Among other dissection highlights, Hochberg pulled out plastic-like pieces, which comprised what could be best described as a backbone, as well as a translucent brownish-yellow piece of the beak, which is made of fingernail-like material. The giant squid's anatomy features a mouth at the top of the head, which means the esophagus travels through the brain. "So you have to get very small chunks of food," said Hochberg, "or you'll blow your brains out." The sharp beaks, then, are used to chomp food into tiny pieces before sending it down the esophagus, through the brain, and into the gut.

There are many weird things about the giant Humboldt squid, but here's one of the strangest: Its beak. The squid's beak is one of the hardest organic substances in existence -- such that the sharp point can slice through a fish or whale like a Ginsu knife. Yet the beak is attached to squid flesh that itself is the texture of jello. How precisely does a gelatinous animal safely wield such a razor-sharp weapon? Why doesn't it just sort of, y'know, rip off? It's as if you tried to carve a roast with a knife that doesn't have a handle: It would cut into your fingers as much as the roast.

Paper here.

"We are looking at something verging on the incredibly bizarre. As she got older she got shorter and broader and was reduced to a giant gelatinous blob, carrying many thousands of eggs," he says.

"Her shape was likely to have affected her behaviour and ability to hunt. I can't imagine her jetting herself around in the water at any great speed, and she was too gelatinous to have been a fighting machine.

"It's likely she was just blobbing around the seabed carrying her brood of eggs, living on dead fish, while her mate was off hunting."

The site was inspired by Margaret Atwood's infamous comment that Oryx and Crake isn't really science fiction, because science fiction is "talking squids in outer space." This prompted a hunt for science fiction which actually did feature talking squids in outer space.