THE BIGFIN SQUID

Of all the strange and wonderful animals that live in the deep sea, perhaps the most tantalising are the ones that are occasionally glimpsed by deep-submerged cameras, then swim off into the darkness before scientists can get a good look.

- 

Many of these animals have never been handled by scientists, including an enigmatic squid with elbows, enormous rippling fins and tentacles like long, rippling strands of spaghetti.

Squid experts have scrutinised the available footage and generally presume these are bigfin squid, from the family Magnapinnidae. This group was described in 1998 based on a few rare specimens of squid larvae. Nobody has ever caught an adult bigfin squid in a net, only on camera. These adults look a lot like the larvae, but until a specimen is brought in, it's hard to know for sure whether there actually is a link between the two.