 "Viral video: Footage of giant squid swimming off Japan coast")
A Japanese-led team of scientists has captured on film the world’s first live images of a giant squid, journeying to the depths of the ocean in search of the mysterious creature thought to have inspired the myth of the “kraken”, a tentacled monster.
The images of the silvery, three-metre (10 feet) long cephalopod, looming out of the darkness nearly 1 km below the surface, were taken last July near the Ogasawara islands, 1,000 km (620 miles) south of Tokyo.
[caption id=“attachment_583287” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Screengrab from YouTube[/caption]
The footage will be aired on the Discovery Channel on 27 January, but ABC News had this sneak peek!
Though the beast was small by giant squid standards - the largest ever caught stretched 18 metres long, tentacles and all - filming it secretly in its natural habitat was a key step towards understanding the animal, researchers said.
“Many people have tried to capture an image of a giant squid alive in its natural habitat, whether researchers or film crews. But they all failed,” said Tsunemi Kubodera, a zoologist at Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science, who led the team.
With inputs from Reuters
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