is a deadly fish with lots of sharp teeth they feed on other fish and small ocean creatures

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piranha is a deadly fish with lots of sharp teeth they feed on other fish and small ocean creatures

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A piranha is a ferocious freshwater fish.

Piranhas live in lakes and rivers in South America.

They require warm water to survive and do not eat when the water temperature is less than 12°C (54°F) degrees Fahrenheit.

T he total number of piranha species is unknown and contested, and new species continue to be described. Estimates range from fewer than 30 to more than 60.

They live up to 25 years in the wild and 10-20 years in captivity.

Piranhas are normally about 15 to 25 centimeters (6 to 10 inches) long, although some specimens have been reported to be up to 50 centimeters (20 inches) in length.

Piranhas range in color from yellow to steel-grey to bluish to partly red to almost black.

A piranha's mouth is lined with a single row of razor-sharp, triangular teeth. They have a distinct under-bite, which means the bottom row of teeth is constantly exposed.

It's not uncommon for piranhas to lose teeth throughout their lifetime. But, while sharks replace their teeth individually, piranhas replace teeth in quarters multiple times throughout their lifespan.

Most piranhas are shy and non-aggressive, unless they are hunting or protecting their young.

Black piranhas and red-bellied piranhas are considered the most dangerous and aggressive toward humans.

Despite the carnivorous nature of the piranha, the piranha is actually an omnivore and will eat almost anything that it can find.

A typical piranha diet consists of insects, fish, crustaceans, worms, carrion, seeds, fruit and other plant material.

They will also eat whatever meat crosses their path, and because they hunt in groups, they can take down large animals.

Piranhas rarely attack humans. Fatal attacks are extremely rare.

These voraciously hungry fish tend to have a l urk-and-ambush style of attack that occurs en masse, with large groups of piranha feeding at once.
Shoals of piranhas can be found in numbers of up to 1000.
Various stories exist about piranhas, such as how they can dilacerate a human body or cattle in seconds. These legends refer specifically to the red-bellied piranha.

Experiments have shown that piranhas have an amazingly acute sense of smell, which aids them in locatin food in the often murky waters of their native habitat.

Piranhas have the standard respiratory system that most fish have. They take water in through their gills and then absorb oxygen from the water. The oxygen then goes to the blood stream. After the oxygen is absorbed the carbon dioxide is exhaled through the gills.

The female lays around 5000 eggs then the male will fertilize the eggs. The male will then protect the eggs and become very territorial of them. The piranhas will spawn from the eggs after a few days. They have two spawning periods, one in April/May and a second in the late summer time.

Many animals prey upon piranhas (especially young piranhas), including other piranhas, larger fish, caimans, water snakes, turtles, birds, otters and people.

The word piranha literally translates as " tooth fish " in the indigenous Brazilian language of Tupi.

Native people of South America use piranha teeth for tools and weapons.

When American President Theodore Roosevelt visited Brazil in 1913, he went on a hunting expedition through the Amazon Rainforest. While standing on the bank of the Amazon River, he witnessed a spectacle created by local fishermen. After blocking off part of the river and starving the piranhas for several days, they pushed a cow into the water, where it was quickly torn apart and skeletonized by a school of hungry piranhas.

Piranhas can be bought as pets in some areas, but they are illegal in many parts of the United States. It is illegal to import piranhas into the Philippines and violators could face six months to four years in jail.

The most common aquarium piranha is Pygocentrus nattereri, the red-bellied piranha.

Films have often portrayed piranhas as aggressive, insatiable predators.

Piranha (1978) and Piranha II: The Spawning (1981) perpetuated the piranha's sinister image by showing murderous piranha fish biting and eating humans. In the 2010 film Piranha 3D, a previously unknown piranha is discovered.

Fossil evidence puts piranha ancestors in the continent's rivers 25 million years ago, but modern piranha genera may have only been around for 1.8 million years.

Piranhas have also been discovered in the Kaptai Lake in southeast Bangladesh and in the Lijiang River in China. Research is being carried out to establish how piranhas have moved to such distant corners of the world from their original habitat.

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A piranha is a ferocious freshwater fish. Piranhas live in lakes and rivers in South America. They require warm water to survive and do not eat when the water temperature is less than 12°C (54°F) degrees Fahrenheit. T he total number of piranha species is unknown and contested, and new species continue to be described.

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stonefish are venomous fish that can kill you fast it is deadly to humans and animals if you step on it

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stonefish are venomous fish that can kill you fast it is deadly to humans and animals if you step on it

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Unique Stock Photos of extremely venomous Reef Stonefish and False Stonefish from Great Barrier Reef, Indonesia and South Pacific.