Large squid’s tentacles flew like harpoons at fish, video shows. Then, things got odd

A rare observance of a deep sea squid using one of its tentacles like a giant tongue got stranger still when it spewed out its intended meal and sped away.

The bizarre moment happened off the coast of Chile, and it left researchers howling with amazement aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor (too).

Video shows the Humboldt squid came out of nowhere, slipped to within inches of an oblivious fish and then launched a barrage of tentacles at it like harpoons.

The much smaller fish is quickly pulled toward certain doom. However, it’s just as quickly freed and the squid appears to flee from it.

Thousands have viewed the video, posted Oct. 30, and many commenters have asked the same question: What happened?

“The squid grabbed a small dogfish or catshark,” explained Greg Rouse, a marine biologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

“I suspect the texture of the skin (very tough) made the squid immediately reject it as food.”

Humboldt squids have an almost mythical reputation for being “cannibalistic, voracious, and monstrous,” the Schmidt Ocean Institute reports.

They are known in the region as red devils, due to “the red and white flashing display they exhibit when captured,” experts say. The predators are also among the largest creatures in deep waters off South America’s Pacific coast, the institute says.

Researchers have identified more than two dozen “flashing” color patterns Humboldt squids use as a type of language to communicate with each other, Oceana reports.

Scientists aboard the research vessel Falkor (too) observed the squid’s “attempted snacking” during a 55-day expedition off Chile, where the submerged continental shelf “drops steeply and suddenly.”

The largely unexplored region is home to a tectonic plate junction that is “the only modern site in the world where a mid-ocean ridge is being swallowed beneath a continental plate,” the institute says.

This story was originally published November 8, 2024 at 7:25 AM with the headline "Large squid’s tentacles flew like harpoons at fish, video shows. Then, things got odd."