July 6
Part octopus, part calamari.
Scientists can't seem to get their arms around this ocean-going oddity, which has been dubbed "octosquid."
When the animal was sucked up from 3,000-foot (914-meter) depths by a deep-sea pipeline Tuesday at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority in Kailua-Kona (NELHA), scientists were initially stumped.
The foot-long octosquid had the body of a squid but eight tentacles like an octopus—and it lacked the long, flowing tentacles reminiscent of squid.
Finding new or rare species is common in the pitch-black depths of the squid's home, which have still been largely unexplored by people.
The pipeline has already yielded some perplexing surprises, such as one still-unnamed fish with an eellike body that could be an entirely new genus.
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