Giant squid is caught on film

PEOPLE have seen more of Mars than of one of the most elusive creatures on Earth -- the giant squid. But two researchers captured the creature on film in the ocean for the first time.

Until Japanese scientists snapped more than 500 photos of a 25-foot-long giant squid off the Ogasawara Islands, sightings of this calamari on steroids have been limited to dead or dying specimens on beaches or in nets. A 60-foot-long carcass washed up in Tasmania in 2002.

Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori found one of the behemoths drifting in the blackness 2,950 feet deep in the Pacific. The photos show the squid feeding in darkness and retracting tentacles before encircling the baited fishing line of the researchers, who reported their findings in a scientific journal last week.

-- Joe Robinson