Whales & Squid: Three Million Battles A Day

[n2doc]

By Danna Staaf

When we want to blow our minds with the sheer vastness of nature, we often turn to astronomy. In fact, we use the word astronomical to mean really a whole lot. But today, I'd like to make a case for biology.

My source is a new paper in the American Malacological Bulletin* called "Unanswered Questions About the Giant Squid Architeuthis (Architeuthidae) Illustrate Our Incomplete Knowledge of Coleoid Cephalopods," in which authors Clyde Roper and Liz Shea make some delicious calculations:

If the estimated 360,000 sperm whales remaining in the world’s oceans eat one giant squid per month, then the giant squid population consumed must be over 4.3 million individuals per year. If the number is one per week, then the consumed population would be over 18.7 million individuals consumed per year. Estimates based on actual samples taken from sperm whale stomachs are much larger still. Clarke (1980) suggested that approximately 1% of the 700–800 squids a female sperm whale eats each day and the 300–400 squids a male eats each day are Architeuthis specimens. If true, that yields the astonishing number of over 3.6 million giant squids consumed per day, and a yearly total over 131 million giant squids. [emphasis mine]

That means this . . .




. . . could be happening more than three million times a day, or more than forty times a second. Consider. It's possible that, in the time it takes you to swallow one sip of water, forty formidable sperm whales around the world have slurped down forty unfortunate giant squid.


more

http://www.science20.com/squid_day/whales_squid_three_million_battles_day-116823

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1. Mind-boggling

Those numbers just blow me away.