Something Is Hunting the Animal With the Biggest Eye on Earth
Earth Unwatched
650 views
A thousand meters down, in total darkness, the largest predator with teeth on Earth hunts the largest invertebrate that has ever lived. We have the scars. We have the beaks. We have the 1955 whale with an 8-metre squid inside it. What we have never had is the footage.
This is the deep-sea food chain, one level at a time: a 7 cm lanternfish, an arrow squid that lives a single year, the giant squid, the sperm whale — and the one animal that eats a sperm whale.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The eye
0:10 A thousand meters down
1:03 Level 1 — The lanternfish
2:26 Level 2 — The arrow squid
3:31 Level 3 — The giant squid
5:30 Level 4 — The sperm whale
9:15 Eaten by...
SOURCES CITED
Møhl et al. 2003 (clicks, 236 dB) · Fais et al. 2016 (acoustic stunning, tested and rejected) · Nilsson et al. 2012 and Schmitz et al. 2013 (the giant eye) · Paxton 2016 (maximum size) · Clarke 1955 (the Azores whale) · Pitman et al. 2001 (killer whales vs sperm whales)
SYNTHETIC IMAGERY
The shots no camera has ever captured — the giant squid alive, the sperm whale hunting in the dark, the glowing lanternfish, the eye in the opening — were generated with Google Flow (Veo). Everything else is real footage, real archive film or real museum specimens.
CREDITS
NOAA, public domain
Sperm whales at the surface, mother and calf, diving group — NOAA Fisheries SEFSC / Melissa Cook (NMFS permits 27867, 25867)
Sperm whale clicks and buzz — NOAA Fisheries: Matthew Bowers, Laura Dias, Gina Rappucci, Lynne Hodge
Sperm whale clicks — NOAA NEFSC Passive Acoustics Branch, "Sounds in the Ocean: Mammals"
Killer whales — Katy Foster and NOAA Fisheries (NMFS permit 21368); NOAA Fisheries (NMFS permit 18786); calls from NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson
Deep-sea squid, jellies and the water column — NOAA Ocean Exploration: Windows to the Deep 2018/2019/2021, Mountains in the Deep 2017, Deep Connections 2019, Discovering the Deep 2017, Northeast U.S. Canyons 2013, Océano Profundo 2015, Southeastern U.S. Deep-sea Exploration 2019, Shakedown + EXPRESS 2023
Echogram and deep scattering layer, lanternfish specimens — NOAA Ocean Exploration / NOAA SEFSC
Sperm whale photographs — Tim Cole (NOAA Fisheries), David Csepp (NOAA), John Bortniak (NOAA Corps), NOAA Photo Library
Killer whale photograph — Allen Shimada (NOAA)
Sperm whale skin with sucker scars — NASA · Giant squid eye and beak with Clyde Roper — Gene Carl Feldman (NASA)
Archive, public domain
"Down to the Sea in Ships" (1922), Elmer Clifton
"Le Poulpe Colossal" (1801) and "Poulpe Colossal attacks a merchant ship" — Pierre Denys de Montfort / Étienne Claude Voysard
Giant squid at Logy Bay, Newfoundland, 1873
"Cachalot with long stripes from struggle with Architeuthis" — Murray & Hjort, 1912
Giant squid eye — Smithsonian Institution · Giant squid beak, Florida 2000 — Richard Young (CC0)
All via Wikimedia Commons
Creative Commons — attribution required
Architeuthis dux NHMD-141565 — Natural History Museum of Denmark — CC BY 4.0
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Architeuthis_dux_NHMD-141565.png
Architeuthis dux — Auckland War Memorial Museum — CC BY 4.0
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Architeuthis_dux_68146399.jpg
Architeuthis dux F 88555 — Rodney Start, Museums Victoria — CC BY 4.0
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Architeuthis_dux_specimen_F_88555.jpg
Architeuthis dux F 74346 — Benjamin Healley, Museums Victoria — CC BY 4.0
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Architeuthis_dux_specimen_F_74346.jpg
Giant squid, Ranheim — NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet — CC BY 2.0
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giant_squid_Ranheim.jpg
Giant squid beak — The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London — CC BY 4.0
Nototodarus sloanii — Darren Stevens, NIWA — CC0
Silhouettes — PhyloPic: Margot Michaud, Becky Barnes, Jamie Whitehouse, Emma Kissling, Olesja Bogomaz (CC0)
Licences: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 and /by/2.0
Music — YouTube Audio Library
"Frame-Dragging" and "Reviver" — The Grey Room / Density & Time · "Moonlight Magic" — Asher Fulero · "Obon Fog" and "Rain Over Kyoto Station" — The Mini Vandals · "Garythargy" — Schwartzy
Sound effects — Freesound (CC0)
#spermwhale #giantsquid #deepsea
1 Comments
Something Is Hunting the Animal With the Biggest Eye on Earth
Earth Unwatched
650 views
A thousand meters down, in total darkness, the largest predator with teeth on Earth hunts the largest invertebrate that has ever lived. We have the scars. We have the beaks. We have the 1955 whale with an 8-metre squid inside it. What we have never had is the footage.
This is the deep-sea food chain, one level at a time: a 7 cm lanternfish, an arrow squid that lives a single year, the giant squid, the sperm whale — and the one animal that eats a sperm whale.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The eye
0:10 A thousand meters down
1:03 Level 1 — The lanternfish
2:26 Level 2 — The arrow squid
3:31 Level 3 — The giant squid
5:30 Level 4 — The sperm whale
9:15 Eaten by...
SOURCES CITED
Møhl et al. 2003 (clicks, 236 dB) · Fais et al. 2016 (acoustic stunning, tested and rejected) · Nilsson et al. 2012 and Schmitz et al. 2013 (the giant eye) · Paxton 2016 (maximum size) · Clarke 1955 (the Azores whale) · Pitman et al. 2001 (killer whales vs sperm whales)
SYNTHETIC IMAGERY
The shots no camera has ever captured — the giant squid alive, the sperm whale hunting in the dark, the glowing lanternfish, the eye in the opening — were generated with Google Flow (Veo). Everything else is real footage, real archive film or real museum specimens.
CREDITS
NOAA, public domain
Sperm whales at the surface, mother and calf, diving group — NOAA Fisheries SEFSC / Melissa Cook (NMFS permits 27867, 25867)
Sperm whale clicks and buzz — NOAA Fisheries: Matthew Bowers, Laura Dias, Gina Rappucci, Lynne Hodge
Sperm whale clicks — NOAA NEFSC Passive Acoustics Branch, "Sounds in the Ocean: Mammals"
Killer whales — Katy Foster and NOAA Fisheries (NMFS permit 21368); NOAA Fisheries (NMFS permit 18786); calls from NOAA Ship Oscar Dyson
Deep-sea squid, jellies and the water column — NOAA Ocean Exploration: Windows to the Deep 2018/2019/2021, Mountains in the Deep 2017, Deep Connections 2019, Discovering the Deep 2017, Northeast U.S. Canyons 2013, Océano Profundo 2015, Southeastern U.S. Deep-sea Exploration 2019, Shakedown + EXPRESS 2023
Echogram and deep scattering layer, lanternfish specimens — NOAA Ocean Exploration / NOAA SEFSC
Sperm whale photographs — Tim Cole (NOAA Fisheries), David Csepp (NOAA), John Bortniak (NOAA Corps), NOAA Photo Library
Killer whale photograph — Allen Shimada (NOAA)
Sperm whale skin with sucker scars — NASA · Giant squid eye and beak with Clyde Roper — Gene Carl Feldman (NASA)
Archive, public domain
"Down to the Sea in Ships" (1922), Elmer Clifton
"Le Poulpe Colossal" (1801) and "Poulpe Colossal attacks a merchant ship" — Pierre Denys de Montfort / Étienne Claude Voysard
Giant squid at Logy Bay, Newfoundland, 1873
"Cachalot with long stripes from struggle with Architeuthis" — Murray & Hjort, 1912
Giant squid eye — Smithsonian Institution · Giant squid beak, Florida 2000 — Richard Young (CC0)
All via Wikimedia Commons
Creative Commons — attribution required
Architeuthis dux NHMD-141565 — Natural History Museum of Denmark — CC BY 4.0
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Architeuthis_dux_NHMD-141565.png
Architeuthis dux — Auckland War Memorial Museum — CC BY 4.0
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Architeuthis_dux_68146399.jpg
Architeuthis dux F 88555 — Rodney Start, Museums Victoria — CC BY 4.0
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Architeuthis_dux_specimen_F_88555.jpg
Architeuthis dux F 74346 — Benjamin Healley, Museums Victoria — CC BY 4.0
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Architeuthis_dux_specimen_F_74346.jpg
Giant squid, Ranheim — NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet — CC BY 2.0
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giant_squid_Ranheim.jpg
Giant squid beak — The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London — CC BY 4.0
Nototodarus sloanii — Darren Stevens, NIWA — CC0
Silhouettes — PhyloPic: Margot Michaud, Becky Barnes, Jamie Whitehouse, Emma Kissling, Olesja Bogomaz (CC0)
Licences: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 and /by/2.0
Music — YouTube Audio Library
"Frame-Dragging" and "Reviver" — The Grey Room / Density & Time · "Moonlight Magic" — Asher Fulero · "Obon Fog" and "Rain Over Kyoto Station" — The Mini Vandals · "Garythargy" — Schwartzy
Sound effects — Freesound (CC0)
#spermwhale #giantsquid #deepsea